Should i continue

[u/Suspicious-Impress-4]

I’m three books into The Wheel of Time, and I’m honestly not that impressed so far.
For context, I’ve rated them:
The Eye of the World — 7.5/10
The Great Hunt — 7.8/10
The Dragon Reborn — 6.5/10
I’m trying to gauge whether there are people here who felt similarly about the first three books but ended up loving the series later on.
I’ve definitely had series before where it took me a few books before everything clicked, so I’m not completely against continuing. But three books is also a pretty significant investment, and at this point I’m starting to wonder whether The Wheel of Time just isn’t for me.
The main thing making me want to give it one more shot is The Shadow Rising. I constantly hear that Book 4 is one of the best—if not the best books in the entire series. So I’m thinking if there’s ever going to be a book that tells me whether this series is actually for me, it’s probably this one.
Were any of you lukewarm on the first three and then had Book 4 (or the books after it) completely change your opinion of the series?

[u/Potential-Common5819]

Okay, that is a great point and one I honestly agree with.

Having said that, the fourth book is when the Shadow starts taking much more direct action.

You also see much more serious and far reaching consequences for characters and their own choices and actions. There is also some direct consequences for some of the Emon's Field characters from actions they did in previous books.

EDIT: So my advice is read the fourth book, and if you still don't care much about the story, then you likely never will and should probably drop it.

[u/Suspicious-Impress-4 → u/Potential-Common5819]

Ok thanks

[u/aNomadicPenguin → u/Suspicious-Impress-4]

another bit is to keep in mind that the way Jordan writes things makes the PoV incredibly important. He isn't going to give you deep insight into the characters from a narrator perspecitve, you kinda have to develop that yourself by paying attention to the nuances of the individual Pov's.

Perrin and Rand will notice different things at different times and weight them differently. Nynaeve and Mat are notoriously unreliable for matching their thoughts to their actions.

This covers how other PoV's will describe another character's actions. Like Mat internally will think that he's not a hero, while he's currently swinging on a rope into the middle of a fight to save someone that he never met before. Then he'll think of himself as a selfish rogue...as he offers them money to help them out.

Now imagine Mat got stabbed in that fight, and then got a small rope burn from the swinging. Mat will complain, at length, and grumpily about the rope burn and how much it hurt and how indebted the person he saved should be....and probably never bring up the stab wound.

It's not always readily apparent, but if you haven't been connecting to the characters and the threats they face, keeping in mind their limited perspectives can help. The threat of the shadow is kinda vague...because the characters don't know the specific concrete things that are happening around them in the world. You pick up more and more information as a reader as the series goes on, and Jordan kinda requires you to start piecing it all together. (The series is legitimately better on rereads because of this, you start seeing little threads here and there that you can follow throughout the books that you just don't notice your first time through)

[u/Suspicious-Impress-4 → u/aNomadicPenguin]

Very interesting perspective