This companion "guide" book is a must have for all Wheel of Time lovers. Robert Jordan has laid out the unwritten descriptions for all of his characters, places, and creatures. The pictures a bit rough, but it kind of gives you a window into Robert Jordan's mind while he was creating this fantastic journey. ( )

This book is interesting. It does provide a bit of new information, especially about the lands beyond the borders of our heroes' usual stomping grounds, and it does serve as a useful reference in lieu of searching through 10,000 pages or so of novels to find stray facts. On the other hand, the artwork is frankly hideous--I stared at the picture of Lanfear for several minutes, wondering in whose head that could conceivably be considered attractive, let alone the most beautiful woman who ever lived-- and the book doesn't provide many real insights. It's a collector's item, really. ( )

This is a book that collects and expands Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. Most of the information is available in the other books (there is some new stuff) but it is nicely gathered in one place and easily looked up. Most of the art work in the book was rather pathetic. I can only guess that since the book was written from the point of view of a historian born in that world, the the drawings were to reflect the level of artistic ability achieved at that time, kind of like the dark ages in Europe.

Over a decent book but only those that really like the Wheel of Time will likely find it useful. ( )

I would not say that this is exactly an invaluable reference; it's nice to have and nice to read, but fans of the Wheel of Time series are going to want it whatever its flaws, and those who are only mildly interested by the regular books are not going to care enough to invest the time and money in this. This book provides a lot of background information about (as it claims) the world of The Wheel of Time books. A lot of that information is not exactly new and could be gleaned from the series, but it's nice having it in one place without having to hunt through all 12 books to find what you were after. There's also some information that's not in the books; most useful/interesting are the descriptions of the Forsaken before the War of the Shadow, and the history of the world since the Breaking - especially that of Artur Hawkwing. Onto its problems... the illustrations are pretty awful. There are a lot of maps, including one showing the nations before the Trolloc Wars and before Artur Hawkwing, and those are nicely done and nice to have. The illustrations of people range from vaguely acceptable (Moiraine, Demandred) to horrible (almost everyone else) to not-even-human-looking (Lan, Rand). The rest of the illustrations (Seanchan animals, Shadowspawn, other objects) are pretty good, although sometimes the caption directly contradicts what's shown in the picture - a flag is described as being blue and green stripes directly underneath a picture of a blue and white flag, for example. This matches up with a general lack of copyediting throughout the book; there are a noteable abundance of misplaced letters and missing/extraneous words, which makes this look like a rush printing job to cash in on the fan base and unfortunately breaks the "reality" of the world for the reader. Still, for all of those flaws, I enjoy having the big hard-cover book, because it makes it feel like a history/social-studies textbook written during the Dragon Reborn's rise to power... which is overall how it reads, too. ( )

(Alistair) Dear sweet gods, the artwork! *shudder*