Ah, The Dragon Reborn. The third installment of the Wheel of Time, and the one that I think determines if you’ll continue the series or abandon it entirely. If you come to the end of this installment energized and excited for what’s to come, you’ll likely make the long journey to A Memory of Light. If you don’t like this book, or are ambivalent about it, the end of your Wheel of Time journey might be nearer than you think. I say that because this is the book that lets the cat (or dragon) out of the bag, so to speak. I don’t want to spoil anything, but I got chills while reading the climax. 

This volume is the first, I think, to fall into a pattern that will be repeated through the rest of the series: there are more point-of-view characters, and their narratives require them to do more, which leaves each point of view stretched thinner than before. You can expect this in a series that’s this dense. On my first read through of this series back in high school, I found this annoying. Now, as I seek to write a fantasy novel of my own, I’m paying more attention to novels’ structures, and why certain pacing decisions might have been made. I think The Dragon Reborn (and the rest of the series) benefits from this structure, where you might not revisit a character for 100+ pages, rather than a character-per-chapter structure (like The Expanse). Both are good choices, and they’re each successful when that structure lends itself to the plot. This sounds obvious, but it’s something that requires a bit more thinking than I anticipated.

This is also the first volume where your pet peeves about the series may start to prickle just a bit. One of mine is the amount of times Nynaeve tugs on her braid. I’m sure more of these will show up depending on how many times certain details are repeated. Despite that, I am enjoying my re-read immensely.

This review is also available on my Medium page.

5✸