The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan is a massive fantasy series about a group of ordinary people getting swept up in a larger world. The Wheel of Time itself is a belief system that represents creation and reality, whereas the Dark One – a Satan-like figure – represents chaos and disorder. Threads of the Wheel represent peoples’ fate or destiny. In this universe, time is cyclical, meaning that people are eventually reborn, and events tend to repeat themselves in later ages.
The story kicks off when Moiraine, an Aes Sedai, arrives at Two Rivers with her Warder al’Lan Mandragoran on the eve of the village’s harvest festival Bel Tine. Aes Sedai are an all-female group of channelers of the One Power, essentially magic in this world, while Warders are prolific warriors that protect Aes Sedai. Moiraine is seeking the Dragon Reborn, a male channeler who is prophesized to be reincarnated from the Wheel of Time to encounter and defeat the Dark One. However, men who try to channel the One Power eventually grow insane because their half of the One Power was corrupted by the Dark One in a previous age. This tension between finding the potential savior of the world and managing his growing madness from the One Power drives the main conflict of the story.
Moiraine has narrowed her search for the Dragon Reborn to three farm boys from the Two Rivers – Rand al’Thor, Matrim Cauthon, and Perrin Aybara – who are ta’veren, individuals that greatly influence the threads of the Wheel itself. This means others tend to gravitate toward the ta’veren. Even those not ta’veren have a great impact on the world. For example, Egwene al’Vere and Nynaeve al’Meara, childhood friends who come with the farm boys, discover they can channel the One Power and get swept up into the politics and machinations of the wider world.
This brief description does not do The Wheel of Time justice. The strengths of the series are the characters’ interactions with each other and the in-depth world building. By the end of the series, the characters from the Two Rivers become major players in the world as the conflict between the Dragon Reborn and the Dark One looms over everyone. For those hesitant about starting a large book series, Amazon adapted the first book, The Eye of the World, into a television show which does a good job capturing the feel of the book while taking some liberties with the source material. Either way, I recommend giving this series a try.