The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a wind rose above the great mountainous island of Braem Wood. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning.
This is starting to feel a little repetitive. Maybe the author just decided to himself, what the heck, these books are already long enough, maybe if I begin Chapter One in each of them in exactly the same way, maybe fantasy haters won’t notice. (Don’t have to worry about fantasy fans because they love this kind of repetition.) After all, it’s been like a thousand pages since the reader of these lines read the opening lines of the previous book and it will be almost another thousand pages before they get to the opening lines of the first chapter of the next book. Yeah, that sounds good, just a copy and paste with a minor alteration to where the wind rises and, presto, that almost a hundred words out of the way. Only another quarter of a million to go and it will be time to start on the next book. This is part of the appeal of fantasy novels to the genre’s lover while simultaneously part of what haters reject. A consistency of design fulfilling the genre expectations is one of the dogs of literature: you either want to adopt the breed as a pet or you don’t want that mutt anywhere near you.
A woman would do a thing until you were sure she always would, then do something else just to fuddle you.
One of the elements of the novels comprising The Wheel of Time series that is often the subject of discourse (and within that discourse very often the topic debate) is the treatment of gender differences. Those interested in the intricacies of this subject are very lucky: about ten million words have been published or posted somewhere on the internet about it. Frankly, however, this quote almost seems to sum up the treatment of gender in the novels. The narrative espouses an equivalence between expressions of misogyny and misandry.
Throughout all the novels in the saga as well as this the reader will stumble across not so much action that illuminates how women feel about men and how men feel about women (although there is certainly that to be found) but through these sorts of idiomatic and proverbial sayings adorned with plucky metaphor in perhaps an attempt to lessen the impact. For instance, “fuddle” is a funny word that does much to defuse the content of the thought expressed here. And the content of that thought is something that would right at home in a 1950’s sitcom.
As the plow breaks the earth shall he break the lives of men, and all that was shall be consumed in the fire of his eyes. The trumpets of war shall sound at his footsteps, the ravens feed at his voice, and he shall wear a crown of swords.
Here is another example of that type of dog that is either so ugly it’s cute or so ugly it’s pug-ugly. The primary protagonist of the entire series, Rand, is at this moment recalling in his mind, unspoken, a quote from the Karaethon Prophecy. (Not that anyone really needs to explain it as a prophetic quote as just looking at it provides a strong hint: it’s in italics, so you know something must be up.) For the fantasy novel lover, this is a total geekout—like a freakout, but more intellectual in nature. Know how many different prophecies are referenced in this series? Consider this your answer: there’s at least ten different categories of prophecies or dreams or foretellings or visions or oracles with answers and withing each of those categories are innumerable individual prophetic statements.
This is the kind of texture that transforms the reading experience into something more interactive in which entire websites or devoted to studying the “ancient historical texts” from which the prophecies and, yes, producing lively debate over the correct interpretation. For those who geeking out of this texture, the novels themselves only become that more readable. For those who just want to confine their immersion to the text, it may be considered prophetic foreboding of doom against picking up that first entry in the series.
