“The Eye of the World” hit bookstore shelves in 1990.  To put this in perspective, I was a junior in high school at the time.  It boggles the mind to consider just how much time it has taken for the full saga of “The Wheel of Time” to be told.  23 years, 14 volumes (and 1 prequel), and 2 authors later, the story is now officially complete.  And what a conclusion it is.

“The Wheel of Time” is not an easy series to tackle.  Even die-hard fans will admit that things were drawn out to an almost ridiculous degree.  What was supposed to be five novels exploded into at least twelve, and several of the books in the middle of the story are extremely slow.  A couple of them actually seem to do little or nothing to move the story forward.  And when the author died somewhat unexpectedly, while working on the final volume, it seemed like there would never be a conclusion at all.

Enter Brandon Sanderson.  An accomplished fantasy saga mastermind in his own right, he was chosen to take Robert Jordan’s detailed notes for “A Memory of Light” and bring it to a final form.  That it became a trilogy instead of one final volume seemed rather fitting, given the history of the series’ expansion over the decades.  But genre readers had been burned before; Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson infamously “concluded” the “Dune” saga in a way that hardly befits the original works.  Would Sanderson be able to meet the expectations of long-suffering fans?

“The Gathering Storm” and “Towers of Midnight” took the lingering plot and character threads and gave them clear direction.  Yet, by the end of “Towers of Midnight”, I was hard-pressed to guess how the series would conclude.  It was easy enough to predict that the Dark One would be defeated, but that had been more  or less obvious from the start.  It was less obvious if Rand, or any of the other major characters, would actually survive The Last Battle.

The first third or so of the book is devoted to setting the stage for the massive military campaigns to come, as the first skirmishes of The Last Battle begin.  Regardless of whether or not the reader has been paying attention to the endless references to how the story has to end, The Last Battle can be a daunting read.  There is, in fact, a massive chapter that spans a third of the book, all devoted to the grueling military maneuvers that take place.  It shouldn’t come as a surprise to any longtime fans that this is the focus, but it’s not easy to see so many familiar faces in constant struggle.

It can be difficult to balance the need for character resolution and the logical flow of a story’s climax.  This is exponentially true when there are several dozen characters to consider.  Some fans have noted that there are some characters that get very little in the way of denouement, once the battle is done.  Frankly, I’m not sure that any amount of epilogue would have fully satisfied everyone.  I could probably read an entire additional novel about the aftermath without hesitation.

The important part is that the involvement and purpose of each main character (and many supporting characters) in The Last Battle makes complete sense.  At least, it did to me.  Just as it makes sense that the majority of the battle would seem hopeless.  It’s a massive chess game on several levels, and it takes the proper amount of time and detail to demonstrate it.  And since there are some shocking casualties along the way, there is never a sense that anyone is safe.  The overall outcome may never be in doubt, but with the fate of the characters always in question, it’s a tense and exhausting read (in all the right ways)!

Most importantly, the end of the story is as it should be: the end of one age, the beginning of another.  Those that survive will clearly be going on to other lives and other stories.  It doesn’t try to bring things to such a definitive end that it feels inauthentic.  Just as there was a substantial history that occurred before the series itself (and even its prequel), the Wheel continues to turn when The Last Battle is done.  And that left me more than satisfied.

Price: $19.24 (print version)
Acquisition method: Amazon.com