Your first time

[Kaznen]

GET YOUR MIND OUT OF THE GUTTER!!!

 

I'm talking about the first time you ever read Wheel of Time. What was it like for you?

 

To get started I tell you about my first time:

 

I was 19 and just finishing my first year of my first attempt at college. I was a big fantasy fan but most of my experences were limited to what was published by TSR (now Wizards of the Coast) yes, Drizzt.

 

My friends told me about Robert Jordan. And I heard good things about it. Nothing saying what the series was about just it was good.

 

While visiting home I bought a trade paperback edition of tEotW. Trade and mass marketpaperbacks of WoT don't have that little plot teaser so I went in reading completly blind to the characters.

 

The prolouge made no sense to me at all of course and I never learned what was going on until Loial made his appearence.

 

But still I was hooked. Within two months I had read the whole series (up to CoS at the time) and read the series twice that summer. I almost wish I never read the Series so I could read it again for the frist time.

[Kadere]

my first time was with this girl..... oh wait.... nevermind.

 

No, my first time I was on vacation to California and I had just finished all the books I had brought with me on the trip, because I read like a maniac and there was more time in the car then I thought there would be. I can't remember what book it was I had just finished, but I forced my parents to take me to a bookstore so I could get another book. (Actually, now that I think about it, I believe I had just finished Lord of the Rings.... yeah, I'm like 99% positive. Wow, I can remember WoT better than LotR).

 

I went in the bookstore wanting to get another fantasy series, because LotR left me on a fantasy high. So I walk in and see WoT. Now I'd been checking out the WoT books for the past 10 years (this being 2000), and I'd always LOVED their covers (I know, I'm like the only one) but I hated their length, it had only been recently that I'd read a book that was 800 pages.

 

So, since I wanted a fantasy, and these looked REALLY GOOD and had a comment on the cover that said they were better then Tolkein, I grabbed TEotW. I read 50 pages a day (because that's how I read then, now it's 100 pages a day) and in 2 weeks I moved on to TGH. I LOVED the books. I had NO IDEA what was going on in the Prolouge, but I understood everything else clearly. So I read the series in like 6 months through Winter's Heart (that being the newest book), and I'm such an addict now that I own TDR-KoD and New Spring in First Edition Hardback, and TEotW and TGH in First Edition Trade paperback. I've read the series 3 times, and I'm dying to read the series again. But right now I'm painstakingly trying to get through Robin Hobb's Assassian's Apprentice.... I don't know if I can make it.

[Alarwyn Liande]

Hmm.. I think it was summer 2001, and I was So bored. :P I had absolutely nothing to do, so I decided to go to library to see there was something interesting to read... And I really liked the title 'The Eye of the World', and after reading the prologue I knew I'd love the series. In six months I had read through the whole series, even though I had to change the language to English when I started CoS (my second book in English! :p).

[Duinn]

Well for me it was this boy :P

 

Nah, the first time I read WoT was when I found a second hand version of EotW in my local bookshop when I was 14(ish) (understandably later on in life Rand was my idol with his women, hmm good times with Avi in the ice cave ;))

 

I still can't understand why someone would get rid of such an amazing book (but man am I glad). It was my first real experince with fantasy and since then I have become quite a fan (tbh Kadere, I loved Assassin's Apprentice) but every year or two I re-read them, it seems each time I get so much more out of them, and cos after KoD I went mad for WoT again (hence me joining DragonMount)

[YDdraig]

A couple of days before I was to go up to uni I was bored and asked my sister for a book. I'd read all mine like 100 times and had no intention of buying another because all my money was to go on booze (it did as well!!). Anyway started it, loved it. Then borrowed it for the 7 hour car journey and didn't finish it :( So I had to wait about 10 weeks to get back and steal my sister's WoT books.

 

It was brilliant, I was finishing a book every two days or so. Couldn't stop reading them so it was not rare for me to be still up at 4am! I then read through them again that holiday.

