Moiraine Sedai

When it was announced that Brandon Sanderson was tapped to complete the Wheel of Time after the untimely passing of author Robert Jordan, I suddenly had my interest in the series piqued after many years of apathy. So, I began the somewhat titanic undertaking of re-reading the Wheel of Time, a task that I am still in the midst of while alternating between one Wheel of Time book and books by other authors.

My favorite books in the Wheel of Time series remain The Great Hunt and The Shadow Rising — although The Shadow Rising does start off particularly slow. The first four volumes remain by and large coherent works that while being part of a bigger series still introduce and resolve certain plot elements within their own pages. The Fires of Heaven is the first book to make the transition from a traditional volume in a series that stands somewhat on its own, to the “super-novel” approach adopted by later books.  This is when the action begins to slow down and pages and pages are spent describing clothes or going round and round through the characters’ fears and insecurities. This is not to say that important things don’t happen in The Fires of Heaven — Moiraine’s fate, Rand’s growing madness, Mat’s transformation from an archetypal trickster into something a bit more and developments in Salidar are all important to the series.

Yet, one of the most important confrontations in the novel — the battle against the Shaido — has key moments occur off-screen, while much time is spent for a final confrontation with one of the Forsaken that is not built up much through the course of the book.

The Fires of Heaven is by no means a bad book, or the worst title in Jordan’s classic series (the dubious honor falls on the completely worthless Crossroads of Twilight). But it does remind me why I gave up on this series so long ago and why some volumes are going to be a slog to get through. Luckily, it’s high points outweigh its low points. But that won’t always be the case as the series marches towards the Last Battle.