Robert Jordan
Robert Jordan is an author.
Robert Jordan was the pen name of James Oliver Rigney Jr., the American writer who made epic fantasy an industry again. The Wheel of Time runs to fourteen volumes plus a prequel and has sold around ninety million copies, and its scale is the point: an invented world with its own economies, prophecies and long memory, plus a magic system split along gender lines that carries most of the plot. Before that he wrote Conan the Barbarian novels that fans still rank as the best by anyone other than Robert E. Howard, and he used different pen names for different genres. He did not live to finish the series; Brandon Sanderson completed it from his notes.
Books (17)
- Unfettered III: New Tales By Masters of Fantasy (2019)
- A Memory of Light (2013)
- Towers of Midnight (2010)
- The Gathering Storm (2009)
- Knife of Dreams (2005)
- New Spring (The Wheel of Time, Book 0) (2004)
- Crossroads of Twilight (2000)
- Winter's Heart (2000)
- The Path of Daggers (1998)
- Legends (1998)
- A Crown of Swords (The Wheel of Time, Book 7) (1996)
- Lord of Chaos (1994)
- The Fires of Heaven (1993)
- The Shadow Rising (1992)
- The Dragon Reborn (The Wheel of Time, Book 3) (1991)
- The Eye of the World (1990)
- The Great Hunt (The Wheel of Time Book 2) (1990)
Where to start with Robert Jordan
The Eye of the World is the only sane starting point, and it wears its Tolkien openly for about two hundred pages before it becomes its own thing. The Shadow Rising is the peak of the series and the book that justifies the commitment. Lord of Chaos has the best single set piece. Crossroads of Twilight is where most readers stall, and skimming it is allowed. A Memory of Light finishes the job.