Lord of Chaos
ISBN: 9781857233001
Description
Rand al' Thor, the Dragon Reborn, strives to bind the nations of the world to his will, to forge the alliances that will fight the advance of the Shadow and to ready the forces of Light for the Last Battle. But there are other powers that seek to command the war against the Dark One.
Reviewed on 29th December 2025
The sixth book of the Wheel of Time - and I've left it a little while since the fifth - and it does remind me of why I thought this was where it started to drag before.
The book covers a significant set of moments in the ongoing story, but does feel a bit like it's dipping into soap opera territory.
There are two really strong segments of the book - one in the middle and one at the end. Both of these feel vital to everything and switch into really compelling reading, and only the first was something I'd remembered from my previous reading.
But everything else feels a bit slow and draggy. The narrative moves between characters and locations at pace, which I remember being something that differs from later books. In one case however, there's a brief section near the start and then those characters seem entirely forgotten about until suddenly needed later.
Still a great series, but I'm less inspired to immediately pick up the next book.
Reviewed on 21st September 2009
So, book 6, finally halfway through the main series of Wheel of Time, and I'm starting to get a bit tired of the series now, especially as this one had a really slow first half. It's not that nothing was happening, but unusually for the fantasy genre, no one was travelling anywhere.
I'm a little concerned that this series doesn't have anything to help new readers to catch up if they drop in mid-series. Admittedly this can often be grating if you have already read the previous volumes but surely leaving it out is limiting your potential sales to an already captured audience?
In the second half of this book the pace picked up again with a lot of big scenes, but again they didn't seem to be going anywhere. Overall I don't feel that the plot was advanced much in this book. It just seems like it is just a tool to set up some plot points and alter some characters opinions to get them into their places for the rest of the series.
I'm not sure any more whether I'm looking forward to reading the next volume. Hopefully it will be more exciting, but I am half tempted to take a break before continuing.
