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rikuson1's reviews
78 reviews
Lord of Chaos by Robert Jordan
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.75
It Was Okay 🥴
-★★âœâ˜†â˜† - (2.75/5.00)
My Grading Score = 55% (C-)
Let me start off by saying this...
If you're someone reading a review of a book on its sixth entry, I'm going to assume you're not necessarily here for your average review. Not one in the sense of "I'm looking to be sold on this book" but more so either "I've finished the book and I want to hear what other people thoughts" or "I've finish this book and I need some sort of validation on my thoughts through reviews of other people to see if my thoughts are in line with there's" I'm saying this because that's usually how my brain works when I finish a book and looking at reviews vs a book I haven't read yet. With that being said, I'm assuming you've finished this book and you're reading it for either of the reasons I said above. Or maybe you're reading it because you want to know Rikuson's thoughts in particular and you're not some random person either way, as you can tell this isn't going to be like my other Wheel of Time reviews since going through this series further and further is only becoming more of a chore than it is an overall enjoyment like how this little portion was because that's how RJ writes. With that being said, I'm going to warn you, I would not call this a review.
My Rant
Lord of Chaos is a hard one for me to process. Because out of the fifty-five chapters and seven hundred and twenty pages in this hardcover book. The only chapter that was really engaging for the entire time was the final chapter. And that's sad to think about because going into this book, many consider this one (just like the last entry) an entry that is one of the best in the series. Then you come to find out that the only reason that is the case is because of its bombastic ending. I'm sorry, you do not get to drag me for 600-700 pages for that.
This seems to be an ongoing thing with this series. Where it just feels absolutely bloated and it's not like nothing is happening, things are definitely happening, but I think I figured out what's is bothering me when it comes to these books lately. And that's RJ's way of writing them. The way RJ's prose are written isn't bad, but it does hurt the story he's trying to tell because of how meandering he can get. He's just too wordy for his own good for me, something that shouldn't take more than a couple of sentences to explain (or a paragraph or three at absolute most) he'll stretch it out to three to four pages or even a whole damn chapter, this man does not understand the word concise. When I look in hindsight of everything that occurred in this book I don't want to be harsh on it because of the fact that the details within it are actually quite good, but once again it's the way it's all written that feels like it undermines it all for me. Unlike The Shadow Rising, where I felt most of it felt like it could not be cut out because of how necessary it was. This book was to that similar but in a different way. The bloated and wordy writing style is what needed trimming. It absolutely hurt the pacing for me for this book, to the point where even though I understood a lot of what was going on. Trying to think about it all just on a surface level becomes a blur, everything is too meshed in with the amount of bloat in here that recap videos for me were required just to remember everything that happened in between the bloat I'm complaining about. This is sad because this is apparently the last book before "the slog," and if I'm feeling this way now, I'm feel like I'm screwed going into those. At least from I heard those books are not a long as this one, but I did hear they all suffer from what I'm complaining about right now but even worse to where, at least there interesting things going on in this entry it's just the bloat that hurts it. I heard there's little to nothing interesting going on, AND there's bloat. So pray for me.
Verdict (And more ranting)
Now, this is a tough one for me because, enjoyment wise, I wouldn't say that I liked this entry. I was going to give it a 3.25/5 because of the fact that overall, I had a similar experience with The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. The start was okay, the middle bored me into oblivion, and the ending was great. And the same can be said here. But the issue with that comparison is the fact that Two Towers is 143,436 words long while Lord of Chaos is 395,195 words long. So that's easily more than double in the length and when I say the ending of Lord of Chaos is great, I'm literally only talking about the final chapter of the book, which is mainly the only thing anyone will mention when that talk about this book. And once again it's not to say that nothing before the final chapter isn't worth talking about, it's because, once again and I can't stress this enough, RJ's writing style that ruins the enjoyment of the consumption of the stories at hand, because it is not bad, I repeat, they are not bad to me. That's the key difference between this for me and The Dragon Reborn and The Fires of Heaven. Because in those two entries I couldn't not get behind majority of the story beats we were going through even in hindsight of focusing on them without RJ's bloated writing style blinding me and they still didb not hold up that much, in comparison to here there's at least a debate can be had that it can. But it does feel like it's far more severe because of this one is longer than those two were, but also unlike The Shadow Rising it does not seem like I'm willing to forgive it this go around, plus the Shadow Rising had more than just it's ending going for it. I can't in good faith say it was enough for it to get into the realms of a 3/5 from me, because 3/5 has to at least mean "I liked it" which overall I did not. At absolute best,
It Was Okay
-★★âœâ˜†â˜† - (2.75/5.00)
My Grading Score = 55% (C-)
Let me start off by saying this...
