Book Review – New Spring: the Novel
Author: Robert Jordan
Cover Artist: Darrell K. Sweet
Publisher: Tor
Binding: Hardcover
Publication Date: 2004
On September 16th, 2007, Robert Jordan, one of the giants of epic fantasy, left us. The biographies in the back of his books said that he intended to write until they nailed shut his coffin, and from what I can tell from his blog that is exactly what he did. Despite that, he left the work for which he will be remembered most by his readers, The Wheel of Time series, unfinished. It looks like A Memory of Light, the 12th and last novel of the series, will be published, although when is still uncertain. Jordan leaves behind an impressive body of work that has been translated into two dozen languages and millions of fans across the world. While by no means universally loved, his work has had a big impact on the genre, so it is no more than fitting that fantasybookspot had a closer look at one of his books.
New Spring: the Novel is a prequel to the series. Originally a novella length version appeared in the 2000 anthology Legends, edited by Robert Silverberg. Later the story was expanded to novel length and published in 2004 after the tenth book of the main series. It was to be the first of three prequels, but it is not clear yet whether the other two will be written.
It was no secret that Jordan was disappointed at the reception of New Spring. Personally I was a bit surprised at the reception of this book as well. It was published the year after Crossroads of Twilight, a novel where all plot movement seemed to grind to a halt. Jordan intended it to be an introduction to The Wheel of Time in its novella form and to be separately readable as a novel. It is therefore not as complex as the books in the main series. For me it was a breath of fresh air in a series that at times seems to be bogged down in its own complexity. I must admit Jordan got things moving again in Knife of Dreams though. But that is hindsight.
A New Spring the novel is a to-the-point, stick-to-the-plan novel. It doesn’t get itself tangled in a myriad of different characters–for instance, Lord of Chaos has over 30 different points of view–nor does it lose itself in lengthy descriptions of a woman’s dress. It is simply a well executed story from The Wheel of Time universe. The story is set some 20 years before the evens described in the main series and starts at the Battle of the Shining Walls. A Foretelling by the Keeper of the Chronicles announces the birth of the Dragon Reborn, a man fated to save the world and break it anew, and is witnessed by two Accepted of the White Tower. Siuan Sanche and Moiraine Damodred are sworn to silence about the matter by the Amyrlin, but events in the Tower soon send them on a quest to find the boy and guide him to the Last Battle where he must fight to save mankind. Events soon take the newly raised Moiraine Sedai out of the Tower to search for the boy. Along the way she weaves al’Lan Mandragoran into her plans. Lan is the uncrowned king of Malkier, a land now tainted by the shadow and swallowed by the Blight. Lan has dedicated his life to battling the Shadow and avenging his nation in the lands north of the inhabited world.
Lan, Moiraine and Siuan are main characters of The Wheel of Time series, and the twenty years of experience have matured them. They are sure of their places in the world. In New Spring, Jordan portrays them as young and inexperienced. Moiriane especially is a lot more fiery than the composed Aes Sedai we meet in The Eye of the World. She shows us just how unusual circumstances are in the Tower when the next generation of initiates enter the Tower in The Great Hunt. A young Moiraine is one of the highlights of the book for me.
As with many prequels it had the disadvantage that the back story is already known to the readers. Jordan includes a number of very interesting things to distract the readers familiar with the rest of The Wheel of Time series from that. For one thing, he includes a raising ritual to Aes Sedai, a ceremony that is never seen in the main story arc. He also gives the reader more insight into the motivation of Moiraine and Lan to guide the Dragon Reborn. One of the other announced prequels would deal with how the two of them showed up in Emond’s Field at the beginning of The Eye of the World. That would probably have put some more pieces of the puzzle in place, but New Spring adds a lot.
So despite the lukewarm reception at the time of its release, I am going to be stubborn and say this is a very well written work. It manages both to provide a proper introduction for new readers as well as to keep things interesting for the experienced The Wheel of Time reader by including hints to riddles in the main series and a glance inside the White Tower in less extraordinary circumstances. As far as prequels go, this is one of the best around. Fantasy has lost a great writer in Robert Jordan.
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