Review: The Great Hunt

Book Details

Title: The Great Hunt (The Wheel of Time, Book 2)

Author: Robert Jordan

Genre: Epic fantasy

Page Count: 681

Publishing Info: Tor, October 15, 1991

My Review

Why I read it: 2nd in a series

The Plot: After centuries of searching for the Horn of Valere which possesses the power to raise past heroes from the dead, it is finally found and then stolen.

The Characters: I don't really like any of these characters.  Rand seems to not have any character growth, and has the same fears and worries throughout the whole book.  I imagine at some point he'll embrace his powers, but it seems to be taking too long to get there.  I guess that's fitting since this is a very long series.  There are a lot of secondary characters, but none that I'm particularly attached to at this point.

The Setting: The world that Jordan has created is very intricate and it seems like he must have spent a long time thinking it out.  There's a reason epic fantasy is my favorite genre (or sub-genre), and this book is a fine example.

A Sample of the Writing:

"Some men," she said, not raising her eyes from his hand, "choose to seek greatness, while others are forced to it.  It is always better to choose than to be forced.  A man who's forced is never completely his own master.  He must dance on the strings of those who forced him."

 

Who Should Read This? Anyone who has already read book one.  If you haven't this isn't the place to start.  This is also a good one for epic fantasy fans like myself, and I almost feel like any true fantasy fan should have read this series, which is one of the reasons I'm reading it, even though I'm far behind.

Final Thoughts: It has been six years since I read the first book in the series, and I'm not really sure why it took me so long to get to book two. This one took me a really long time to get into, and I found the pacing very uneven throughout. Things would get exciting, and then almost deathly slow again. I've found this happens often with longer books. Most of the time they just don't need to be as long as they are.  I'll definitely be continuing on with the series, though.

Grade: C+

Cover Thoughts: My cover is like the one on the left, but I think the e-book edition (the cover on the right) is at least 10 times better.  Why are they making the covers so much cooler for e-books?