The Dragon Reborn (The Wheel of Time, #3)
The Dragon Reborn by Robert Jordan
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars
Not much actually happened in The Dragon Reborn but it was more engaging than the previous two books.
The Dragon Reborn is the third book in The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan. The title of this novel may be The Dragon Reborn, this title implies that Rand will take the central role again, but the main characters of this book were actually Mat, Perrin, and Egwene. If I’m not mistaken, Rand has only like three or four small POV chapters. This doesn’t mean that Rand wasn’t important to the main story, the storyline still heavily revolved around him.
Picture: The Dragon Reborn by Francesca Resta
Now that I’m three books into the series, let me just say that Jordan is terribly slow in progressing his main story, and the early books are supposedly some of Jordan’s finest works in the series; I haven’t reached the infamous dreadful book 7-10. If you cut/condensed the traveling sections of the first three books, what you have is pretty much one book with no pacing issue; Jordan is that inefficient and repetitive. That being said, The Dragon Reborn was, somehow, the most engaging book so far. Sure there was still repetition and same plot structure usage—started strong for the first 20%, travel for 50-60%, then closing with incredible final section—but I didn’t find myself struggling through the middle section as much as I did for the first two books.
I feel like Jordan has improved a lot in characterizations; I found Mat, Perrin, and Egwene to be more sympathetic than before now. Focusing the POV chapters to these three ended up being a great decision; it brings a lot of benefits rather than disadvantages. First of all, we get to read these important characters being developed further. We also get to see their thoughts towards Rand, other characters, and the state of the world/predicament they’re in. Finally, Rand was still thickheaded here and I don’t think I can withstand reading him being stubborn about accepting his destiny for another 700 pages for the third time in a row. I get it, he has valid reasons for being stubborn and reluctant, and I do understand why he acted that way. However, just because I understand his reasons doesn’t mean that I would enjoy reading literally thousands of pages of him being angry and stubborn about something which he always ended up doing anyway.
“Should and would build no bridges.”
This was the first time where I started to realize just how insane Nynaeve’s braid tugging syndrome was. Insane, I mean it, insane and ridiculous. Not only she’s one of the most annoying female characters I’ve ever encountered (and there are still 10 books left for her to get worse), her existence relies dangerously on her tugging braid. I can’t seem to understand why Jordan need to emphasize her braid tugging that much, it was pointless and annoying; I think she’ll literally die if she doesn’t tug her braid. No one in the world tugs their braid that fiercely and that much. NO ONE.
“She jerked her braid so hard it hurt.”
*standing applause*
As much as I enjoyed reading this installment, I seriously feel like not a lot of important things have happened; the entirety of the three books so far could’ve been easily condensed into one book without losing matters of importance. I’m giving the same 3.5 stars rating just like I did for the first two books. In my opinion, that’s not a good enough measurement for a series as massive as this. Why am I continuing? I loved Sanderson’s adult fantasy works that much that I’m willing to push myself—or at least still attempt—to finish this series just to read Sanderson’s involvement in it. Although I sounded negative and critical in this review, let me clarify that it wasn’t because it’s a bad book, The Dragon Reborn was the least boring installment so far. I just feel disappointed that a lot of the superb parts of the series so far were constantly diminished unnecessarily due to pacing issue and repetitiveness. I’ve heard a lot of amazing things about the next book of the series, The Shadow Rising, here’s hoping that it will finally break or at least reached my 4 stars rating barrier.
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9 thoughts on “The Dragon Reborn (The Wheel of Time, #3)”
Hehehehehe I have SUCH an opposite reaction to you on so many of these points! Nynaeve is one of my all-time favourites (although she probably should have gone bald by now with all the braid tugging). I do think that 4-6 are the best in the series and that’s where a lot of the excitement begins to happen — all the set up is done and now things can unfold. I’m currently stuck on book 10, which is…difficult.
Whatttt, no freaking way!? Hahahahhaaa. Well, I’ve heard that she gets better a lot in later installments so we’ll see about that!
I’ve heard a lot of great things about book 4-6, so we’ll see how I feel about that after I’m done with my next read! Book 10 is the worst of the series supposedly, once you finished that everything should be smooth sailing. Best of luck, Justine! Let’s conquer this wheel this year!
no, for me Book 10 (Crossroads of Twilight) was pretty good. But Book 9 (Winter’s Heart) was pretty hard to read, due to half (more or less) dealt with a (comparably) boring Character doing nothing but travelling, and trying to catch up to a large group of people… The only significant thing that happens because of this is, the Shaido Aiel are vanquished and other Aiel become very disliking of the Seanchan……… it takes around 300 pages to do this…. (Beat that) Otherwise the book was good
Winter’s Heart was VERY hard to read, because Perrin was the main-main character in it, and it pretty much just talked about how he chased the Aiel around….. for 75% of the book……. it was too much, and not REALLY needed…..
I’m genuinely laughing at this hahahahaha! xD
You’ve hit on some of what drove me crazy with this series. The pacing…nothing happens…nothing continues to happen…then last 10 pages Rand jumps through some portal, defeats the level boss and we reset for the next book.
And then the braid tugging.
And the crossing of arms under the boobs.
And the spankings.
Somewhere I found a link to a page one woman put together as she reread them all with annotations for all the problems she had. It was amusing.
Yeahhh! I don’t know about the rest of the series, I’ve heard that it gets significantly worse in book 7-10 but we’ll see I guess. I’m pacing myself going through this series. I hope I can finish it this year though! 😀
Found the link I mentioned. It’s on TOR’s website. She goes through every chapter of the books. Pretty amusing at times.
https://www.tor.com/series/wot-reread/
Ohhh I didn’t know this. Thanks for sharing it with me!