Caught In The Whirlwind
Book 14: The Shadow Rising
Title: The Shadow Rising (Wheel of Time book 4)
Author: Robert Jordan
Genre: Fantasy (Epic)
Pages: 1008
Summary
The adventures of Rand al’Thor and friends continue as more prophecy unfolds. Again not going to spoil since it’s the middle of the series.
Notes
Ok…here’s where the wheels on the Wheel of Time bus start to fall off. By far the largest book of the series so far, the first half consists mostly of exposition. Explaining the backstory of the world and some of the characters that had not had their stories explained previously. Things get moving in the second half, but much like Rand keeps saying…things are moving too slow.
The pace of the series does slow down considerably from here on out as we transition from the introductory books to the middle of the story which sets up the ending (whatever that ending will be).
Jordan’s issues with writing female characters and dialog between men and women continues here. It feels more pronounced since it’s been the way things have gone for the past few books and one hoped that it’s something Jordan would have grown out of but it’s not so. Nearly everything bit of dialog from a female character (especially things that Nynaeve says) has something to do with how much of a wool-brained fool men are and a good amount of what the men say are how incomprehensible women are. The 40th time Perrin thinks “Light! I’ll never understand women!” you’ll want to find Robert Jordan (were he still alive) and throw the book at him.
BUT. writing cliches aside, the story is still interesting and the reader is left with a hunger for learning what’s going to happen next.
Next Book
I’m taking another little break from the Wheel of Time to dive into a literary classic. After Wassy and I had a conversation on the way back from our wine country trip this weekend which turned to books we read in high school English class, I’ve decided to read Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. I need to make a better effort to read some of the more widely held classics that I didn’t get a chance to read in high school. And maybe re-read some of the ones I did for a better appreciation. But not Dickens. Oh god…I’m NEVER reading any more Dickens again.
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about 1 year ago
First, let me just say how much I like your website. Its designed VERY well. I’m quite jealous.
Second, BRAVE NEW WORLD IS AWESOME. I’ll admit though, I haven’t read it since high school – but in high school it blew my mind.
In a good way
Enjoy it!
about 1 year ago
The blog? Oooh, wish I could take credit for it, but it’s actually a pre-packaged wordpress theme that I tweaked a smidge (http://digitalnature.ro/). I’m going to be getting my own design going at some point though, when I have the time to do it.
And yeah, I’m quite looking forward to reading Brave New World. From what I’ve read, a lot of the ideas, despite being written so long ago are surprisingly still relevant. Can’t wait to dig in!
about 1 year ago
Let me ask you, in your book review above you included a picture of the cover. I noticed the picture links to Amazon.com – did you have to do that manually?
Right now, I have to import an image into my blog and then set the place it links to. A lot of work, in comparison to how easy it was on Vox. I miss Vox for that ease
about 1 year ago
That’s a wordpress plugin. I don’t think you can do somthing similar with wordpress.com
. Don’t believe they support installing random plugins…
It’s called Amazon Reloaded: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/amazon-reloaded-for-wordpress/
Gives me a little search box on the posting page that searches amazon. Pretty much works like the Vox amazon integration did. That was one of my favorite parts of Vox too.
about 1 year ago
Hm, now you’re making me want to just do the .org thing…
about 1 year ago
It’s really not too bad to set up as long as you’re ok with setting up your own web hosting/domain name.
A lot of the plugins and such are installed right through the admin control panel so aside from the initial setup, there’s very little in the way of actually having to upload files by hand.
The .org version also can import wordpress.com blogs, so all your content will transfer over.