Across the Jordan

There's a certain tenderness to giving one’s heart to something that is neither highbrow nor very popular. Here’s the story of how I fell in love with Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series

- K Narayanan

It's hard to remember precisely when a love affair began; hard enough with people, even harder with books.

This isa personal story. A story of a love affair with a series of fantasy novels, Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time.

It would be easier, I suppose, if these ‘were acknowledged literary classics. Shakespeare. Joyce, maybe. Or if these were books that had gained respectability because of their niche nature. Instead, they were successful in the ‘90s and Aughts. After the death of the author and the conclusion of the series, the buzz around them subsided.

These books are high fantasy; not the more fashionable grimdark. They were never reviewed by The New York Times. The Guardian's Alison Flood posted a sneering critique. Her reaction is representative of those who didn’t fall under the spell of the novels. But there were, and I suspect still are, plenty of us who still love them and return to them every so often.

Idon’t remember when I bought the first in the series, The Eye of the World (1990), but it was sometime in the ‘90s. I was young, single, employed asa financial analyst at a small firm. Landmark bookshop, an airconditioned oasis in a Madras summer, had two whole shelves devoted to Science Fiction and Fantasy. I decided to take a break from my usual diet of thrillers and try a fantasy novel. The fantasy shelf was dominated by The Wheel of Time.