The Eye of the World or: The Fellowship of the Wheel of Time

I had considered reading The Wheel of Time for quite some time, but had always been somewhat reluctant, for two reasons. First, the series is ridiculously long; by the time it finishes, it will consist of fourteen books (plus a prequel), with each book averaging about 800 pages. Secondly, and more importantly, nothing I had heard about it had convinced me that it was anything other than standard Tolkienesque fantasy.

I was right on both counts. For a series that has been billed as the best fantasy not written by the good Professor, this is seriously underwhelming stuff. It feels like it genuinely wants to be the Next Big Thing, but is even more derivative of Tolkien's writing than most fantasy I've read, and that's saying a lot. This might not be a problem if it didn't have the pretensions to greatness that it seems to; and it's well-written enough that if it had been half the length it is, I would strongly recommend it. Unfortunately, I can't recommend reading through 800 pages of predictable, formulaic plot, with dull characters who leave little impact on the reader, and where the pace frequently grinds to a halt in an attempt to pad out the book, as if it wasn't long enough already. It takes more than a colossal word count to make your book an epic.

I have to say, it starts very well. The prologue is extremely exciting and gets the reader anticipating a grand, sweeping epic, with a literally eternal battle between good and evil that spans the whole of Time itself. The basic idea behind the series is that Time is cyclic, and the same events happen over and over again, but with such a huge amount of time between that people have forgotten about them by the time they happen again. At the beginning of Time, the Dark One was imprisoned by the Creator; when his followers attempted to free him, a great hero known as the Dragon was able to lock him away again, at the cost of Breaking the World. It is prophesied that the Dragon will be Reborn in the time of the world's greatest need, but that in order to imprison the Dark One again, another Breaking of the World must occur. The premise is a splendid one, and that is one of the great tragedies of this novel: that Jordan didn't do more with it. After this excellent prologue, the narrative dumps the reader in a farming village in the backwater of nowhere, where we are forced to endure 100 pages of people preparing for a spring festival (a long-expected party, if you will). The plot focuses on one Rand al'Thor, an insignificant farmboy with dreams of going out into the world and having adventures. 

Now, anyone who has read any piece of fiction in their life will already have figured out that Rand is the Dragon Reborn. Oh sure, he has two friends who are also being hunted by minions of the Dark One, but they are little more than red herrings; desperate attempts by Jordan to preserve some sense of mystery in an otherwise depressingly predictable narrative. It doesn't help that most of the characters, Rand included, are thoroughly unengaging; his friend Perrin goes through some interesting development about halfway through the novel, but it's all but forgotten when the narrative focus flips back to Rand. His other friend, Mat, is the annoying comic relief of the novel, whose one notable character trait is his unbelievable stupidity. The other members of the Fellowship fare little better; most of their character traits can be adequately summed up by their RPG character classes. Other than the aforementioned three, there's a Ranger, a Mage, a Cleric and a Bard. That's pretty much all there is to them, except for the fact that the Ranger is the uncrowned king of a nation at war with the Dark One. Wait a minute...

And this is one of the novel's greatest flaws: practically everything here is ripped straight out of Tolkien, to the extent that if you turn the map ninety degrees, Rand's home and the Blight (the domain of the Dark One) line up almost exactly to where the Shire and Mordor are on the map of Middle-earth. The characters spend most of the novel either walking across country or being pursued by riders in black, and late in the novel they discover a mysterious, skulking figure in rags, completely consumed by evil, is pursuing them. I don't necessarily mind an author using a Middle-earth clone as his setting as long as he does something new with it, but it bothers me when people recycle the plot and try to pass it off as something new; The Eye of the World is one of the most blatant rewrites of the plot of The Lord of the Rings I have ever read.

The novel's other flaw is the fact that it is criminally overlong; it's an 800 page novel with enough plot and ideas to fill 400. As already said, it starts with 100 pages of people at home, and I know it's important to establish the characters before the main plot starts otherwise what happens to them is meaningless, but Jordan doesn't do this. So much of the novel is pointless padding which could safely be cut without affecting the plot in the slightest that it makes me want to throw it at the wall; later in the novel, we get to follow two of the characters walking from one city to another, stopping at villages on the way to rest. They arrive at a village, encounter minions of the Dark One, defeat them, and move on. This happens no fewer than three times, takes up a good 80 pages, and doesn't further the plot in any way. For the record, I don't dislike long novels; each book of A Song of Ice and Fire (one of my favourite series of novels of all time) is longer than this, but the characters are engaging, the plot compelling, and the pace quick enough that you don't notice.

It's not all bad, fortunately. The ending is actually pretty spectacular, and finally delivers on the promises of the prologue, giving a long overdue sense of the epic that this novel desperately needs. After so much tedium, it finally manages to give a sense of urgency to the narrative which had been totally lacking up to that point. It's a shame that it occurs far too late to save the novel. Other than that, the world itself is well-drawn, and the way magic works in this world is actually very interesting. Magic has a yin/yang duality, in that males can draw on one half, and females the other. However, because of the influence of the Dark One, men cannot use it without ultimately going horrifically insane.

