Tarmon Gaidon is the name chosen for the last battle between mankind and the Dark One. It is the Armageddon of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series. A solid year of catch up reading has brought me to Tarmon Gaidon’s doorstep, only to be bitterly disappointed. I have exhausted all eleven Wheel of Time books and the one prequel. To my dismay, I have recently learned that Robert Jordan has a serious medical condition – one which requires intense treatment and leaves his body weak and exhausted.
This is bad for me. I need to read the last book of the series. I absolutely need to. I know it’s selfish and I don’t care. I never knew Robert Jordan personally so it is very difficult to care more about his personal health than about his ability to finish that book. Seriously. I need closure. I have invested a year of my life to reading thousands of pages written by this man, only to come one book shy of the end. And what an end it could be! Then again, the more I think about, I realize that one book is not nearly enough to lead up to, detail, and conclude Tarmon Gaidon (i.e. the armageddon).
Robert Jordan is a master story teller, but he’s not brief. Each 650-850 page book should attest to that. Yet all I have heard through the grapevine is that he plans to write one more Wheel of Time book, two series prequels, and then he plans to move on to other story ideas he’s been working on. I, for one, have invested far too much time, attention, and interest to settle for not getting my story’s ending. I want it. I want to know what happens to everybody. Will Mat and Tuon be reunited? Will Mat become Emperor of the Seanchan empire? How does Perrin Goldeneyes fit into the Seanchan prophecies of the wolf and the hammer?
Many non-Jordan fans will read this and think, Oh, he’s one of those people. He probably sits around in his underwear playing RPG and eating yesterday’s leftover pizza. Not true, although I would eat the leftover pizza. Strange as it seems, I started reading Robert Jordan because of C. S. Lewis. After reading and rereading The Chronicles of Narnia, Lewis’ sci-fi series, and his other fictional works, I found a void which demanded to be filled. Lewis created a wonder in me that no other author has. Lewis found a way to make story-telling magic.
That’s not just a flowery, meaningless compliment. I truly mean that. I read The Silmarillion by Tolkein, but I have no interest in reading The Lord of the Rings. That meant searching for another storyteller whose world would capture my imagination. I heard about Robert Jordan six years ago, from a friend at DBU. The name had stuck in my head, so I gave The Wheel of Time a shot. Jordan is no C. S. Lewis, but he weaves an interesting tale. Now I sit and I wait. Sometimes I wonder if writers conspire against me. I have to wait two months for the next LOST episode also. Hence the Grey’s Anatomy obsession. I’m still watching last season’s episodes, enjoying the instant availability of new content.