Amazon recently released Season 1 of the Wheel of Time based on the best selling series by Robert Jordan, which covers the first of thirteen books, The Eye of the World. While it may have served as the show's inspiration there is so much more to the book. This is a coming of age story framed by an epic quest and set in a world where the balance of power is in the hands of women rather than men. It's about five villagers from an isolated region who suddenly find themselves fleeing for their lives from legendary monsters and discovering that the world is much larger, and history far more complicated, than they ever imagined. All because one of the three boys will either restore the balance of the world and destroy the Dark One or doom them all if he gives in to the insanity that caused him to break the world in a previous life. 

There are few books that can equal the quantity of detail and history that Jordan packs into The Eye of the World. If you're looking for a quick read this isn't the book you want. But if you want to journey from place to place in great detail and delve into millennia of history trying to separate the accurate from the myths then get ready. More recent fantasies shy away from the ultra-long, ultra-complex sagas with a few exceptions like Martin's Game of Thrones and Sanderson's Stormlight series. The most obvious comparison is Tolkein's Lord of the Rings series and at a quick glance they share many similarities. The two worlds however, are nothing alike. The Eye of the World takes place in a darker world three thousand years after the fall of an advanced magical civilization. This was caused by a taint on the source of magic men draw from and causes them to go a little more insane each time they use it. To prevent the chaos the female Aes'Sedai now either kill any man with magical ability or strip it from him, leaving him little more than a mindless husk. The distrust and power imbalance between men and women is obvious even in the remote village of Emond's Field where the book begins and goes far beyond simple sexism. Additionally, the book is full or dark tales and history describing the slow fall of civilization to the point where once great cities lie abandoned to evil or completely obliterated without a trace.

To really describe the plot and characters would take hours that could be better spent reading the actual book. There are eight main characters in this first book. The Aes'Sedai sorceress and her guardian Warder, aided by a wandering gleeman (entertainer), explain the world and its history to the five villagers. The villagers consist of three boys in their late teens, a girl two years younger, and the thirty year old woman who was the wise woman of their village. Both the Aes'Sedai Moiraine and the Dark One believe that one of the boys is the reincarnation of a male Aes'Sedai known as the Dragon who once imprisoned the Dark One before succumbing to insanity. According to legend, souls are reborn as the Wheel of Time turns and there are many prophecies concerning the "Dragon Reborn". The prophecies often seem to contradict each other, but some say he will restore the male half of the source of magic and others that he will destroy what's left of the world.

From Lore's review of the audiobook on Audible: The narration is done by 2 excellent narrators: Michael Kramer and Kate Reading. Each chapter will be read by one or the other depending on the chapter's main character. If the main character is female then Kate will read the entire chapter including the male voices. Michael will handle the chapters where the main character is male and he will do the female voices. This means that you must get accustomed to 2 voices for each character. This put me off at first but I quickly became accustomed to it and now I really enjoy the format.  I had read The Eye of the World years ago but it didn't inspire me to keep going forward in the series, where the audiobook left me wanting more!

The Amazon version of The Eye of the World often bears little resemblance to the book. Some of the discrepancies are obviously to open the casting to a wider range of ethnicities, which is a great idea if more of the roles portrayed the essence of the characters Jordan described. The best portrayal is that of Logain, the False Dragon, who is a tiny part in this first book. The studio also tries to promote sexual equality by saying that the Dragon has been both men and women in previous lives which undermines part of Jordan's plot and the gender imbalance he explores. Although there are certainly some people in his world who assume that men who use the source are inherently evil, Jordan is very clear that this is a misconception and that they are the victims of an evil curse. There are also an equal number of people who distrust the female Aes'Sedai for various reasons. The show also tries to drag the story into more adult territory by adding obvious sexual relations, additional violence, and raising the ages of the four younger characters. With such a long and deep book a show can only skim the surface, but if the industry could make something that captured the essence of the Fellowship of the Ring they could surely have done a better job of The Eye of the World in eight episodes.

The author known best as Robert Jordan, real name James Rigney Jr., started out writing books about Conan the Barbarian before starting The Wheel of Time. He also wrote in other genres, both fiction and non-fiction, under other names. He was a decorated Vietnam War veteran and a physicist before becoming a popular fantasy author. Sadly, he died in 2007 before finishing the WoT series, but had time to leave behind the notes later used by Brandon Sanderson to finish the series.