It's a real shame. Despite all my complaints, The Eye of the World is not catastrophically bad. I almost wish it were. Its problem is that it's just so formulaic, so standard, so forgettable. I question the point of writing an 800 page novel which brings absolutely nothing new to the genre; everything in it has been done before and better. If it were half the length it is and the pacing were better, this might not have been such a problem; David Gemmell's novels aren't terribly original, but they're exciting, and they're brief, rarely more than 400 pages. I'm told that The Wheel of Time gets better as it goes along, but a novel ought to grab you after 50 pages, not 750. Go back and read The Lord of the Rings again; that's what The Eye of the World is trying to be, but it's unfortunately nothing more than a second-rate copy. So much work was put into this novel, but it's just so ordinary, so... average. And that, in a way, is more disappointing than if it had been outright bad.

Monsters

To start as I mean to go on, here's a review of a low-budget, independent science fiction film that you probably haven't heard of, but definitely ought to see.

There are many remarkable things about Monsters, but to start with the basics: it cost a mere $500,000 to make, has a professional cast of two, and is the director's first feature. All the visual effects were made on director Gareth Edwards' laptop at the end of the day. Edwards has won the award for Best Director at the British Independent Film Awards. And it's one of the best films of the year. It may not have cost much to make, but every penny is visible on screen, and it looks better than a film of this budget has any right to. Pretty much the whole film was shot on location in Mexico, which is probably where most of the money went. The photography is gorgeous, and the bleakness of the location lends itself well to the feeling of isolation which pervades much of the film.

The plot is relatively simple. A few years from now, NASA discovers the possibility of life in our solar system, and sends a probe to investigate. The probe, however, breaks up on re-entry over Mexico, with the result that half the country is now deemed an "Infected Zone", and is populated by extra-terrestrials. The two main characters, Andrew Kaulder (Scoot McNairy) and Sam Wynden (Whitney Able) need to cross the Zone to make it back to America. The two leads have a relationship which builds over the course of the film, and have a good deal of chemistry together, which is probably helped by the fact that they're a real-life couple. They are the only professionals in the film; everyone else is a local hired during filming. This arguably leads to them being more convincing than they would have been otherwise, with locals, shopkeepers, and even guerillas essentially playing themselves. The plot is simple, but simple is no bad thing, especially when considering how good the dialogue and characterisation is; the fact that almost all of the dialogue was ad-libbed is a definite point in its favour here, making the conversations between Andrew and Sam that much more believable.

The effects work is mostly very good; some of the CGI for destroyed trains and tanks looks a little fake, but all is forgiven when the audience finally sees the "creatures" (they're never referred to as "monsters" during the film). Considering that all the CGI was made with software you can buy at PC World, being too critical seems a little unfair, especially when it becomes apparent how much effort was put into designing the creatures. At the risk of sounding redundant, these are some of the most alien aliens I've ever seen; there's none of this Star Trek nonsense where all the aliens are humanoid and speak perfect English. I'm unwilling to say what they look like, as it's one of the film's major draws, but suffice it to say that the art design for them is fantastic, and fits very well with current scientific speculation about the possibility of life in our solar system. They are only glimpsed throughout most of the film, but fortunately the budget did allow for a big reveal, where a creature is finally seen in all its bizarre glory. You wouldn't think they had been made in Adobe; the final shots of the film have a haunting, unearthly beauty that, in their own way, are more spectacular than anything in Avatar.

It's a shame I can't say more about this film without spoiling anything, but regardless, you really ought to go and see it. With Moon and District 9 last year, and Monsters this year, it seems like quality science fiction is finally making a comeback, and one I'm entirely in favour of. The recent Star Trek and Avatar have been very pretty, certainly, but have lacked the big ideas that used to be a hallmark of the genre; it seems that people are trying to bring them back. Unfortunately, this is not a film that will draw the crowds, and likely won't be in cinemas for much longer, which is all the more reason to go and see it now. It's one of the best films of the year, and one of the best science fiction films in quite some time.

Welcome, true believers!

First things first: the focus of this blog is going to be on reviews of films and commentary on interesting goings-on in the film industry. There will be reviews of the latest blockbusters, but more what I'm going for is to try and get awareness for niche and/or foreign films that might go unnoticed otherwise. This means that a lot of what I'll be reviewing is available on DVD, so there's no excuse for you not to see it afterwards. That being said, I'll still be complaining about bad films, and there will also be reviews of novels, comics, and general ramblings on anything that happens to be on my mind at the time.

Chances are, if you're here at all, it's because you know me in the real world; I'm hoping that the readership will eventually be a little bigger than that, so if you like what you see here, tell people about it! I hope you enjoy.

Excelsior!