Mat snorted. “I don’t want to be any bloody hero.”
Bit late for that. For all of them.
Til shade is gone,
til water is gone
Into the shadow with teeth bared
Screaming defiance with the last breath
To spit in Sightblinder’s eye on the Last Day.
Amusingly, due to the library not having a copy of The Eye of the World , the first two times I read the series, I actually started with The Great Hunt . While the Eye of the World could arguably stand alone (albeit with a somewhat unsatisfying feeling, given the sheer quantity of untapped potential in the world building), it’s in the Great Hunt that things really start getting crazy.
Rand is just now starting to understand what being the Dragon Reborn could mean. Perrin has a connection to the wolves, something very old, come new again. Mat is still cursed by his dagger and yet he's the one to finally sound the Horn . You have the first hints of parallel universes and world hopping, along with the World of Dreams–which will turn out to be rather important to the universe all together–along with a few more Forsaken coming out of the woodwork. Lanfear… Lanfear proves that being loved by a power hungry hundred/thousand year old super powerful jealous woman can be… interesting.
The Wheel of Time turns and Ages come and go, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth returns again. In the Third Age, an Age of Prophecy, the World and Time themselves hang in the balance. What was, what will be, and what is, may yet fall under the Shadow.
I first read the Wheel of Time somewhere around 2004, with only 10 of the eventual 14 books published. When Knife of Dreams was published in 2005, I read them all again. Likewise with The Gathering Storm in 2009 (the first written by Brandon Sanderson after Robert Jordan’s death), Towers of Midnight in 2010, and finally A Memory of Light in 2013. It’s been a few years, but the series as a whole is well worth every minute to invest in a reread–it’s among my favorite series I’ve ever written. This time around though (for the second time) I’ll be listening to the audiobooks.
FOR I CAN SEE THE BALANCE AND YOU HAVE LEFT THE WORLD MUCH BETTER THAN YOU FOUND IT, AND IF YOU ASK ME, said Death, NOBODY COULD DO ANY BETTER THAN THAT…
And so it ends.
Tiffany Aching is back! Now she’s a full witch, out on her own.
Of course things are going to go wrong.
Magic was useful for everything. It just killed you. You should always think of it first. Then you should decide if a little dram of death was worth it.
Just whoa. This book got big. We see a lot more about the world and more about the powers that exist beneath the surface. The world is weird and complicated and everything we thought we knew… well, i9t’s mostly right. Just incomplete.
Onwards! This time around, Pendragon has come to the territory of Veelox, dealing with a virtual reality addiction crisis. It’s a topic that comes up over and over again in science fiction and even in real world media coverage, warning that as virtual reality gets better and better, it will be harder and harder for people to leave, leading to society decaying. Regardless of what you think about the idea of such a thing happening in the real world, it’s an interesting enough take to build the story on.
Characterwise, Aja is actually one of the more interesting travelers we’ve been introduced to. She’s so confident in herself at first that she nearly refuses Bobby’s help, but as could be expected, things go sideways. She seems to learn from her mistakes and finally admits that perhaps she can’t save the world all by herself.
The trouble is you can shut your eyes but you can’t shut your mind.
Tiffany returns, this time slightly older and in just a bit more trouble than before. This time around, she accidentally danced with the Wintersmith (the very embodiment of winter) and, as one thing leads to another, the Wintersmith beings to fall in love, trying to become human along the way.
Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.
A Hat Full of Sky takes The Wee Free Men and grows from there, following Tiffany Aching as she actually starts to learn a bit more witching, while at the same time having to deal with some of the fall out from her actions in The Wee Free Men.