fantasy
In The Eye of the World, a trio of young men from a village are suddenly targeted by
a long-dormant dark force and must flee their homes along with a few other
villagers in order to take the danger away from their town. Along their
treacherous journey, they face many foes and threats and end up being separated
into three groups. Guided by a magic duo, they aim to reach a far-flung city
where they hope to receive the help they need to save themselves and the world.
This epic fantasy has been suggested to me many times. I was
finally nudged to make time for this long novel when I learned that a TV series
based on this novel was going to be released. (Spoiler: I’ve watched the first
TV episode and they’ve already changed quite a bit. Sigh.) At its heart, it’s a
tale of a journey. Often, journey novels can drag because the traveling itself
gets boring or is slow-moving. However, I cannot say that I was ever bored and
there was very little travel tedium. It
helped that the team was split up for much of the novel so that there were
multiple journeys to follow. It also helped that the characters were fun to get
to know. Robert Jordan spun his tale in a very evocative way. The intentions of the duo guiding the young villagers
were unclear--were they good or evil? The people and creatures encountered during the journeys were
creative and intriguing. The last quarter of the book was almost
un-put-downable. It was a great tale and I’ll definitely be reading more of
this series.
I both read the Kindle book and listened to the audiobook,
alternating between the two when it was convenient. The audiobook narrators were the same married
couple that narrates another terrific epic fantasy (Brandon Sanderson’s StormlightArchive series), Michael Kramer and Kate Reading. Since I have listened to
hours and hours of their voices narrating the other series, I was concerned
that their narration would cause confusion or distraction. I can say that I was not confused but I was
distracted at times. I kept recognizing how a specific voice that was used for
one of the Eye of the World characters was the same voice used for one of the
Stormlight Archive characters, for example. I also noticed how the narrators’
voices have aged since they narrated this novel. But they still did a good job with voice
acting most of the time and using unique voices for many of the different
characters in the novel. As is always the case, Michael is the better voice
actor and has a wider vocal repertoire than Kate. He read most of the novel
because only a few chapters were from a female character’s perspective. What
really bugged me is that there was a lack of consistency between the two
narrators. They should have agreed upon the pronunciations of all proper nouns.
Despite this, I will give them an A-.
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