Robert Jordan. The Eye of the World. 1990; Tor, 2019.

The Eye of the World carries many echoes of The Lord of the Rings (LOTR). It is a different world, but not that different. The culture including transportation, weapons, and architecture is medieval. There are languages and naming conventions that seem to have Celtic and Old English roots. There are some people who have certain supernatural powers. There is a great evil that controls a barren wasteland. This evil is trying to take over the world. And some of the heroes and heroines are ordinary rural types who find themselves outside of their comfort zones and in the midst of a big adventure.

Much of the story is told from the point of view of Rand, a farmer’s son who lives in a remote part of the world known as Two Rivers. Most people they run into have heard of it but never been there. It is Hicksville.

That also means that nothing much ever happens there. The seasons cycle through and life goes on. Big battles and political dramas in the past have pretty much not touched Two Rivers because it is hardly worth fighting over.

It is then quite shocking when on the eve of the spring festival in Two Rivers, the village is attacked by an army of Trollocs. I suspect the name Trolloc was derived from troll and orc (think LOTR) or perhaps ogre. These are large, hairy half-humans controlled by the Dark One. They seem to be selective on which houses they burn and whose livestock they kill, but people are terrified.

Rand’s home, outside the village in the country, is one of the places singled out. His widowed father is nearly killed. Rand is a teenager, and the homes of two of his friends, Perrin and Mat were two of the other places targeted by the Trollocs.

While everyone acknowledges that the Trollocs and the Dark One are evil, there is a lot of ambiguity concerning other characters. The village is also visited by Moiraine and her scout and bodyguard Lan. Moiraine is an Aes Sedai, a kind of sorceress who can at times call up or channel supernatural power. Aes Sedai are all women in the present age. In the distant past, all male Aes Sedai either went over to the Dark One or died saving the world from the Dark One. Since then many or most people do not trust the Aes Sedai because it is not always clear which side they are on.

Moiraine persuades Rand and his friends and two young women from Two Rivers to accompany her on a quest to fight this latest outbreak of evil. She is convinced that the three young men and at least one of the young women are part of a kind of divine plan. As she puts it, they are threads woven into the Pattern of the Age or Web of Destiny.

So most of the story, then, tells of this group of people attempting to fulfill their destiny. Along the way, they pick up another companion, Thom the gleeman. A gleeman is a traveling entertainer or bard. Mat learns some juggling tricks from Thom. These tricks will come in handy later when the members of the group get separated and Mat and Rand are on their own. Between Mat’s juggling and Rand’s flute playing the pair are able to earn their keep at some the inns they come to. It is better than sleeping behind a hedge or under a haystack, which, unfortunately, they have no choice but to do sometimes.

To try to summarize the tale would not do it justice. It is epic in scope. Like an Odyssey on land (well, a few from the group have some adventures on a river), the characters visit many different villages and cities and encounter all kinds of people and other creatures. Besides the evil Trollocs, there are are also eyeless ghostlike creatures called Fades and people committed to the Dark One named Dreadlords who lead the Trollocs. While the Dark One himself goes by many different names, his true name is the same as the Hebrew and Arabic word for Satan. Moiraine advises her charges:

“There are limits to the Dark One’s power inside you. Yield even for an instant and he will have a string tied to your heart, a string you may never be able to cut. Surrender, and you will be his. Deny him, and his power fails.” (675, cf. James 4:7)

Ultimately, then, The Eye of the World does reflect a Western or Judeo-Christian perspective of good and evil. Indeed, the term Aes Sedai, the name of the power-wielding sorceresses, means “servant of all.” This, of course, echoes Jesus’s famous observation:

Ye know that they which are accounted to rule over the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and their great ones exercise authority upon them. But so shall it not be among you: but whosoever will be great among you, shall be your minister: And whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all. (Mark 10:42-44 KJV)

For long time, though, the tale makes the morally good side seem impersonal. Moiraine tells others to find the One Power. I could almost hear Obi-wan Kenobi saying, “Use the Force, Luke.” It is well known that the Star Wars saga is rooted in a pantheistic oriental worldview. But towards the end, we learn that the world of the Eye of the World came into being from a good Creator. So, maybe, as in Narnia, there is an Emperor Beyond the Sea.

There are other echoes of epics and medieval tales. Some of the weapons have a story. Rand takes his father’s sword with him on his quest. The sword has an engraving of a heron. Several people wonder how a peasant shepherd from Two Rivers can have such a weapon whose design has a famous military reputation. One of the characters is a Green Man, a half-human half-green plant character as we see in old European legends and fairy tales. Another is an Ogier, a tree-loving giant. There is also an interesting take on the wolf man. Oh yes, at least one queen and her royal family play a part.

While Eye of the World clearly falls into the sword and sorcery category of fantasy, there is one element that is more reminiscent of science fiction. In sci-fi stories wormholes or hyperspace are highways which cause spacecraft to move at incredible speeds or travel quickly to distant locations. Thanks to the Ogier, we discover a kind of underground tunnel system that does something similar.

Jordan tells the story very well. Because he creates a new world, there are plenty of descriptions, but Jordan clearly presents them and weaves them into the narrative. He easily compares to Tolkien that way. Reading the book does require imagination, but it is worth it. The descriptions are clear enough that when I discovered about halfway through reading the novel that my edition contained a glossary, I realized that I was doing fine without it. (I do confess because of the scope of the story, I was happy to refer to the glossary a number of times while writing this review. It was easier than trying to find a specific name or episode among 830 pages!)

In The Eye of the World, the fantasy comes alive. The good and evil are palpable. While it does tell a complete story, it also hints that Rand’s adventures are far from over. Hey, others like Dante and Tennyson have written some kind of sequel to The Odyssey. I may not feel right now that I have to go out an get the next volume in the set; still, if I want to escape into another sword and sorcery story, I am sure I could do worse than picking up Jordan’s sequel. There are thirteen more plus a prequel.

P.S. As I was reading this, I was thinking to myself that someone from Hollywood must have obtained the movie rights to this. I could easily see this story being made into a film series. I do not subscribe to any streaming services, so I was not aware when I started that Amazon Prime already has released its first season based on this book series. I also learned that there are some serious fans—there is an annual Jordan Con (convention) that hosts discussions and interpretations of the books. Sounds like fun.