“The battle scenes have the breathless urgency of firsthand experience, and the . . . evil laced into the forces of good, the dangers latent in any promised salvation, the sense of the unavoidable onslaught of unpredictable events bear the marks of American national experience during the last three decades.”
“Has all the breadth and depth that have made this fantasy author one of the acknowledged greats of the genre.”
“His writing is distinguished . . . by the richness of its fabric, with all the charm and naïveté of the Brothers Grimm and the social/moral commentary of Huxley’s Brave New World. With his well-fleshed-out characters, dark imagery, comic relief, vivid landscapes, and a fascinating sense of timelessness, Jordan has created a complex literature with a language and reality all its own.”
“Throughout Jordan’s preeminent high-fantasy saga . . . the characters (minor as well as major), the world, and the source of powers have remained remarkably rich and consistent—no mean feat. . . . Amid all the Sturm und Drang, however, is a finely tuned comic strain that both leavens the story and adds to its development. A major fantasy epic.”
“Truth is not only stranger, it’s richer than fiction, but Jordan’s fictional universe approaches the variety and complexity of the real. . . . Plotlines [are] strummed with resonating long-wave rhythms something like Beethoven’s Eroica.”
