I started reading the Wheel of Time series about 30 years ago. I don’t remember much about the plot.
When I got to the third book, I felt that the author was spinning his wheels and didn’t know how to finish a story.
By the time I finished the fourth book, I thought, “Well, at least I’m more than half-way through.”
As I started reading the fifth book, shortly after it was published, I learned that the seven-book series was now going to be a ten-book series.
I stopped reading it mid-chapter. I sold my copies of the books. I never considered going back to them.
From time to time, I’d hear people discussing the book series. On this one topic at least, I typically kept my opinions to myself. I know there are people who are really enamored with the story. That’s OK. Not everyone has to like everything.
I also idly noted that the series was considered influential among the polyamorous community. That’s cool, but it wasn’t enough to get me to start a ten-book series again.
I’ve just finished watching the first season of the Wheel of Time TV series on Amazon Prime. I surprised myself by how much I remembered from the books, which was very little. I remembered the starting town was Two Rivers, and that Rand al’Thor was the name of an important character in the books. I remembered that women were the approved magic-users and that magic-using men were dangerous and had to be suppressed.
Everything else had purged itself from my mind. So the TV series was basically new to me.
I found the TV series to be mildly engaging, but not to the level of Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones. Perhaps I’ve been burned out by too many other epic fantasies in movies and TV, but Wheel of Time seemed bland. Stuff happened. The good guys were “Light” and the bad guys were “Dark”. Some people did bad things for stupid reasons. Our protagonists did stupid things for stupid reasons.
Since I have Amazon Prime mainly for the free shipping, I’ll probably continue to watch future seasons of the Wheel of Time. But only, as they say, if there’s nothing else on.