Robert Jordan passed away last September of a rare blood disease, with eleven of a planned twelve books written in his acclaimed The Wheel of Time series. I had never read them, and I might never have, had his wife not read Mistborn, and chosen Brandon Sanderson to finish what Mr. Jordan started.
Ever since I finished Elantris and Mistborn, I vowed to read everything that Sanderson ever penned, unless some future book disappoints me so completely as to sour me towards his writing forever. As The Well of Ascension proved that that day is far, far away (if it ever comes, God forbid), I realized that I'd never be able to read A Memory of Light without reading the other 11 books first. So, even as I picked up the books from Lynn Flewelling's Nightrunner series from Border's, I bought The Eye of the World (a rare $6.99 paperback in this brave new world filled with $7.99s) and figured it would be as good a read as any to bide my time until June 24th, when the fourth Nightrunner book would be released.
Well, simply put, it was.
It took Jordan the better part of the 800+ page book to get into his own, but by the end his was a terribly well-rendered world with distinct, memorable characters, and that wonderful sense of bigger things to come that lies at the core of every sprawling epic. I have heard opinions that Jordan's writing floundered a bit in the latter books, but the man's passion for his creation never waned; it is said he dictated the rough outline of what he foresaw for the last book from what would prove to be his deathbed. And knowing that Brandon Sanderson is the one who has been tasked with breathing life into that outline gives me great hope for what the ending of Jordan's epic might bring. He isn't the best at the craft, but he is a worthy mentor all the same, and the world is just a bit dimmer for his passing so early (for what are the mid-fifties in the 21st century but the prime years of one's adult life?), when he could have brought forth so much more wonderment and magic.
Though I could not have known the man or his works in life, I am glad that his The Wheel of Time series remains to light the path that he left behind.
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Today is the 24th, so very shortly I'll be delving back into Flewelling's world of Aurenfaie, warrior queens, and beautiful gods of death. Expect an update (or another post) once I'm through.
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Finally, I thought it might be of interest to some that I've written this post on the ultra-tiny keyboard of my Asus EEE laptop. Why? Because my Vaio's going through a defragmentation at the moment, and doing nothing while the computer cleans itself--especially when there's another perfectly good computer waiting in the wings--is just plain silly.
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