What? WoT? Woohoo!

It only dawned on me recently to check when the next Wheel of Time book was due; the wait between volumes is agonizingly long, so it can be months and months before it crosses my mind. But today’s the day! Book 11, Knife of Dreams, is finally released and should arrive soon from Amazon. By the time a new installment hits shelves, it’s kind of hazy what exactly happened in the previous book. Luckily it never takes long to get absorbed in Robert Jordan’s writing and back on track with the story (but I still might search out a good synopsis online to be that much more prepared).

I got hooked on the series late in high school, courtesy of Adrian (if you’re lurking around out there and happen across this, drop me a comment … I really should get around to emailing you sometime). When I started university, the eighth book came out that term and I found a few people in my residence who were fans of the series. Unfortunately, as far as I know, no one I’m in regular contact with is also a reader. WoT fandom is an odd experience: each book is a #1 New York Times bestseller (and probably top seller at all online bookstores at this moment), and the fans you do meet are extremely devoted and into it, but it’s almost like a secret addiction. There aren’t may occasions for it to come up in conversation, and with little in the way of ancillary merchandise, it’s oxymoronically popular yet obscure. When you do come across a fellow fan, eyes light up and excited conversations ensue … which leads to another fun feature, in that nobody has much opportunity to verbalize WoT-isms so no one knows how to pronounce anything! Aes Sedai, Seanchan, Athan Miere, Egwene, and so much more.

So yeah, that eighth book in first term. Seven freakin’ years later and we’re only at the eleventh! But the next one will be the last of this storyline, so the end is in sight. As the years dragged on between releases, the pace of the storytelling in much of the recent volumes did too. Here’s hoping Knife of Dreams is an excellent read and sets up a finale worthy of all the promise that has built up from the early books.