Chapter 3: The Peddler

Picking up where we left off, we continue to see just how big the wagon is by its wheels, which are taller than a man each. Come on, eight horses is hard enough to swallow. How do you even move a wagon that size without it falling apart? Is this like the land version of Noah's Ark, or a fantasy version of a moving truck? It's ridiculous.

The driver of this truck wagon is named Padan Fain, a cheerful fellow who comes into Emond's Field every spring. He doesn't just bring wares to sell, he also helpfully provides information about the outside world. I'm not sure why this is such a big deal ... don't these country guys pride themselves on being separated from everybody else? Why would they be so interested in things that don't concern them in the slightest? Maybe life in Emond's Field is just that boring.

Chapter 2: Strangers

I probably shouldn't be going over every little sentence that isn't geography or history. What kind of blogger is completely and utterly mad? I know that some would say "the best kind," but since I want these posts to be at least readable I'll try and do some more summing up.

Rand and Mat lug the cider barrels into the inn, where most of the Village Council is lounging around. Haral Luhhan the blacksmith gives Mat a nasty look because he suspects that Mat pulled another childish prank involving smothering his dogs in flour and setting them loose (which he did). Mat gets distracted by Bran's wife, who's carrying honeycakes, and Rand has to get him to focus again. There, I just summarized three pages in three sentences. The subtle not-quite-tension is a bit lost in translation, but it's understood just fine, right? But the siren song of nitpicking is already calling me back ...

Chapter 1: An Empty Road

How does it take so long to make a blog post about a single chapter? It was only fifteen pages!

We begin with the book pointing out that it's beginning, or at least that it's a beginning, which is an important distinction to begin with. Even though the book had a prologue already, I guess it's technically true with this being the first chapter. The impact there is still lost though, and it comes off sounding rather pretentious. What's worse is that it's about wind, which reminds me of this:

Wind howled through the night, carrying a scent that would change the world (Eragon p1).

 That said, the instance in Wheel of Time gets a pass because of the Grandfather Clause (or maybe just the Father Clause, since it was only published in 1990), and because it isn't shamelessly ripping off plotlines from superior stories. Or so it seems ...