Since its debut in 1990, The Wheel of Time(r) by Robert Jordan has captivated millions of readers around the globe with its scope, originality, and compelling characters.The Wheel of Time turns and Ages come and go, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth returns again. In the Third Age, an Age of Prophecy, the … Prophecy, the World and Time themselves hang in the balance. What was, what will be, and what is, may yet fall under the Shadow.
For three days battle has raged in the snow around the great city of Tar Valon. In the city, a Foretelling of the future is uttered. On the slopes of Dragonmount, the immense mountain that looms over the city, is born an infant prophesied to change the world. That child must be found before the forces of the Shadow have an opportunity to kill him.
Moiraine Damodred, a young Accepted soon to be raised to Aes Sedai, and Lan Mandragoran, a soldier fighting in the battle, are set on paths that will bind their lives together. But those paths are filled with complications and dangers, for Moiraine, of the Royal House of Cairhien, whose king has just died, and Lan, considered the uncrowned king of a nation long dead, find their lives threatened by the plots of those seeking power.
“New Spring” related some of these events, in compressed form; New Spring: The Novel tells the whole story.
The Wheel of Time(r)
New Spring: The Novel
#1 The Eye of the World
#2 The Great Hunt
#3 The Dragon Reborn
#4 The Shadow Rising
#5 The Fires of Heaven
#6 Lord of Chaos
#7 A Crown of Swords
#8 The Path of Daggers
#9 Winter’s Heart
#10 Crossroads of Twilight
#11 Knife of Dreams
By Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson
#12 The Gathering Storm
#13 Towers of Midnight
#14 A Memory of Light
By Robert Jordan and Teresa Patterson
The World of Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time
By Robert Jordan, Harriet McDougal, Alan Romanczuk, and Maria Simons
The Wheel of Time Companion
At the Publisher’s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
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It was just so good to see Moiraine and Siuan as young, unimportant apprentices being tested and struggling to find their places as new Aes Sedai.
If you ever wondered how Lan and Moiraine meet or how they set off on the hunt for the Dragon Reborn then this is a good book for you.
Really enjoyed the hints at the Kin and Elyas as a warder.
First, I want to point out that I am a huge fan of Robert Jordan. I have read all of the Wheel of Time books already, and his writing has inspired me to be a writer myself. He sparked my deep passion for fantasy.
So when I started reading A New Spring, the book was not new to me. I knew the characters very intimately. I understood what the story was about and how it would inevitably end. Yet I have not read the Wheel of Time series since I really turned a new corner in my own writing career. So I thought this would be a good time to revisit an old friend — and refresh my memory before the TV show releases (hopefully, in 2021).
Be warned, spoilers are ahead!
The book kicks off with Moraine as an Accepted at the White Tower with her best friend Siuan when the Keeper of the Flame — an Aes Sedai leader — foretells the birth of the Dragon Reborn on the steps of Dragonmount, then promptly dies. Not long after, the Amyrlin Seat herself — the leader of the Aes Sedai and head of the White Tower — mysteriously dies in her sleep as the two women are raised to the Shawl and become Aes Sedai themselves.
To top things off, the Aiel War –a War the people from beyond the Spine of the World began against the Cairhienen king, who also happens to be Moraine’s uncle — has finally come to an end outside the walls of Tar Valon with the death of Moraine’s entire royal house. The sisters of the Aes Sedai like the idea of putting Moraine on the Sun Throne as an Aes Sedai queen — but she has other plans.
Moraine is determined to find the Dragon Reborn –a monumental task in itself since thousands of children are born around Dragonmount during the time of the foretelling — so that he can be properly raised and prepared for the Last Battle against the Dark One. If she is strapped down to the Sun Throne, she will never complete the task she and Siuan have set themselves upon. So she does the only thing she logically can do — she runs away from the White Tower to begin searching for the boychild.
Along the way, Moraine meets Lan Mandragoran — heir to a long-dead noble house. The two travel together for a short time, during which they come to some unspoken respect for each other. The Pattern has woven their fates together, and even after they part ways, it weaves them back together again when Moraine ends up, completely by accident, in the same palace in Chachin. Events spiral out of control — Lan fights against his fate as a king without a kingdom; Moraine fights against the Black Ajah hiding in plain sight — and by the end of the book, they discover that their fates are inexorably tethered to each other.
As expected, I loved the characters. They all have so much personality. I did have an issue in this book with the seemingly sudden transformation Moraine had after she left the White Tower. She went from a young woman who looked forward to her future and enjoyed playing pranks, to a serious and determined woman bent on finding the Dragon Reborn. While I don’t fault her for her motivation, I didn’t get a sense of the shift from one to the other. Nothing significant happened that should cause such a change to my experienced eye. The girls were a bit too girly for my taste in this book, and I sincerely hope that does not hold true for other girls in the books to come (which yes, I have read before as well).
A New Spring is clearly a prequel book meant to lead people toward the rest of the series. But if you have not read the first four books of the Wheel of Time series first, some of the events in this will not make as much sense and will not be as pleasing as they are to someone who, like me, has read the other books and already understand some of these characters.
I’ve heard many times about how good The Wheel of Time series is, and with the upcoming TV Show I decided to start reading the series finally. Now I know most would say to start with book 1, but I don’t feel that is the right way to read a story. If there is a book 0, I will read book 0 because I read in order of universe time, not the order they were written.
And man this books makes me not even bother to read book 1. The biggest issue I have is how nothing happens at all with this story. I question why it was 400 pages and what was done with all of them. You could probably sum up this book in about 10 pages and not miss anything of importance. I understand many of these things that were repeated probably holds relevance for people who have already read the books, but to me they were just more filler that meant nothing. We spend somewhere around 250 pages just following girls study and complain and plan. It is incredibly dull and boring and feels like he was just padding out the pages.
The characters I guess felt really one-dimensional. It is like he wrote down a trait that needed to be filled, than wrote a character around that trait. None of the characters really felt all that fleshed out or interesting, sure they were interesting but I didn’t feel like very much more existed to their characters than filling their roles. It doesn’t help they don’t really interact with each other for most of the book, only really spending 100 pages together. In which I don’t feel enough time was given to making them grow together as a group.
In the end this book doesn’t inspire much confidence in The Wheel of Time series and the rest of the books. It didn’t feel interesting or give me all that many questions about the universe. And just left me wondering where this great fantasy series so many people talk about is. Maybe in book 1 the greatness shows up, guess I will have to read that one to find out at some point. Also this is another book that the synopsis just doesn’t match the book at all, I really wish they would write them to actually match the content of the book and not some hook to get you interested in the other books.