The Wheel of Time is one of the finest epic fantasy stories ever created. Building on the inspiration of J. R. R. Tolkien, Robert Jordan begins with a modest story about a farm-boy being chased from his village. Fourteen books plus a prequel later … well, this isn’t the place for spoilers.

I have a tortured history with this series. It began in High School, when I started purchasing mass-paperback copies from my local bookstore. Before long I came to the end of book four, left for Bible College, and had to wait years for each of the subsequent volumes to be written and published. While each book was an exciting return to a world I loved to explore, by 2012 (two decades after I started reading), I had lost some of the threads of the story.

When I heard that Amazon was producing a live-action television show based on the series, I knew I wanted to read them again but I don’t have the time to reread 4.5 million words! Then I had an idea. While I was checking my Strava account I realized how many hours I spent running. So I downloaded the audio-book. It took two months of running to get through The Eye of the World, but it was so compelling I actually increased my mileage to keep listening!

Hearing these stories slowed the pace of the novel to the speed where every detail sinks in. I was amazed by the way characters and events I remember from later novels in the series were introduced and foreshadowed in this first volume. The work, now over three decades old, is as compelling as ever.

If you enjoy epic fantasy and have not yet read The Wheel of Time, count yourself lucky—you still get to experience it for the first time.

Jordan, Robert. The Eye of the World. TOR, 1990. The Wheel of Time 1.