Lord of Chaos (The Wheel of Time #6), review

And here we are again! After pausing The Wheel of Time and having ready all the Cosmere I decided it was time to go back to the epic adventures of Rand al’Thor.

After just short of a month, I’ve read (a.k.a. listened) the sixth book in the series, Lord of Chaos (The Wheel of Time, #6), what an epic ending to the over 40 hours of audiobook!

Rating: 3.5/5

I’ve shared my overall feelings about the series before and I don’t think they have changed, especially with this installment which feels quite slow. I still love the series for its depth and world, but what makes it really shine are its realised characters and the epicness of its events. Unfortunately, these epic moments diluted among a mountain of text that spends too much time to on chores.

I’ve spent the vast majority of the book just wondering where things were going because they were not going anywhere. Too many points of view and too much time spent in scenes that didn’t move the plot. And is an awful feeling because I really wish I loved more those scenes! I’m pretty sure that all of them are necessary, because when I think about the Wheel of Time I can imagine a fully realised world full of incredible characters, and I doubt this would still be the case without all those filling scenes.

So yes, I’m not saying there is too much filling, but I’m saying there is a bit too much? Again, is hard for me to reconcile this feeling.

Because then, when a scene actually moves the plot forward, you could hear me scream! 🙀 There are moments so memorable and epics in this book that when I finished it last night, I immediately got better feelings about it.

Seeing our characters reunite, Rand accepting his position on all of this, and also friendships that are being muddled by world events… it’s very impressive.

During this same month I’ve been watching Castle, the serial tv show. The fact that every episode has little to do with the previous but that as the seasons go, the writers add more and more details into the overall story line, made me realise that it’s how I started looking at the Wheel of Time. Usually when I read fantasy I’m tied to the three story act, expecting the plot to move forward towards a conclusion, but after six books I think that the way to read the Wheel of Time is far from that. Each individual book doesn’t strongly follow the classical formula, yes there is a meaningful ending, but the book doesn’t really build up only towards that. It’s closer to a tv show where we just spent time with the characters while they are doing their own thing, sometimes we spent time with them to know them better (too often) even if the plot doesn’t benefit from it. So I’ve changed my attitude and now I’m just reading the Wheel of Time enjoying the ride with no expectation of what needs to happen or when.

It’s a bittersweet realisation but I think this will propel me to the upcoming books, and I still love what’s going on, so I really want to get to the conclusion of the series. I can’t wait to get more epic moments like the last chapter of this book. Rand is such a freaking main character!

This experience is being strange indeed. I see myself trying to understand what I love and what I hate about the epic story, and I really can’t pinpoint what’s going on. I have plenty of critiques but I still see how this is one of the best epic stories ever written and I’m still loving the ride. So weird.