The Shadow Rising

Reviewed on 21st June 2025

Onto book four in my Wheel of Time re-read. There's a lot going on, and we open with a contrast to the previous book by skipping around the various main characters fairly quickly. After a while though, this settles into long chunks of the book following a particular character, and I found this quite draining, and that I wanted to get through it to get to the other characters. I think for me, the jumping between them works better as a style for keeping my attention.

This feels like the book where the author has realised it's going to be more books than he thought to get to the end of this story, and so things slow down a bit. There's more world to explore, and that's very much what's happening here. One storyline takes us off to learn a new culture, their entire backstory, and set up stuff for future books. Another storyline finds another culture to explore, and provides an action setting for two characters who I felt got a bit of short shrift in the previous book. And the third takes us back home to see how things are changing and provide key character and world growth.

It's one of the longest books in the series and really felt it. Particularly once I'd passed the halfway point it felt a real slog trying to get through to the end - I really wanted it to be over faster. And yet I'm already craving returning to the world and getting on with book five.

Reviewed on 10th August 2009

This fourth book in the series is the best so far. It's a mix of romance and war as the characters grow closer and begin to pair off in a slow start to the book - the first half seems to pass very slowly before suddenly speeding up as the second half kicks in.

Once the group has split into three directions, it's a refreshing change that they don't spend the rest of the novel being drawn back together, as the girls chase the Black Ajar, Perrin returns to the Two Rivers to defend his homeland, and Rand leads everyone else off to only he knows where.

It makes for a good mix, almost presented as three separate novels as it focusses on each group for a long period in turn, not returning to the pattern of mixing quickly between scenes until the climax nears - and what a climax there is. For once I didn't feel let down by the ending, there's plenty going on for all three groups and lots of satisfactory battles that mean the conclusion isn't rushed.

Overall I'm very impressed - the characters seem deeper and more emotionally mature, and the bad guys are more fleshed out and understandable. I'm really looking forward to reading more.