This wind, it was not the ending. There are no endings, and never will be endings, to the turning of the Wheel of Time.
But it was an ending.
- from A Memory of Light, by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson
And, so, my reading quest—an age lasting about 18 years—comes to its conclusion and a new one stands ready to begin...
I came rather late to the series, having been first introduced to it in the fall of 1994. I'd just permanently moved to Southeast Alaska that July and was employed for the winter by the local bookseller. Book 6, Lord of Chaos, had just been released in hardcover and the locals were going nuts trying to get copies, even going so far as to come by everyday to note who had not yet picked-up their special orders and trying to convince me that it never would be and I should sell it to them instead.
Hah, nice try. Cripes, the extent that people would go over a freaking book! I was and still am a near fanatical reader; however, no book should be that important. Should it?
Having a slow afternoon, one shift at the downtown store, I grabbed a copy of Book 1, Eye of the World, in order to see what all the fuss was about...
It was quickly thrown onto my already large employee account and I was off and running, not unlike Rand, Perrin, Matt, Egwene, and Nynaeve fleeing Emonds Field. I devoured Eye of the World, was swept along on The Great Hunt, and held my breath for The Dragon Reborn. Rare sunny summer afternoons were spent in parks reading The Shadow Rising, trying desperately, like Rand, to understand the Aiel culture and witnessing Perrin's resistant rise to lordhood, while Tulip tried to comprehend my own fanaticism for a rather large book. I felt that I fought the Shaido alongside Mat in The Fires of Heaven and was awestruck by the Lord of Chaos before it'd even made it to paperback.
And, then came the waiting...
Two whole years for A Crown of Swords. When I received it, I thought the cover a cheesy ad for that video game, Street Fighter. Yep, it is possible to judge a book by its cover. It did, however, begin to introduce me to the madness of channeling Saidin and handling the filth of its taint. Over and over and over again (with 2-3 years between each book), it would be described throughout The Path of Daggers and Winter's Heart until I felt I'd burn out from it; that is, until that satisfying ending of Rand and Nynaeve cleansing Saidin at the conclusion of Winter's Heart. There was hope again!
And, then we spend the better part of 100 pages of prologue to Crossroads of Twilight describing how multiple people experienced the cleansing from different points around the world. And, I despaired. In hindsight, I have to wonder how much of this was due to the onset of Jordan's illness? By the time Knife of Dreams was released, I was sick of continually relearning how the Sea Folk would stand to show their social ranking and was especially ready to smack Perrin Aybara except that the story was finally beginning to move again. I wondered if I could handle reading anymore; however, Irish obstinacy won out and I vowed to finish this journey no matter what (wish I could say the same for A Song of Ice and Fire—I'm not sure which I'm more sick of: the series or Martin's political yapping).
I wondered if he was going to end this quest with a whimper as he spun so many threads out from the main pattern of the plot. I resolved to hold a nice bonfire if he ever did.
I again despaired for Jordan and his readers with his announcement of his diagnosis of cardiac amyloidosis in 2006. The despair turned to hopelessness at his passing and I didn't hold much hope for a new writer picking the series up. I was even less happy to find out that the planned conclusion, A Memory of Light, was to be broken into 3 books.
Still, I set myself to face The Gathering Storm while traveling to Fairbanks and Anchorage for business. That first prologue written by Sanderson was devoured while eating dinner at one of the small restaurants attached to the Captain Cooke Hotel. And, I was once again awestruck with the series as Sanderson began to move the story forward at an engrossing pace and more than satisfactorily began to re-weave all the loose threads back into the pattern to take us through the storm, into the Towers of Midnight, and out to regain A Memory of Light. It was an incredibly satisfying conclusion and I'm not afraid to admit that I actually found myself tearing-up as I realized I was at the final 3 pages last night...
If they weren't such distinctly individual stories, I guess I could count all of the various Robert B. Parker (can't be from Massachusetts and not appreciate Spenser) and Ed McBain books as something similarly epic; however, I can't quite go that far. The Wheel of Time has been engrossing and infuriating and such a thread within the fabric of my adult life that I have to say that, with maybe the experience of Stephen King's Dark Tower series, nothing else has compared in my literary experiences. Even Roland's quest, with its disjointed bizarreness stemming from the collision of fictional worlds within King's creative mind (and, yes, that's what I see the Dark Tower as—the nexus of his alternate realities) was a spark compared to the overall brilliance (of light and thought) of the Wheel of Time in all its slogging yet enthralling grandiosity.
No adventure, quest, or saga is ever experienced by our heroes without hating it all as it unfolds. It is at its completion that we can look back with fondness, humor, or even thankfulness. The Wheel of Time has proven no different and I regret not one single moment of it.
Thank you, Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson for spinning us into this pattern as the Wheel turns.
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