Mehta

I don't quite understand the hype. This book is meaningful and thought-provoking in some ways, but the convenient plot and all the coincidences followed by the contrived justification of said coincidences felt very unpolished to read. I enjoyed some of the discussions that were had, but overall nothing quite stood out to me as amazing. I thought I would be heartbroken after reading this based on what the general consensus seems to be, but while I did find it very sad, it just did not hit me in the emotions as much as I'd been told it would. This could be due to the fact that—despite being mostly nuanced—I did not care about our main character Amir a whole lot. Also, the frequent tidbits of information in the book regarding the turmoil and situation in Afghanistan felt a bit... off. I'm not quite sure what it is, maybe it's because this story seems to be highly catered towards people a part of the western audience who may be ignorant about all this.

I don't think this is a bad book, but for the amount of popularity it has, I just don't see what the big deal is. It was fine, but nothing that praise-worthy in my opinion.

2.5 stars. I thought The Eye of the World was a fairly good story, but unfortunately my enjoyment while reading this was not very high.

I was quite invested in the story during the beginning, but somewhere around the middle my interest started to falter. Some of the dialogue dragged on for too long and started to feel redundant. Amidst all the things this book does really well, some repetitive dialogue or scenes is not the biggest deal. However, for some reason I just felt really exhausted because of it.

Also, by the end of the book, I did not become as invested in our main characters as I hoped I would. My favourite character was definitely Moraine; I found her to be incredibly intriguing and mysterious and kept wanting to read more about her. But as for the other characters like Rand, Nynaeve, Perrin, Egwene, etc. while I definitely didn't mind reading about them, did I like them enough to commit to a 14 book series that [I'm assuming] centers around them? Probably not.

I think this book definitely has its merits and is not a bad book by any means, but it's just not for me at least at this point in time. Convincing myself to finish this series, no matter how much I want to, will lead to some form of a fantasy burnout. I won't say never; perhaps I'll slowly make my way through the Wheel of Time series one day, but I won't be picking up the second book any time soon.

Given how popular Ouran High School Host Club is, I have a strong feeling this manga series gets better with each volume. After all, having a rocky start is not unheard of for many popular series.

But that still doesn't take away the fact that I had a difficult time getting invested in this story. From the premise alone, the plot seemed like something I'd greatly enjoy. But the way the actual story was executed on paper left more to be desired. The characters were not very fleshed out, and in hindsight felt somewhat like caricatures.

I think the layout could have also been more polished. The composition of dialogue/text and art seemed unbalanced. The text would often overpower the art in terms of how much space it took up in a panel, which made it difficult for me to digest the story through visual means. The events that take place also felt a bit all over the place, like a bunch of different plot points were jam-packed into a tiny volume. So this inevitably led to the pacing feeling off.

The story wasn't all bad, because the plot here is something I'd definitely enjoy if it were just executed more sophisticatedly. For now, I'll give the anime a shot because consuming the same story in a different format might work better for me.