The Shadow Rising – Robert Jordan

Cover of The Shadow Rising


The Shadow Rising
Robert Jordan
1006 pages
published in 1993

The Shadow Rising is the fourth book in Jordan’s Wheel of Time series. In my view it’s the point where the series really started to balloon. For a start it’s some 300 pages longer than the previous installment, but the plot as well gets bigger and more complicated. The most common criticism of the Wheel of Time (apart from those who, perhaps unfairly, reject it out of hand as sub-Tolkien crap) is that the story stopped progressing halfway through the series; the seeds for this are sown here. In many ways this is the watershed in the series, between what Jordan started with, a fairly linear story in the Tolkienesque mold and what it ended up being, perhaps the most complex fantasy series ever written weaving half a dozen separate storylines together into an almost coherent whole. This is the first book in the series in which the various plotlines do not come together neatly at the end of the book, nor are intended to.

But this is not the sole reason as to why this is a watershed in the series. The character of the series also changes, from being largely a quest based story to one of a more political nature. Rand al’Thor has declared himself the Dragon Reborn, drawn the sword that’s not a sword and the unfallen fortress has fallen. From now on he has a nation and a army behind him, he has revealed himself to the world and the stakes have gotten that much higher. From now on he can no longer led himself be lead, he has to lead himself. And while his friends may still be his friends, their interests and his may no longer completely match…

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The Dragon Reborn – Robert Jordan

Cover of The Dragon Reborn


The Dragon Reborn
Robert Jordan
699 pages
published in 1991

The Dragon Reborn is the third book in the Wheel of Time series and as such it does not quite have the worst artwork in the series. That honour is reserved for either the previous book The Great Hunt, with its depiction of Trollocs as humans with curved helmets or the sixth book, The Lord of Chaos, with its incompetent romance novel cover. No book in the series however has what you can call good art, or even art that bears much resemblence to the books its used on. That’s not unusual for any book of course and normally I don’t care too much about what’s on a cover, but the Darrell Sweet artwork on these is just too embarassing, especially when read in public. But never mind eh? It’s still much, much better than reading Dan Brown where people can see you.

Moving on to what’s between the covers, The Dragon Reborn is the last book in the series to duplicate the quest structure of The Lord of the Rings and also the last book in which the various storylines neatly come together in the end. It’s not the end of the series, as the series has no end, but it’s a end. From the next book, The Shadow Rising onward, things would be much more complicated. It’s also a sort of beginning, as this is the first book which is not dominated by Rand as the main character; in fact he’s hardly in it, with much of the action focussing on Perrin, Mat and Egwene/Nynaeve/Elayne in three different storylines, which come together at the climax of the book, just as with the previous two books.

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The Great Hunt – Robert Jordan

Cover of The Great Hunt


The Great Hunt
Robert Jordan
707 pages
published in 1991

I said so, didn’t I, that Robert Jordan hooks you into the story? Here I was determined just to reread The eye of the World to mark his passing, so why did I immediately reach for The Great Hunt? Because I wanted to read more of course. It had been almost a decade since the last time I read through the entire series after all. Not to mention that the weather has turned decidedly autumnal, always the best season to read a great epic fantasy series.

Now as I understand it, The Eye of the World was deliberately written as a standalone novel, in case the series didn’t take off. So all the plot threads resolve neatly at the end, and the plot itself is fairly linear and straightforward. From The Great Hunt onwards this is no longer the case. The plotlines start to unravel, with the various main characters going their own ways having their own adventures only to come together at the end and with some plot threads continuing in the next book. Unlike the later books though, where the plot threads multiply unchecked and drag themselves from book to book, here Jordan still has a tight grip on things. It’s just more clear that this is a part of a series.

Everytime I’ve read The Great Hunt I’ve had difficulty in getting started, with the first 100-150 pages or so being just pure torture to get through. Absurd of course; there’s novels that finish in fewer pages, but that’s the way it is with fat fantasies. As for why this is so hard to get started, it’s because the main character behaves like an idiot and the plot seems to crawl at first. Spoilers follow.

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Brasyl – Ian McDonald

Cover of Brasyl


Brasyl
Ian McDonald
404 pages
published in 2007

Call Ian McDonald the anti-Niven. Whereas Larry Niven has often been accused of writing all his characters as if they belong at an early sixties Californian cocktail party, McDonald’s characters always come across as belonging to the particular ethnic and cultural background they’re said to belong to. This is because McDonald, like the best science fiction writers is genuinely interested in culture as well as science, and genuinely interested in cultures other than his own. He has a knack for painting a picture of a given culture, whether real or invented, through the judicious use of background detail and character interests. So far I’ve not yet read a McDonald novel in which the world he created didn’t convince me. His latest novel, Brasyl, continues that trend. It’s set, of course, in that perpetual country of the future: Brazil.

Comparisons with McDonald’s 2004 novel River of Gods are therefore quickly made, though unjustified. Apart from that both novels take place in countries that are not often used as a setting in science fiction and apart from these settings being an essential part of them, not just an exotic background for some displaced westerners adventure to take place against, the two novels have nothing much in common. Which is just as well.

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Happy birthday Sputnik

Sputnik 1

fifty years ago today the first manmade object reached orbit. Science fiction fans everywhere thought it would be the start of mankind’s thriumphant conquest of space, even if it was the Russkies who did it, but it didn’t quite work out that way. While we’re using satellites for all kinds of important stuff, that whole idea that humanity had to leave its cradle behind seemed a lot less attractive in reality than science fiction had made it seem — quite a lot harder as well. We’re struggling to get a space station capable of keeping half a dozen astronauts living there for a month or two up and running, let alone that we can get the million inhabitants L5 colonies O’Neill dreams up going. For now, the future seems to be Earth orbit satellites and unmanned probes to the rest of the Solar System, plus the occasional hype of a new Moon or Mars programme

Should we be disappointed with this? That we have no giant space colonies, no Moonbase, no exploration of Mars, no interstellar expeditions? Or should we be happy instead with the things we do have: a Solar System far more interesting and odd than anybody had ever imagined, Earthbound telescopes powerful enough to detect planets around other stars, extrasolar planets where nobody would’ve believed planets could exist, an universe fastly more wonderful than any science fiction writer ever imagined?

Me, I’d rather go for wonder than for disappointment; I just wish much of science fiction would do the same and embrace the universe we live in rather than the universe we wished we lived in. Too much modern science fiction wallows in nostalgia or tries to refit the real universe into the old cliches.