The Eye of the World

The American writer Robert Jordan's high fantasy novel The Eye of the World appeared on 15 January 1990 from Tor Books as the opening book of The Wheel of Time. It first came out as a large paperback, and the initial publication ran to a prologue and 53 chapters, with a later re-release adding a further prologue. The book was reissued in 2002 as two separate volumes aimed at the young adult market.

The story opens in Emond's Field, a remote village in the Two Rivers, where a mysterious noblewoman arrives and Trollocs, humanoid monsters, attack soon afterwards. The visitor gives her name as Moiraine Damodred, an Aes Sedai, and she warns them that servants of the Dark One are hunting three young men of the village: Matrim Cauthon, Perrin Aybara and Rand al'Thor. The three leave the village with her and her Warder, Lan Mandragoran, joined by a young woman from the same village.

The group spends the first volume being chased across a map that keeps getting larger, through cities and along a river, while the three young men work out why they in particular are being hunted. The world has a history built out of seven ages that repeat, women who can channel the One Power and men who cannot safely, and a prophecy about a dragon that nobody wants fulfilled.

The Wheel of Time eventually ran to fourteen volumes, completed after Jordan's death by Brandon Sanderson. The first book establishes the Two Rivers, the Aes Sedai, the Warders and the three central characters, and it is the opening of a long series rather than a standalone story.