Liam's Reviews > The Shadow Rising

“The Shadow shall rise across the world, and darken every land, even to the smallest corner, and there shall be neither Light nor safety. And he who shall be born of the Dawn, born of the Maiden, according to Prophecy, he shall stretch forth his hands to catch the Shadow, and the world shall scream in the pain of salvation."

4.5 Stars: ✰✰✰✰½

In terms of overall content, this was the best book so far. Book Four of the Wheel of Time continued in the same vein as The Great Hunt, making huge developments in the worldbuilding, the characters, and the story as a whole.

The Dragon Reborn almost felt like a break compared to this book - it had relatively slow pacing, few developments in the story, even fewer developments in terms of worldbuilding, but a strong focus on characterization that carried into the heart of this book. There's something so cool about the way that Jordan develops the qualities and characteristics of each character - down to their weapon and clothing of choice. It gives each character in this book an almost iconic vibe to them, that I really wasn't expecting. I don't want to give any spoilers, because it's best experienced as you make your way through the books, but it's honestly a lot of fun to see it all unfold. We're not just discovering the story and the world, we're watching some seriously cool characters come into the fullness of their destiny. Perrin, of course, is still my favorite. His POV in this book had some of the best scenes and sequences of the entire series.

Regarding POVs - similar to The Great Hunt, there was another significant increase in the number of POVs in this book. Some of them were actually characters that we're meeting for the first time, others were characters we saw only in passing from prior books. This really did a great job of broadening the scope once again, showing us almost every corner of this vast world, and tying together many different elements of the story that have popped here and there throughout all of the previous books.

The way that Jordan develops the story in these books is honestly really unique and interesting to me. It's a weird analogy, but he writes almost like the way you sharpen a knife. In book one, we got a pretty full understanding of the plot, and the plot hasn't changed at all. It's just been sharpened. Each book introduces new elements, new ideas, and new developments, bringing us further along and honing the plot to a much finer edge. It might be too slow for some, but it's been great for me, as I have plenty of fast paced books to keep me occupied. This book had a few things in it that really changed the way you think about both individual characters and entire people groups as a whole. It was seriously good stuff.

The only reason I took off half a star is because this book definitely felt a little too long. I feel like certain aspects of it could have been condensed, resulting in a much better flow of the story. Just to put it into perspective, book three was roughly 24 hours long... This book was over 40 hours long. The length itself isn't a problem, as I've listened to books even longer than this one and loved them, it was more the fact that I didn't feel like it needed to be as long as it was that was the problem.

Overall, this is a series I don't think any fantasy fan should miss. I'm heading into the more controversial territory now, as many people seem to have mixed opinions about the remaining books in the series, but we'll see =]. I've genuinely loved reading these books.

For this review and more, check out my blog: Thoughts of a Thousand Lives. I have only just started it, and there are a few pages still being worked on, but I'd appreciate any thoughts or feedback!

Happy reading =].