Eye of the World or Eye of the Beholder

I am listening to Eye of the World at work. What a thrill to get paid to slog through Robert Jordan. I say that because I'm not afraid of tainting your view one way or the other. So I'll weigh them in.




In his first volume of the Wheel of Time series, Robert Jordan throws down some blatant Tolkienisms (thankfully free of Hobbits or any of their renamed ilk) and starts the ball rolling on about a billion loose ends that will have to wrapped up by some guest author since trying to keep them all straight killed him. That was quite irreverent, I know, but it is mild compared to how I felt when I read volume 35 and found him still creating threads instead of tying them off. So we have the collection of stereotypes that make up the cast all in their immature and untried state, though as Aestril once pointed out the woman never stop folding their arms under their breasts no matter how much of the world they see. I'm digressing though. There is occasionally a moment of sincerity between characters that causes my heart to swell. As much as I kvetch about Jordan and his books I'm not sure why I'm listening to this, but I am.

Eye of the Beholder is the first Metallica song that I liked and started the long relationship that I have in the past call "the problem of Metallica." The fade-in intro is beautiful and being the jingoistic patriot that I am I love to hear Hetfield growl, "I hunger after independence, lengthen freedom's ring." Of course he was prophetically speaking about a rights-trampling future government at a time when the W Administration hadn't even been imagined and not aggressive foreign policy as the result of extreme patriotism. But who am I to mince words. Some one crank the Metallica and lets read some Robert Jordan.

R.