If you're someone reading a review of a book on its sixth entry, I'm going to assume you're not necessarily here for your average review. Not one in the sense of "I'm looking to be sold on this book" but more so either "I've finished the book and I want to hear what other people thoughts" or "I've finish this book and I need some sort of validation on my thoughts through reviews of other people to see if my thoughts are in line with there's" I'm saying this because that's usually how my brain works when I finish a book and looking at reviews vs a book I haven't read yet. With that being said, I'm assuming you've finished this book and you're reading it for either of the reasons I said above. Or maybe you're reading it because you want to know Rikuson's thoughts in particular and you're not some random person either way, as you can tell this isn't going to be like my other Wheel of Time reviews since going through this series further and further is only becoming more of a chore than it is an overall enjoyment like how this little portion was because that's how RJ writes. With that being said, I'm going to warn you, I would not call this a review.
My Rant
Lord of Chaos is a hard one for me to process. Because out of the fifty-five chapters and seven hundred and twenty pages in this hardcover book. The only chapter that was really engaging for the entire time was the final chapter. And that's sad to think about because going into this book, many consider this one (just like the last entry) an entry that is one of the best in the series. Then you come to find out that the only reason that is the case is because of its bombastic ending. I'm sorry, you do not get to drag me for 600-700 pages for that.
This seems to be an ongoing thing with this series. Where it just feels absolutely bloated and it's not like nothing is happening, things are definitely happening, but I think I figured out what's is bothering me when it comes to these books lately. And that's RJ's way of writing them. The way RJ's prose are written isn't bad, but it does hurt the story he's trying to tell because of how meandering he can get. He's just too wordy for his own good for me, something that shouldn't take more than a couple of sentences to explain (or a paragraph or three at absolute most) he'll stretch it out to three to four pages or even a whole damn chapter, this man does not understand the word concise. When I look in hindsight of everything that occurred in this book I don't want to be harsh on it because of the fact that the details within it are actually quite good, but once again it's the way it's all written that feels like it undermines it all for me. Unlike The Shadow Rising, where I felt most of it felt like it could not be cut out because of how necessary it was. This book was to that similar but in a different way. The bloated and wordy writing style is what needed trimming. It absolutely hurt the pacing for me for this book, to the point where even though I understood a lot of what was going on. Trying to think about it all just on a surface level becomes a blur, everything is too meshed in with the amount of bloat in here that recap videos for me were required just to remember everything that happened in between the bloat I'm complaining about. This is sad because this is apparently the last book before "the slog," and if I'm feeling this way now, I'm feel like I'm screwed going into those. At least from I heard those books are not a long as this one, but I did hear they all suffer from what I'm complaining about right now but even worse to where, at least there interesting things going on in this entry it's just the bloat that hurts it. I heard there's little to nothing interesting going on, AND there's bloat. So pray for me.
Verdict (And more ranting)
Now, this is a tough one for me because, enjoyment wise, I wouldn't say that I liked this entry. I was going to give it a 3.25/5 because of the fact that overall, I had a similar experience with The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. The start was okay, the middle bored me into oblivion, and the ending was great. And the same can be said here. But the issue with that comparison is the fact that Two Towers is 143,436 words long while Lord of Chaos is 395,195 words long. So that's easily more than double in the length and when I say the ending of Lord of Chaos is great, I'm literally only talking about the final chapter of the book, which is mainly the only thing anyone will mention when that talk about this book. And once again it's not to say that nothing before the final chapter isn't worth talking about, it's because, once again and I can't stress this enough, RJ's writing style that ruins the enjoyment of the consumption of the stories at hand, because it is not bad, I repeat, they are not bad to me. That's the key difference between this for me and The Dragon Reborn and The Fires of Heaven. Because in those two entries I couldn't not get behind majority of the story beats we were going through even in hindsight of focusing on them without RJ's bloated writing style blinding me and they still didb not hold up that much, in comparison to here there's at least a debate can be had that it can. But it does feel like it's far more severe because of this one is longer than those two were, but also unlike The Shadow Rising it does not seem like I'm willing to forgive it this go around, plus the Shadow Rising had more than just it's ending going for it. I can't in good faith say it was enough for it to get into the realms of a 3/5 from me, because 3/5 has to at least mean "I liked it" which overall I did not. At absolute best,
It Was Okay
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Genocide, Mental illness, Racism, Sexism, Sexual content, Slavery, Torture, Toxic relationship, Violence, Xenophobia, Kidnapping, Murder, and War
Moderate: Confinement
Minor: Rape and Slavery