What, in your mind, makes the Wheel of Time series so popular? Why has it retained an audience that is willing to wait so long for it to conclude?
I think it’s depth of characterization. That’s something that Robert Jordan was phenomenal at. His use of third-person viewpoint gets you really close and intense with these characters, and you fall in love with them.
He was also very subtle with foreshadowing, which I appreciate. He did a great job with that. And his world building is quite spectacular. He has a magic system that straddles that line between hard and soft, and I really love a lot of the things he did with it.
Those things all came together, but first and foremost, it was characters people love. He did that viewpoint so well. When you’re in someone’s head, you feel like you know them. These characters became my friends growing up; they’re like my high school buddies. I can only assume that that happened with a lot of readers.
If you are viewing this on github.io, you can see that this site is open source. Please do not try to improve this page. It is auto-generated by a python script. If you have suggestions for improvements, please start a discussion on the github repo or the Discord.