Well, I finished _The Eye of the World_ last night. All I can say is that I really don't understand how this book started the franchise. TOR must have pushed it to death to get it over with the public, because it's simply not that good. It's insanely wordy, badly, badly paced, and pathetically void of interesting events and occurrences. I'll probably start the second book soon, just to see if it gets any better or if Jordan keeps up his boring, uninformative ways. At this point I don't see myself reading the whole series.

The sole saving grace is that the world really looks convincingly deep. I actually believe that things that might otherwise seem like they were thrown in for color have a history and perhaps even a reason for existing, so that was good.