My first recommendation for fantasy book readers would probably have to be the saga of The Wheel of Time. WoT, as most of the fans refer to the series, is an unfinished set of 11 books set in an imaginary world. The plot revolves around the usual struggle between the Good and Evil. The champion of the world, the Dragon Reborn, is fighting the forces of the Dark One
and his followers, called the Darkfriends, led by an elite evil mages, the Forsaken Ones. The whole world is in turmoil, as the event lead to the Final Battle when everything will be settled once and for all.
Robert Jordan, actually James Oliver Rigney, Jr. had an original style. I say had not has, because Mr. Jordan suffered from a rare disease called amyloidosis, which he was determined to fight, but ultimately lost this fight on September 16, 2007 (the last of the books will be written in RJs stead by another fantasy writer Brandon Sanderson). Jordan’s characters are very realistic and poses many innate qualities and peculiarities. The study of characters has been done thoroughly and resulted in very deep and diverse (and VERY big) group of characters.
Also, the plot itself is very intense, and consist of a good number of side-plots interconnected to one another and building up the main plot. Seriously, sometimes it’s easy to get lost in the amount of information conveyed by the series. Nonetheless, I found the series very addictive. Once I started the first book, it only took me one or two chapters to get totally hooked on the story of Rand, Perin, Mat, and Co.
All in all, the series are very exciting, yet slightly predictable at times with some overly detailed description of landscape. Nonetheless, those little cons are completely wiped out by the amazing plot (which kind of slows down towards the mid-end part of the series), depth of characters, and the battle scenes that pop up now and again throughout the saga.
Aside for the 11 books (one more to come, unfortunatelly by a different author), there is one sequel (The New Spring) and reference book (The World of Robert Jordan’s the Wheel of Time – commonly refered to as the “Big White Book” by fans).
My ranking for the series: 9/10 (Extremely Recommended)
