The Great Hunt

The Great Hunt improves enormously from The Eye of the World, but still has some issues.

Books 1 and 2 have always felt a little separated from the rest of the series to me. I have always said that there is a large tone shift in book 3, and that every character in book 3 feels different from the way they did in 1 and 2. Book 3's characterizations of all the main cast are the ones that he works with and builds on in the rest of the series, and I think for a few characters it's a bit jarring coming out of book 2 into their book 3 POVs (especially Mat).

But, the story in this book is VASTLY improved over book 1. There are still some pacing issues, but I think the story here is much more engaging and interesting than in book 1. There won't be any last-second "hey the whole quest needs to get derailed to take you where the plot needs to happen" contrivances in this one, all the plotlines flow much more organically. Jordan's real talent was in writing ensemble pieces, and this is the first ensemble piece of the series. Where EOTW really follows Rand and the other viewpoints are IMO incidental, this book is about ALL of the main characters.

There are still one or two inconsistencies here with the magic system from the other books, though. It's the last time that's true; after this book he had fully ironed out all the details of the magic system and didn't make any other changes. This book sets up plotlines that flow through the entire rest of the series as well, which book 1 didn't do quite as much in my opinion- this is a REALLY interesting book on a re-read.

This book has a lot of Loial in it, which is good because Loial is great and Ogier are great and if I could just have a Wheel of Time spinoff series about Loial and other Ogier that would be great. When I was younger I recall this being my favorite book of the series because it's adventure after adventure after adventure, and also it has a lot of Loial, have I mentioned that I like Loial a lot?

Like Eye of the World, I finished this one weeks ago as well, and apparently all I remember is Loial. The small-town teens turned adventurers are still bad at communicating and in denial about what they are and the boys hate being reminded that they are ta'veren whose fates are guided by the Pattern and who twist the Pattern around themselves whether they like it or not. But Loial loves to remind them of this, and I love Loial, so I derive some crude satisfaction from this.

I think this is the one Rand uses a [redacted] but totally [redacted] so [redacted]? That was great I loved that part.