 

Then KoD last year, I locked myself in my room for 8 hours and read it from start to finish. Brilliant. Finished that at 4am. And had a lecture at 9! Slept like a baby the next night though :lol:

[Luckers]

I'm an avid fantasy reader, and have been since i read the belgariad when i was 10, so every year i get a couple of new fantasy books for my birthday. The big one was my twelth, because i got the Eye of the World and a Game of Thrones that year. Even then i could read at a freakish pace, and i had read both series' over the next two months. (up to clash of kings in GRRM, and up to path of daggers in WoT). I didn't really like A song of ice and fire. Yeah, to a twelve year old the sex parts were cool, but the series as a whole was a little too dark. WoT on the other hand became my bread and butter. In the 6 years since then ive read the series 12 times (i read it twice a year. Once during the christmas break, and once around the end of april.)

 

But im not a nerd. I swear. :lol:

[True source]

I was bored ao i went into a shop in my local town and saw it on the shelf, I read the prologue and then bought, and now im here which basically says what I thought of it! 8) Short n sweet for y'all.

 

Join the band of the red hand, its good fun!

[sj]

My 7th grade Language Arts teacher gave tEotW as a choice to read.

 

I was one of about 2 people who finished it.

 

The teacher admited to giving up halfway through reading tEotW but I was hooked on the series.

 

Language Arts teachers never have any taste in books anyways

[Angel of Death]

I was on vacation, and was slowy reading through it until the wunternight chapter, then i was hooked.

[SinisterDeath]

Well, I was on a trip/vacation thing to see my brother in virginia, his wife, and there newly born daughter. My brother had pointed out eotw to me.. So we bought it. *almost didnt* Then on the flight home I tried to read it.. didn't get to far. *the first few pages are always a snore :P*

Then at school, *I was in 8th grade* I needed to find a new book to read, as I had just finished one. So I saw the one I got from the trip, and said, what the hell! So I picked it up, and still havent put it down. :P

[TheDiceAgain...]

Well, there was this one time at band camp...

 

Seriously though...

 

I think I was a Sophomore in high school and I had just finished reading a book by Eddings, probably one of the Malorean books. I am very bad at wating for paperbacks so I knew I'd have to wait a year and a half for the next one in the series and with as much as I read at the time, that just was not happening.

 

I was scouring the rather limited selection of sci-fi/fanatasy books at the local Hallmark store and I saw this huge paperback that kind of caught my eye. I figured that it would keep entertained for a week or so , so I picked it up and brought it home. It sat on my desk for a week or two for one reason or another.

 

Of course being young and stupid, I did something and got grounded. I actually think I thanked my mom for that a few years later. There I was on a Saturday night with nothing to do but sit in my room and stare at the ceiling.(wasn't allowed to use the phone or watch TV nor was I in a mood to do what teenage guys do when they're alone in their room *inner monologue filter is off again, argh!*).

 

Anyway, I picked up the book and started leafing through the glossary and then got down to reading. I think what really hooked me was one line: "I win again, Lews Therin."

 

I found myself chuckling under my breath and I knew I was hooked from then on. I know for a fact that none of the first 6 took me more than 4 days to read which tells you two things, I absolutely love these books and I apparently was grounded alot, since I didn't have much else to do...

 

Dice

[Ani_Raevla]

My aunt bought me the EotW on either Christmas or my b-day. Can't really remember. I was in middle school, I'm sure of that. I didn't think that it was a whole series, and when I saw that there were atleast ten more books and Jordan still wasn't done, I was completly freaked out. But I kept on reading until the fifth (which was like two years ago), and barely began again on the sixth this year.

[Wolfsbane]

My friend Matt (two t's mind you) told me about the books in grade 9, because his dad was a maniac for them so I decided I'd give them a try.

It was recommended to me that I DON'T read the prologue, which made a hell of a lot of sense after reading the whole bloody thing (I feel sorry for the people turned off because the opener didn't make sense). I read the book just before spring break and when I found myself finished with Matt's copy of EoTW, I just had to have more. I found a used book store on Pender Island and devoured TGH, after two days I was done and after TDR, but- alas dear friends, there was no TDR on Pender Island.

Misery of all miseries.

 

I just became so entranced by the characters and the world RJ created that I had to have more.

I would like to pose my own question though-

Which of RJ's books almost put you off the series? You've read them all I am assuming, otherwise what kind of WoT geek are you?

WoT #5- The Fires of Heaven I found the biggest let-down, with The Shadow Rising so full of action and movement and plot development and more Perrin than any normal Perrin-fan could take, it just got boring and annoying and didn't feel the same to me in tFoH.

LoC brought me back from the brink, but I know many wot fans we lost to FoH.

 

What say you?

