I am still slowly progressing through The Wheel of Time series. I started collecting the books a few years back every time that I found one for cheap in a used bookstore. I read the first two books, and enjoyed them. The first felt very derivative of Lord of the Rings, among other things, particularly in the naming of characters. Perrin, the loyal friend of the main protagonist, always makes me think of Peregrin Took from LoTR. The main antagonist, Ba’alzamon (Ba’al Zebub) and his main henchmen, are very similar to Sauron and his Nazgul. Lifting names from Arthurian legend is common, too (See Egwene – Gwynevere, Gawyn – Gawain, etc.). It screams a bit of the “can I copy your homework” meme at times.
I was happy that book 2, The Great Hunt, started to find more of its own footing and expand in ways that felt less familiar to me, and I think that trend continues in The Dragon Reborn. Reborn makes a pretty bold choice for the third book in a franchise in that it sends its main character off on a solo journey, and leaves you with the other side protagonists for almost the entirety of the story. And Jordan mostly pulls it off. He is not a good writer of female characters, so the chapters that focus on a trio of women studying to be powerful sorcerors can be frustrating at times. One of the trio takes what was an occasional nervous tic (tugging on her long braided hair) and turns it into a defining character trait. It got to the point where I had to Google whether any other readers noticed this odd trend. Fortunately, there were many posts about this phenomena which made me feel less crazy.
All in all, it is another decent entry into the series and kept me interested enough to eventually pick up book #4.
