Lord of Chaos: Robert Jordan – Book Review

Far more politics than fantasy adventure, this book is incredibly important, but slow.

Lord of Chaos is about politics. I mean, the politics take place in a fantasy setting, but considering the reasons most read fantasy novels is to escape the slog and bureaucracy, I can see why this may be a problem for some. I tend to have troubles remembering the order all events happened (especially since I am reading all of the books in The Wheel of Time back to back in rapid fire fashion) so I went to the WoT Wiki to make sure I had everything straight in my head and even the plot summary read like a dry manifest of political discourse.

I suppose what I’ve said sounds incredibly boring, but I love the politics and maneuvering and spying, all of the things that go into a fantasy minded political manifest. That being said, this book moves very, very slowly, as a function of how detailed Robert Jordan tends to be with his characters. As I mentioned in my review of The Fires of Heaven, at times Robert Jordan seems less to be writing a story and more to be writing a documentary or biography of characters in a fantasy universe. Even if that is really the case, one of the highest compliments I can give to an author is the admission that they do not write to make you feel good or write what fans want to read; Jordan writes some sections in Lord of Chaos that are legitimately difficult to read, but are incredibly important to the overall world.

It is in this book that you really start to cultivate a strong dislike for Egwene (unless you agree with some of the choices she makes, which some might). I always felt during this book that everything could go just a bit more smoothly if Egwene would stop worshiping Aes Sedai and start thinking about sharing incredibly important information with Rand. To put it another way, I feel like this series could have been seven, maybe eight books long, but Egwene’s massive superiority complex lengthened the whole series by six books. I will not lie, chapters from Egwene’s perspective were often frustrating to read because she totally misreads situations, and the more wrong she is the more she thinks everyone around her is stupid, and also dumb. Someone might use the excuse that she is just a small town farm girl, but Rand picks up on political undercurrents, Matt figures his way around, Perrin is still the best, and Egwene is just so ignorant of what is going on around her.

Speaking of Mat, this book has made me start coming around to not hating him. I won’t say I like him yet, but there are some scenes where Matt walks in, reads the situation correctly, and reacts like a normal, well-adjusted human would. I can respect that. Not only does he read and react accordingly, but what he does actually smooths the path forward, as opposed to his usual behaviour, which is to apply a hammer and chisel to any situation he sees so he can watch it fall apart.

Perrin is a difficult character to judge, admittedly; there is so much potential there, but his dislike of war leads to a great deal of indecision. I completely understand where he is coming from, there, and it is a very realistic portrayal of a character who just wanted to live a quiet life who is sucked into the whirlpool of war. I appreciate everything about Perrin’s current story arc, but that isn’t to say I like all of it; he is still my favorite character at this point, though his role in this book is fairly minor.

While not full of action, every chapter of this book has some critical piece of information in the greater tapestry of The Wheel of Time; it may move slowly, but I am not sure there is any book before this one more important in the grand scheme of things. The odd thing is that despite its very hefty page count (1,007 pages in paper back), a truly staggering amount of the story happens behind the scenes. Let it never be said that Robert Jordan holds your hand; he was an author who respected his readers. To be fully honest, there are times that he respected his readers perhaps a hair too much; one event that happens on page was a mystery for six full books. Oh, you have all of the pieces you need to fit the puzzle together, but no picture of what the puzzle is supposed to look like when it is finished. I was told by a longtime fan of the series that there is one final clue to the event in the twelfth book in the series that allows you to fit all of the puzzle pieces from The Fires of Heaven and Lord of Chaos together, but before that clue was released it caused several years of strife and debate among fans.

With all of the above still being true, there is one thing about this series that you will get in very few others; as so much happens off-page, it is an incredible rush of satisfaction each time you fit everything together and figure out an event that happened behind the scenes, or fit several sub plots into the greater picture; it is certainly akin to solving a mystery before the detective has told you the solution. I think that, despite its slow pacing, this is my favorite book for that exact reason; so much of the behind the scenes action comes into play, and it is a joy to work through it all.

While the book is almost all politics, those that are in it for the fantasy fights aren’t left completely out in the cold. Most of the action occurs during the climax of the book, so you have a long time to wait (remember, we’re talking about a book over 1,000 pages long), but since it comes right at the end, you will have all of the motivation you need to move into the seventh book without hesitation.

To go off on a side tangent, the modernized cover of the book is a fantastic piece of art, and there is so much going on, so much rendered on that canvas. If you would like to see the full panoramic of the canvas, it is available here–though there are some spoilers if you think about it too hard. Like all covers, it does depict a scene from the book, but I think it depicts the scene in question too perfectly. Is that a thing? It might be a thing.