The Wheel of Time book series by Robert Jordan has an immense and devoted fan base. To the point that there are so very many fan sites and channels out there. To put it bluntly, It’s difficult to know where to start. Especially if one hasn’t even heard of the books before. So I thought I’d share the main sites that I – a relative newbie compared to my super-fan son – use to expand my own knowledge.
WOT 101
First, if you are a complete newbie to the Wheel of Time – haven’t read the books and/or know basically zilch about them – then the best place to start is a YouTube playlist called WOT 101 from a channel called Unraveling the Pattern.
WOT 101 is a highly recommended playlist made just for newbies that explores the background lore/mythology of the books. In tiny bite-sized chunks at that. The longest video is around 11 minutes. And some are as short as 2-3 minutes. I watched it and it explains so much about the big picture of the world in the books. Stuff I thought I understood but apparently didn’t before.
Official links
As of right now, there are only two “official” sites for the TV series that I know of. The first is the Twitter account of The Wheel of Time TV show. They’ve been posting something every Wednesday for the last year or so. Expect the number of posts to increase drastically as the release date of Nov 19 approaches. Any major casting or production news hits there first most of the time. This is what they posted this week to honor the anniversary of Robert Jordan’s death:
And then there is the Amazon Prime YouTube channel. Trailers for the TV series should pop up there first.
Want more?
Fandom links
Okay, there are two fan websites that are of immense use to me as a relative newbie. I follow Dragonmount for news and information about the books and upcoming TV series. Spoilers happen there but are generally well labeled and easy to avoid. Mostly.
And then there is A Wheel of Time Wiki, which naturally is a very deep dive into heavy spoiler territory so tread carefully. I do use it a lot as I work my way through the books. I also try not to get ahead of myself. Honest. But there are thousands of people and hundreds of locations in these books. I know the main characters and the primary locations. At least I think I do. Sometimes somebody or some place pops up that I don’t “recognize” at all, though. So I look it up. I mean, there’s a reason why there are two (or more?) printed compendiums for this book series. So, yeah, the wiki is something that newbies might actually need.
Hope my own newbie WOT quick list helps if you have no idea where to start.