For those of us who love the fantasy and science-fiction genres, we are lucky to live in an era of abundance. Genre television has really taken off, leading to shows like Game of Thrones, House of the Dragon, The Rings of Power, The Wheel of Time, and The Legend of Vox Machina. Books, e-books, audiobooks, and podcasts abound, and there are more people reading and writing for these genres than ever before. Without throwing any shade at the early years of genre storytelling, it’s good to see that The Hobbit and Frankenstein aren’t the only options on bookshelves anymore.
With so much content and so many options, one might ask: what is necessary reading in the fantasy genre? Which novels fundamentally set the standard for what the genre is and should look like while bringing their readers joy, entertainment, sorrow, solace, wonder, and all of the other emotions that we feel when we read?
Some series and authors instantly leap to mind; J.R.R. Tolkein’s The Lord of the Rings books are the holy trinity of the fantasy genre; they are the touchstones by which Tolkien started it all. Other series like George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire improved and altered the genre, bending into the realms of gritty realism and human frailty. The Harry Potter franchise is one of the best coming of age stories ever told. A Wizard of Earthsea and Rage of Dragons both begin new fantasy series with settings very different from the fantasy standard of a medieval-European style world. Fans of Brandon Sanderson’s works point to his unique and colorful fantasy worldbuilding in series like Mistborn or The Stormlight Archives. But which should be considered essential reading?
For me personally, I would regard The Lord of the Rings as the single most important fantasy series of all time, and I am not alone in that opinion. Tolkien almost single-handedly created the modern fantasy genre as we know it and deserves immense credit. However, Tolkien wrote The Lord of the Rings in the early twentieth century and throughout the course of World War II, and some of the prose and storytelling are a bit dated. Tolkien wrote his works before (among other things) the sexual revolution, the era of mass media, and the production of most modern film and television. This is reflected in his work.
Another piece of essential reading is my favorite high-fantasy series (pending its conclusion, of course): A Song of Ice and Fire. With his novels, George R.R. Martin created a visceral and compelling world full of people whose personalities, goals, actions, and failings feel entirely real. In these novels, characters do not go out on quests because they are pure of heart or trying to vanquish the embodiment of all evil, but because they have relatable motivations that readers could sympathize with, or at least understand. Dragons are not riddling tricksters hoarding wealth they could never spend, but feral beasts that people seek to manipulate in an arms race for control of the world. In Westeros, the dragons didn’t want mounds of gold… but people do, just as in real life.
Both The Lord of the Rings and A Song of Ice and Fire are two of the best-known high fantasy novel series to people outside the genre, due in part to their high-profile film and television adaptations. However, in my opinion the third most necessary series to read for anyone trying to understand the high fantasy genre is far less well known: The Wheel of Time.
Why fantasy fans need to read The Wheel of Time
The Wheel of Time was written from 1990-2013, first by createor Robert Jordan and then finished by Brandon Sanderson after Jordan died in 2007. Comprised of 14 novels, The Wheel of Time is one of the behemoths of fantasy storytelling and definitely requires a significant time investment. The novels (and the TV adaptation which just finished an excellent third season) follow sheep herder Rand al'Thor and his closest friends as Rand discovers that he is the legendary Dragon Reborn, a figure of immense magical power who is prophesized to either save or destroy the world. Spoiling only the prologue to the first novel, I will say that in his last life, Rand did a little of both. To this day, The Wheel of Time remains one of the best-selling high fantasy series ever written.
The Wheel of Time expands and alters classic fantasy tropes by bringing in several aspects of Eastern religions, such as reincarnation and the cyclical nature of life. It does not leave western mythology behind; there is still a dichotomy between good and evil and many monsters that bear a striking resemblance to the orcs from The Lord of the Rings. However, the introduction of reincarnation gives the series its own distinct flavor; Rand must confront what he has done in past lives, and even sometimes confront those he interacted with in them. There will also not always be a final resolution to one's life, for all things can happen again.
In The Wheel of Time, both men and women can use magic, but they draw it from different sources. The male half of the One Power is tainted because of events that happened long before the start of the story, so when men use magic, they are slowly driven insane. So as we root for Rand and the other characters, we must also contend with the fact that not only do they have personality flaws, but we don’t even know if we can trust the character who is acting as our POV to the story. Rand’s questioning of his own sanity and the voices in his head starts in the fourth book, The Shadow Rising, and pretty much continues for the entire series. To say he does some pretty morally dubious things along the way would be an understatement. We also get to see how his enemies, allies, friends and loved ones react to a man with all the power in the world while he slowly loses his marbles. The whole series starts with three pages of prologue in which a man walks through the ruins of his own palace full of the bodies of everyone he knows, and he is laughing. The series really wasn’t trying to hide the stakes.
The single most important aspect of The Wheel of Time is the epic scale of its climaxes. Robert Jordan’s work is symphonic, and the natural tendency in his writing was always to build to a massive crescendo. Most books in the series build towards one pivotal moment where all the plotlines and characters converge in space, time, or both. And some of these collisions are massive; by the fifth novel of the series, battle of hundreds of thousands of soldiers are taking place, and that’s only the half of it. Did you like Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings? Imagine hundreds or thousands of wizards that powerful fighting all at once. Like the surprise victory by the Starks at the Battle of the Whispering Wood in A Song of Ice and Fire? Imagine entire armies moving through portals to attack each other from behind.
Do you like it when your characters experience real emotion? Imagine them walking through time and being forced to endure all the pain and suffering of generations of their ancestors. You want a high fantasy settings? Three thousand years before the start of the main series, a group of magic users goes mad and ends up terraforming the planet, breaking and creating mountains, seas, and continents, leaving the landscape twisted and shattered. Everything in Jordan’s world is big, including the catastrophes. Armies of dead heroes, hordes of living nightmares, fortresses that have never fallen, swords that are weapons of mass destruction, a protagonist who is both the savior and destroyer of entire worlds, a never-ending cycle of death and resurrection: this is what The Wheel of Time is made of, and there is so much of it that it almost overwhelms you. It’s fantastic.
The Wheel of Time series is not without its flaws. A recurring complaint I’ve heard from some people I recommend the series to is that the dialogue is old-fashioned and that the gender dynamics are hard to get past. Both of those complaints have some validity. It is only natural that over the course of writing roughly eleven thousand pages, Jordan was going to have to reuse some linguistic tricks and things were going to start seeming stale.
The gender dynamics are also strained at times. Robert Jordan was born in the Deep South in the 1940s, and I can see some real southern belle energy in some of his female characters. My only response to this is that his characters are not uniform, and the ones that start the series as the main characters have fully developed personalities and fulfilling character arcs; it is characters introduced later on or minor characters that can be the most frustrating.
Despite of all that, The Wheel of Time is an engaging and emotional read from an author who was a master of high fantasy. Robert Jordan’s novels bring adventure, mystery, suspense, romance, epic scale and all of the other things that make a great fantasy novel series. As we wait to hear whether Amazon's adaptation of The Wheel of Time will be renewed for a fourth season, I highly recommend people pick up a copy from your local bookstore.
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