New TV tie-in book suggests that THE WHEEL OF TIME will hit screens in November

Orbit Books are prepping a new edition of The Eye of the World, the first Wheel of Time novel, for release on 4 November 2021. This suggests that the TV show will hit screens around that time, maybe a week to a month later.

This news seems to coincide with rumours (via WoTSeries) that Amazon are planning a release window for The Wheel of Time running between 25 November and 25 December, with Friday 26 November (Black Friday) being the preferred date. That's a bit later than was previously expected: the show completed the bulk of its filming last November, with only a few pick-up shots left to complete (the show reportedly wrapped principle photography a few days ago, with a few last pickup shots and plates being filmed this week; Season 2 starts shooting in a couple of weeks). Post-production and vfx on the completed episodes had been running for months, with the work needed to edit and slot in the last few shots not believed to be particularly onerous. Some rumours put an airdate as early as September.

Seeing when a tie-in edition of a novel - likely with some kind of still image or photograph from the show on the cover, with the TV show logo prominently displayed - is coming out is a tried-and-tested method for discerning the release date of a show or movie based on a book, although it can backfire a little. Most publishers try to time the release so it happens quite soon before the TV show comes out; TV tie-in editions of A Game of Thrones were released just one week before the HBO TV show debuted in 2011, for example, but tie-in editions of The Lord of the Rings started appearing a month or so before the movie aired in 2001. The Witcher didn't really get a TV tie-in edition (at least not here in the UK), instead getting stickers popped on the covers of existing editions several weeks before broadcast.

The signs are very good then that The Wheel of Time will hit Amazon Prime in November, with 26 November being maybe the most likely date, but even earlier in the month is not impossible.

Assuming the first three episodes would drop together followed by five weekly releases, that would see the final episode release on 31 December 2021, meaning the entire first season would air before this year ends, which would be good going.

Of course these dates can change until the studio formally confirms them, but for now it looks good that we'll be seeing the show on air before the end of this year.

Amazon Prime releases concept art for the WHEEL OF TIME TV series

To celebrate today's 31st birthday of the Wheel of Time fantasy series, Amazon have shared some concept art for the upcoming TV series.

Showrunner Rafe Judkins introduced a slew of artwork showing how the TV show will be bringing the late Robert Jordan's vision to life.

In the first image (above), two characters - possibly Rand and Mat - are in a narrow valley staring down at a settlement below. This doesn't seem immediately like anything from the books but could be during their long journey overland from Shadar Logoth to Caemlyn..

The second image is more readily identifiable as the village of Emond's Field, possibly during the Winternight celebrations. In the first Wheel of Time novel, The Eye of the World, the actual Winternight celebration takes place off-page. Actually seeing it, and the tumultuous events that follow, is a reasonable change from the page.

The third image is likely of the Tinker caravan, where Perrin and Egwene seek refuge after the events at Shadar Logoth.

This image seems to feature our main group of characters travelling through a forest towards a distant tower. This is most likely just before the group arrive in the ruined city of Shadar Logoth.

The final image is likely of the ruined, eerie city itself just before trouble erupts.

The first season of Wheel of Time has concluded shooting, although there has been some confusion over whether the season wrapped on schedule or was forced to wrap early due to greater COVID restrictions in the Czech Republic, with a few scenes left to shoot. This has an impact on the show's airdate. Assuming they have everything they need, Season 1 of The Wheel of Time could potentially air in the next few months, otherwise they'll have to wait until they can pick up those last shots (which possibly won't happen until they shoot a second season).

More news, of course, as we get it.

The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan

The Eye of the World is the first volume in Robert Jordan's best-selling Wheel of Time series. Originally published in 1990, this was supposed to be the first book in a six-volume series. Instead, the series doubled in size. The eleventh book, Knife of Dreams, was published in 2005. The author passed away in 2007 whilst working on the final book, A Memory of Light, which will be completed by fellow fantasy author Brandon Sanderson for publication in late 2009.

With sales of 44 million and no less than four New York Times #1 bestsellers, The Wheel of Time is the most popular work of epic fantasy since The Lord of the Rings. However, it also one of the most divisive. The series has always attracted mixed reviews and has never won any major awards, but its fans love it, and some of the WoT fansites are the biggest SF&F forums and websites on the Internet. Jordan also became tremendously influential, with authors such as George RR Martin, JV Jones, Raymond E. Feist and Guy Gavriel Kay all attracting notice after Jordan recommended them to his fans or provided cover blurbs.

