You won't need to have read the sprawling, 14-volume fantasy saga to know instinctively that what you're seeing on the Amazon series only skims its surface.įeints are made to indicate the scope of Jordan's world, and its history - a bit of dialogue here, a snippet of song there. Here Are Some We Missed What do you call a scaled-down epic? NPR Books Summer Poll 2021: A Decade Of Great Sci-Fi And Fantasy We Picked Our Favorite Sci-Fi And Fantasy Books 10 Years Ago. The dialogue mostly avoids the fantasy-genre trap of sounding falsely stiff and heightened, as if the screenwriter entered Beowulf into Google Translate neither does it sound too jarringly contemporary (i.e., 'Word comes from the North! We are to just like chill here for the nonce!') In the six episodes made available to the press (the first season consists of eight episodes, and a Season 2 has already been picked up), the central storyline splits off into several threads, giving each of our main characters room to breathe, and their situations time to complicate, in ways that feel necessary and intriguing - without the sense of narrative bloat the bogs down so many streaming series. ( Wheel of Time, geddit?) But another twist: The last time the Dragon faced the Dark One, he blew it, and the world was broken.Īgain and again, the series executes familiar story beats and fantasy tropes with a contemporary sensibility that would likely cause old Professor Tolkien to spill his Twinings all over his tweed waistcoast: A matter-of-factly diverse approach to casting, storylines that foreground women, the existence of same-sex couples, and of it all taking place in a moral universe where characters make choices that aren't dictated by their noble blood, or the relative swarthiness of their skin. There is Rand (Josha Stradowski), a humble farmboy Egwene (Madeleine Madden), a young woman recently admitted to the ranks of the village's matriarchy Perrin (Marcus Rutherford), a hulking young blacksmith and Mat (Barney Harris), a charming wastrel.Īnd that 'Reborn' business? Turns out the clash between Dragon and Dark One has happened before, many times, and will continue to happen. This, too, is familiar ground.īut the series introduces a twist, and introduces it early: The Dragon Reborn may be one of four people in the remote village of Two Rivers. Yes, the plot involves the search for The Chosen One - in the lore of the series, the long-prophesied person called the Dragon Reborn, who alone can defeat the Dark One. Life Kit Want To Start Reading Sci-Fi And Fantasy? Here's A Beginner's Guide To The Galaxyīecause the ferry scene in question doesn't end with the heroes' escape, as it does in Tolkien - it goes further, and includes a turn of events that raises the stakes and reveals that the world of the series will admit many more shades of gray than the tidy Light/Shadow duality of Middle-Earth.

The wheel of time graphic novel books