A Review: The Fires of Heaven by Robert Jordan
The Fires of Heaven is Book 5 of The Wheel of Time. After four novels of build-up, you might be curious: does Jordan begin to pay off on some of his promises?
Summary
Rand, coming into his own as the Dragon Reborn, leads the Aiel out of the Three-Fold land and embarks on his destiny to break the world. Meanwhile, Nynaeve, Elayne, and Egwene explore Tel’aran’rhiod—the world of dreams—and their ability to master this long-lost art may be the key to helping Rand stay one step ahead of the Dark Lord.
Review
Rand has fully stepped into his role as the Dragon, he saw some interesting growth in this story. Ascending to leadership is challenging for someone so young, and to be thrust into a role of extreme power comes with a steep learning curve. Rand had to learn who to trust and who to use to accomplish his goals, and his successes and failures in this role were shown to have serious consequences in ways that the previous novels hadn’t truly realized.
Like Rand, it was equally compelling to see Mat deal with his role in the pattern. We saw Mat make a tough decision that Rand wasn’t able to make, separating them in their willingness to do what must be done to survive.
Nynaeve and Elayne’s story felt like it had too much time focused on it, but there were definitely points in their story that were highlights. Nynaeve in particular experienced a relatively decent character arc. Most readers will likely find her a bit infuriating, but in this installment, she is forced to face her own shortcomings and adjust her behavior. If most of Nynaeve and Elanyne’s stories were isolated to their Tel’aran’rhiod interactions, the story might have been better paced for it.
Reducing the Nynaeve and Elayne story might have left room for what I wanted more of: Siuan and Morgase. Both of these characters had stories I was interested in following: a fall from power. There’s more to come with their stories, but I would have traded more from them in exchange for a reduction to the chapters featuring our primary cast of characters.
Perrin is notably absent from this novel, but it doesn’t suffer for it. I loved Perrin’s story in the previous installment, but I didn’t feel that his presence was particularly needed here, so Jordan made a good decision to hold off on his story for now.
The novel’s ending is the true highlight of the story. While there were some great moments sprinkled throughout the story, the climax is where the story was allowed to shine, reminding us that Jordan is still willing to shake the world as the dark one’s plot unfolds.
There’s so much more to discuss with this story, and so many pieces put into place for the future of the series, and I can’t wait to revisit the following novels. Since I barely remembered half of the events that occurred in this novel, I’m sure I’m in for a similar experience in book six.
Is The Fires of Heaven Worth Reading?
At this point, it’d be hard to recommend reading this novel if the pace of the previous novel was too slow for you or if characters like Nynaeve are too off-putting. While the pace of this novel was perhaps a bit faster, it still falls in the same category as The Shadow Rising. And while I see progress for some of the more vexing characters, it may still not be enough to warrant continuing the series for some readers. But if that’s not an issue, and you’re invested, read on!
