As I feel that reading a novel is different than a roleplaying game product, the following may contain spoilers.

Jordan's massive series the Wheel of Time is an oddball to pin-down. One, there's an roleplaying game for it out there (one that made me picked up the series to see what was so inspiring), and two, it seems that the book series will never end (book 10 will be released shortly).

I admit that this review is just my impression of the first book of the series, but feel free to argue your points politely.

Eye of the World was an interesting read, having learned some of the details from my friends and the roleplaying book, even knowing somewhat of what was going to happen.

Jordan's writing style seems at odds with what he is trying to craft, the amount of detail has lead several of my friends to spout "we're walking, we're walking," whenever I bring up the book. Another friend berates the "Jordanian" writing style, having too much detail, and making the reader insulted for having an imagination ("the tree leaves were exactly _this_ shade of green, and the tree's trunk was exactly 73.5 cm in diameter").

Personally, I didn't feel that Jordan when too far with his descriptions, even though I did lose track sometimes of the events that were taking place because of his overflow.

What I feel is the novel's main weaknesses are Jordan’s characters and his slip into what I call "Dickens’s ploy." Having enjoyed Great Expectations in (I now assume edited for the audience) high school, I attempted Oliver Twist, but the novel fell into repetitive plot points too many times for me to want to finish. The same repetitive events occur in the Eye of the World, taking away from what I felt was solid up until then.

Jordan's characters are too flat to feel anything for them until the last three chapters of the book. You empathize with their place, but the large numbers of supporting characters get more detail than the main point-of-view characters.

Another annoying point is the missing details of two of the characters' "budding" romance, which struck me completely out-of-left-field, as the build up between the two was a competitive motif rather than "looking to like."

Still, overall, I feel that the novel was a worthy read, it even brought up some ideas for my roleplaying games. And that makes it worth the time it took to finish it, if nothing else.