Reviews with content warning for Torture - The Eye of the World

If you loved The Hobbit you will love this book because they’re quite similar in the beginning lol. As with any first book in a fantasy series a large amount of the book is dedicated to world building and not character growth. I wish the author hadn’t made so many people’s names rhyme/have more than one name. Other than that an interesting story and a flashy ending that has me eager to see what happens next.

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surdiablo's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I wasn't expecting it to like it as much as I did. I know people complain about long descriptions but the immersion I had in the first couple of chapters, slow as they were, was so good that everything is still so vivid in my mind. It's Epic fantasy through and through and the pace is somewhat slow, but I had a blast reading through this honestly. Ending wasn't really confusing either although it does happen rather quickly considering the pace until then. Characters are too stubborn and suspicious of everyone which might piss off readers but I think it makes sense considering the world and the situation they find themselves in. Looking forward to read the second book! :)

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johnawickline's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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summerb's review against another edition

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adventurous dark medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

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randanopterix's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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syllareads's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? N/A
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

Thank god I'm done with this book.

To be clear: this is not meant to say I hated it, I just started this as an audiobook and I'm so slow when it comes to those it's actually ridiculous lmao. Thank god I bought the paperback and read the last 100 pages or so Like That or else I might have died.

Moving on!
Even though I've read a ton of fantasy ever since I was a wee child, I have never before touched The Wheel of Time, which is arguably one of the biggest classic high fantasy sagas there is. Well, here I am, remedying that! After...years and years but shhh.

The Eye of the World is book 1 in the 14-book series and thus, the journey begins. I wasn't too sure what to think of it at first (which, again, was mostly due to the audiobook - the narration itself was beautiful, but my auditory processing sucks ass) but the characters managed to grow on me fairly quickly, especially after they were split up during their journey - a moment I highly appreciated, as it gave each of them their time to shine and established a clear and distinct narrative voice for each of the three boys, Mat, Perrin, and Rand.

I've heard a lot of people say this series is pretty dense but so far, I haven't been running into any problems there. Sure, the names can be a lot but the perspectives help with that as well; we're getting to know the world mostly through Rand's eyes, a farm boy from Emmond's Field, making this first book reminiscent of younger books with a similar style (See: Eragon). It's a well-known technique at this point that works wonderful: exposition feels less like dreadful slogs, since the characters are not telling us information but the poor sod who had to leave his peaceful life for an adventure he definitely didn't ask for.

All in all, Eye of the World was a nice start for me and I'll be looking forward to the rest of this series!

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