Review - The Dragon Reborn (Wheel of Time #3) by Robert Jordan

Preamble

I don’t think I would have gotten this far into The Wheel Of Time if not for the Amazon Prime show. It seems that Jordan’s skill improved tremendously over the course of the first three books. The first one had me somewhat impressed, the second was more of an appreciative nod. The Dragon Reborn has made this into one of my favourite fantasy series.

A note about my reviews: I consider myself an appreciator, not a critic. I know first-hand what goes into the creation of art – the blood, the sweat, the tears, the risk. I also know that art appreciation is subjective and lernt good what mama tell’t me – if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. I’m not a school marm grading a spelling test – I’m a reader who enjoys reading. If a book is entertaining, well-written, and I get absorbed into it, five out of five. I have gone as low as three stars – anything less than that and I will not review a book (chances are I DNFed anyway). Regardless, I wouldn’t even put a star rating system on my reviews but for the reality of storefronts like Amazon.

Take from that what you will.

Review – 5/5

The Amyrlin Seat loves her a fishing metaphor. At one point in the novel, after some mention of how something is like a fish or getting a hand caught in a trap or something so cheesily over the top I thought, ‘Man, Robert Jordan just can’t help himself.’

And then one of the other characters referenced this character’s propensity to say stuff like that near the end of the book.

In a way, that’s a large part of how some of the threads of the story came together in this, the third book. Some of the nonsensical behaviour of the characters in the previous books got an explanation, and not a hamfisted one, either. I found myself rather impressed with the way Robert Jordan upended some of the characterization criticisms I had in the earlier books. The characters’ motivations began to make more sense.

And it barely had Rand in it at all.

I liked hanging with Perrin and Mat. Perrin’s character had a nice little wrestle with fate and destiny, thanks to another character’s foretellings. Philosophical questions about prophecy abounded, and Perrin liked being told what was going to happen to him about as much as Rand did in the previous books. None of these Two Rivers folk like being led down the garden path, it seems, whether that was by Moraine or any of the other characters with whom they became involved with. And hell yeah, Perrin becomes involved with a pretty cool female lead who just shows up out of the blue while he’s on his journey.

Mat, who was largely a dark-touched invalid in the second book, takes center stage in this one. He thinks himself a rogue – and he is, to a degree – but he’s also a protagonist who can’t help but do the right thing. He dreams of escaping his destiny, but it’s always after he does what he can to look out for his friends. In his quest for lonely escape, he finds himself charging into the belly of the beast to save the women he loves.

Women who give him a whole raft of unearned s-word for his trouble.

And speaking of swords, Rand does play a pivotal role. He gets the Wheel of Time equivalent of the Vorpal Blade of Doom +8 when he’s like, I dunno, a level five knight, and uses it to ‘defeat’ the big bad. Except this win over the dark is the same as every other one he’s had now (he’s on number three now). I feel like there’s a pattern here, and I would not be surprised if Rand kills Satan yet again at the end of book four, only to realize that the princess is in another castle.

Robert Jordan weaves a form of slow magic, a deliberately paced machination that gently gets up to speed near the end. People talk about the Sanderlanche in terms of Brandon Sanderson’s propensity to turn the action up to 11 in the final pages of the novel, and I am definitely noticing something similar in Jordan’s work. Each book has been the same in this regard.

There is plenty that can be said about the series: the gorgeous setting, the likeable (and detestable) characters, the scale of the conflict and the build up of power. I was only sort of joking when I said Rand was like a level five knight who gets the fantasy equivalent of a nuclear bomb. He’s been progressing as the avatar of good to fight the embodiment of evil, except that his use of the One Power is not without its problems.

Is he going to go nuts due to the tainted Power and kill everyone he loves, as he did in a past life? Guess I'll find out next time in The Shadow Rising.