From: dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig)
Subject: The Shadow Rising (no spoilers)
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest) 
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 02:33:34 GMT

I have no real complaints about this book or the series.  It isn't
breaking new literary ground, but it's doing a fine job within the
epic fantasy subgenre.  It was worth the $25 pricetag for the hard-
cover, and it was worth the time it took to read it.  Nor can I
complain about the length of the entire cycle:  Jordan is telling
a big story, but there's no sense of any of the subplots being
superflous or padded.  It's not everyone who can write a 5000-page
page-turner.  In summary, "The Wheel of Time" is no more than
well-crafted entertainment -- but it's also no less.

That said, I do have a few observations and a few nits to pick.

1. Tar Valon appears to require a remarkably small quorum for major decisions.

2. Loial appears to be suffering from the Longing, and will probably start
   sickening visibly in the next book.

3. The implication from this book and the earlier ones is that The Dragon
   went mad almost immediately, while The Dragon Reborn is expected to go
   mad over a period of months and/or years.  There are a number of ways
   to rationalize this, but it strikes me mainly as a matter of plot
   convenience.

4. The rationale for a few people being able to make an enormous difference
   is better than the usual "nobody knows that the Evil One's strawberry
   birthmark is vulnerable to soy sauce" arbitrariness.  Since virtually
   every power in the world is aligned against the Dark One, but many of
   the leaders have been subborned or replaced, one of the keys to victory
   is to bring down or expose a relatively small number of plotters.


Oh, right, some nitpicking -- mostly on matters of craftsmanship.

1. A sprinkling of the names used have a heavy freight of association
   from our own culture, and I think it was a mistake on Jordan's part
   to use them here.  The most blatant examples are Artur Paendrag, 
   Shai'tan, Sammael, Shayol Ghul.  It could be argued that this is
   the author's way of showing the persistence of the greatest legends
   or influences from one age, or even turn of the wheel, to the next,
   but to me it came across as a distracting lack of originality.

2. Jordan's also made the decision not to flesh his cultures out with
   much detail.  That's probably to the good -- It's better to have an
   implicit generic-medieval setting and concentrate on the story than
   to spend a lot of time on world-building and probably do a not-very-
   convincing job and not be thanked for your pains.  But his attempts
   to make some of his cultures more foreign to us seem superficial.
   For example, he calls a fork a fork, but calls chop sticks 'sursa'.
   He inserts apostrophes in names, sometimes in odd places, but the
   glossary indicates that these apostrophes generally have no effect
   upon pronunciation.

3. Darell K Sweet doesn't seem to have put a lot of thought into the
   details of the cover art.  The clothing and hair appear to be an
   amalgam of nineteenth- and twentieth-century western styles.  The
   bow is supposed to be a longbow, but it isn't, and if the holder is
   a righty (as I infer from his stance), he's going to find it very
   hard to use that bow with a left-side quiver.  His companion is
   holding a mug in his right hand, which suggests that he's got his
   sword buckled on the wrong side.  (Sweet is going for composition,
   of course.)  For a pseudo-medieval culture, there's an awful lot
   of iron-mongery being mistreated on the ground or over that extremely
   stupid and dangerous fire.  (It's not a cooking fire, and the
   branches holding the pots aren't going to last long enough.)  And
   I'm not sure of this, but isn't having a glass bottle like that for 
   the brandy (or whatever) an unlikely luxury for the implicit
   technological level -- especially on the road?

-----
Dani Zweig
dani@netcom.com

   'T is with our judgements as our watches, none
   Go alike, yet each believes his own
		--Alexander Pope

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