 

wolfs

[SinisterDeath]

None, I equally enjoyed every book, Yes even cot.

[Kaylan]

I was ten or eleven years old, and my dad's girlfriend (at the time) was reading them. I got interested, and I kept buying them, but she stopped reading them after Lord of Chaos because she could tell the series was being dragged out.

 

Every book after that one has put me off the series, now I generally only buy them when I find them cheap. *shrugs* I still want to know what happens in the series, but I get sick of reading details that aren't pivotal to the story over and over again.

[Wolfsbane]

I agree, but I found KoD to be the wrap-up special. The episode where EVERY loose end that could've been gradually tied up starting from tFoH, is tied up. I have no complaints about KoD other than I felt too good about it.. seriously, FINALLY Elayne gets Caemlyn (and I'm not an Elayne fan), Egwene's kicking butt in the Tower, Lan has raised the Golden Crane, Perrin's got Faile (and he was my favourite until he got into 'Obsession' mode for 3 books), Mat gets married, Tuon nails Suroth, etc. etc. etc.

I still recommend the series to people, but I generally accept that they'll fall off (books 5-7).

Sorry, off topic, but still curious.

 

Wolfs

[Kaznen]

What almost put me off the series was was PoD. CoS left Mat with a major cliffhanger but it wasn't picked up unitil WH.

 

I liked CoT, I just didn't think the info warrented the need for a whole book. 2/3 of the book wasn't needed and the remaining 1/3 could have been told in WH and KoD.

 

I do think that the post FoH books drag. In the earlier books a question raised would be answered often within three paragraphs. Now it takes many chapters if at all in a single book.

[Kadere]

I love this series. I've loved it since I first picked up The Eye of the World. Sure I struggled through The Dragon Reborn, A Crown of Swords, Path of Daggers, and Crossroads of Twilight, but I still love all of those books. You can't get to the AWESOMENESS which is Shadow Rising+Fires of Heaven (which I see as one book) without getting through the manotony of The Dragon Reborn. You can't get to the wrap up moments in Winter's Heart without reading A Crown of Swords and Path of Daggers, and really neither of those books are all that bad. A Crown of Swords has a REALLY cool ending, and the finding of the Bowl of the Winds is totally sweet, and you finally get the invasion of the Seanchan which you've been waiting for since The Great Hunt. Then in Path of Daggers you get a SWEET battle scene for like 100 pages, Faile is kidnapped which is SUCH a good cliffhanger, the Bowl of the Winds is FINALLY used, the Asha'men snap thanks to Osan'gar, Taim starts acting funny, Oh my god I love that book. And then Crossroads of Twilight was only a preverbial let down because we had to wait so long for the awesomeness of Knife of Dreams. But Crossroads had a LOT of cool stuff going on, it was the calm before the storm. Sure the main plots didn't really move forward, but there are scenes in that book (like Karede's servant Ajimbura stabbing that rat) that make my skin crawl.

 

Yeah, I love this series, every book, every discription, every character, every plot point, all of it. It took me 6 months the first time I read it to get through 9 books, but I never wanted to put the books down, I just kept wanting to see how everything ends. "Drawn out" or not, this is still the best fantasy series I've ever read.

[Ord]

Well my roommate and one of my good friends both read it. I usually wasn't really into fantasy books so after a couple of months of being pestered by them I finally picked up EotW. And the rest as they say is History. I absolutely love the books.

[Red States Rule!]

Well my first time was with a girl WHILE READING Jordan... how do ya like that?

 

16 years old. My first thoughts were of how Bela should have been the heroine of the story. Why not?

 

That, and of how UPPITY the Aes Sedai were.... I had to wait until book six for them to get theirs.

[elmindreda]

im still reading them for the first time and i had never heard of robert jordan or WoT so i was surprised at how good the stories are.

 

I think they are really good and id never really gone in for reading fantasy before- i hardly read to be honest but i find them really capivating for the most part

[loki redfern]

I read book three first on a holiday to new york then i never looked back (except to read tEotW and tGH after LoC). kinda bacwards but it suits me down to the strange purple ground of my planet

[elmindreda]

haha what colour is the sky?

 

and what is tGH

[Kadere]

tGH is an acronym for The Great Hunt

[loki redfern]

that depends which voice you talk to i'm the one that thinks the colour of the sky is the flavor of chocolate