The first volume opens in traditional fashion, with a prologue set roughly 3,400 years prior to the main narrative. In the Age of Legends, the world was united in peace under the leadership of the Aes Sedai, men and women who could wield the One Power, the primeval force of creation which turns the Wheel of Time. In their hubris, the Aes Sedai carried out experiments to access greater forms of the Power, and accidentally breached the prison of the Dark One, the ultimate force of evil in the universe. The Dark One's touch plunged the world into a century of chaos and despair until the Aes Sedai rallied under their leader, a man nicknamed the Dragon, and re-sealed the Dark One's prison. At the moment of that victory, the Dark One cursed the male half of the One Power, driving all male channellers of the Power insane. In their insanity, they destroyed the world, pushing humanity to the brink of extinction and reshaping the continents through the three centuries of earthquakes and tidal waves they unleashed. With the ending of the Breaking of the World, the Aes Sedai, now consisting only of women, rallied and helped civilisation rebuild to a level of technology roughly equal to that of the Renaissance (although social customs and graces are much more akin to the late 18th/early 19th Century). This Age of history has lived in the shadow of the Prophecies of the Dragon, that state that the hastily-patched seal on the Dark One's prison will eventually fail and the Dragon will be Reborn to save the world, but in doing so will doom it for he will go insane and shatter the world for a second time. Which would be bad, obviously.

The Eye of the World opens in the backwater region of the Two Rivers, a bucolic rural landscape tucked in a forgotten corner of the Kingdom of Andor. Rand al'Thor - a shepherd's son - and four of his friends are forced to flee the Two Rivers when the monstrous servants of the Dark One attack, searching for Rand and two of his friends, Mat and Perrin. They are guided by an Aes Sedai, Moiraine, and her Warder (a sort-of bodyguard, but with souped-up badass qualities), Lan. Whilst hiding in the ruined, ancient city of Shadar Logoth our heroes are separated, and must undergo many trials before they reunite in Andor's capital city of Caemlyn and find out what it is that the Dark One wants with them.

Rereading The Eye of the World after thirteen years is a fascinating experience. Both the good and the bad elements stand out a lot more than when I read it as an engrossed teenager, but it's still a page-turning read with a lot to recommend it.

First, the positives. Jordan is an excellent storyteller and demonstrates full command of the numerous entwining plots in this first volume. He delineates each character quite clearly and whilst those characters are based strongly on existing archetypes, he makes them work, so the reader cares about what happens to them. He is also a strong worldbuilder. Few fictional worlds come as fully-realised as this one, with only Middle-earth and after three books or so, GRRM's Westeros coming close to matching both its depth and scope (Bakker's Earwa may also yet match it). Jordan also has some interesting things to say in this series. Whilst not averse to 'grittiness' in fantasy, Jordan expressed concerns about the idea that everyone is flawed and grey takes away from the nature of evil, that real evil exists in the world and must be confronted. Whilst Jordan's characters are certainly not saints or flawless, the forces of the Shadow are very clearly shown to be black-hearted, cruel and merciless, which especially now is refreshing from the notion that are no bad guys, just people with their own agendas which may or may not be as valid as the heroes'. However, this doesn't make for very interesting antagonists and it's a relief then that much of the rest of the series concentrates more on the struggles between different factions of the supposed good guys.

The negatives sound pretty damning. The first half of the book is modelled very closely on the opening of The Lord of the Rings, but the novel stretches the line between tribute to parody to breaking point. We not only have analogues to the Shire (the Two Rivers), Gandalf (Moiraine) and Aragorn (Lan), but also the One Ring (the cursed dagger), the Nazgul (the Myrddraal), the Trolls and Orcs (the Trollocs), Moria (Shadar Logoth), Gollum (Padan Fain), Treebeard (the Green Man) and even the Argonath (the Arinelle statues). It's extremely hard to ignore these close parallels, although they do broadly succeed in giving the first half of the book some of the same atmosphere as the opening of The Fellowship of the Ring and, as bad as they are, they're not quite veering into Terry 'How the Hell Did He Not Get Sued' Brooks territory. As mentioned earlier, the Shadow's pure, irredeemable evil is also rather wearying and the Myrddraal and Ba'alazamon's tedious threats almost tip them into cartoon villain territory. The world building is excellent, but occasionally Jordan resorts to info dumping to transmit it to the audience, which comes across as awkward. And Robert Jordan's sense of humour is beyond tiresome. I was trying to count the number of times Rand or Perrin thought that the other was better at talking to girls and had to give up in the end. A good running gag is one that appears once per book and is varied a bit each time, not exactly the same gag repeated half a dozen times within a few chapters. This also runs into Jordan's problem of his use of stock phrases and recurring sentence structures, which occasionally come across as quite clumsy. Jordan is a great storyteller, but he is certainly not a good writer.

Yet these negatives, although rather annoying, are offset by the positives. The story is engrossing and the depth of detail refreshing, if overdone at times. The characters are interesting, the world building excellent and the fresh spins on old ideas are well-done. The book hints at countless more mysteries to come, and makes you want to pick up the second (and much better) book, which is its main goal, after all.

The Eye of the World (***½) remains a decent opening to a fascinating, if eventually rather troubled, saga. The novel is published by Orbit in the UK and Tor in the US. The second book is The Great Hunt.