The Wheel of Time has many appealing aspects. It paints a world very well, and offers realistic characters. This may be one of the only fantasy stories that feels like it could really be happening to me, for the most part. A great deal of intrigue occurs spanning many countries, which is quite entertaining to me. Human flaws posing a problem on par with the enemy is also something that struck me as very true to life and good exploration.
That said, there are also some less appealing bits. For a start, the "battle of the sexes" theme got very tiresome over time. Largely this theme appears to be the Two Rivers' women having a disparaging view of men (though others do this as well to some degree), and most particularly Nynaeve, who grew increasingly obnoxious over the series. Now to a certain extent this is justified by their immaturity and culture. However, the laid-back attitude people seem to have about this (and even to extreme sexist abuses later on) was not so believable.
For their part, the men seem to respond with a resigned failure to understand women. A little of this would still be understandable from both genders, but it became more frequent, not less, over many books, and change was slow. On a higher level, it seems the gulf extends even into the fabric of the universe itself with gender-divided magic. That was a troubling message to me, for are we to believe the differences run that deep?
There were a few more minor issues as well. For one, language does not appear to evolve at all over time, nor due to groups' geographical isolation. This is quite common in fantasy overall of course, but it jars here with an otherwise realistic atmosphere. The very low diversity in religious opinions/lack of organized religion was also unrealistic to me. I prefer a central conflict which is less black and white too, but that's more a personal taste. Some of the length seemed due to extra padding or description filler too, and it seems this could have been cut down. In spite of this, I do recommend the series. The length can be daunting indeed, but it's still worth it.
Good overall, with some flaws.
The Wheel of Time has many appealing aspects. It paints a world very well, and offers realistic characters. This may be one of the only fantasy stories that feels like it could really be happening to me, for the most part. A great deal of intrigue occurs spanning many countries, which is quite entertaining to me. Human flaws posing a problem on par with the enemy is also something that struck me as very true to life and good exploration.
That said, there are also some less appealing bits. For a start, the "battle of the sexes" theme got very tiresome over time. Largely this theme appears to be the Two Rivers' women having a disparaging view of men (though others do this as well to some degree), and most particularly Nynaeve, who grew increasingly obnoxious over the series. Now to a certain extent this is justified by their immaturity and culture. However, the laid-back attitude people seem to have about this (and even to extreme sexist abuses later on) was not so believable.
For their part, the men seem to respond with a resigned failure to understand women. A little of this would still be understandable from both genders, but it became more frequent, not less, over many books, and change was slow. On a higher level, it seems the gulf extends even into the fabric of the universe itself with gender-divided magic. That was a troubling message to me, for are we to believe the differences run that deep?
There were a few more minor issues as well. For one, language does not appear to evolve at all over time, nor due to groups' geographical isolation. This is quite common in fantasy overall of course, but it jars here with an otherwise realistic atmosphere. The very low diversity in religious opinions/lack of organized religion was also unrealistic to me. I prefer a central conflict which is less black and white too, but that's more a personal taste. Some of the length seemed due to extra padding or description filler too, and it seems this could have been cut down. In spite of this, I do recommend the series. The length can be daunting indeed, but it's still worth it.