I may never forgive my former staffer for leaving a copy of The Great Hunt – book two of Robert Jordan’s (now Brandon Sanderson’s) sprawling, awkward fantasy epic, The Wheel of Time.

I swear, it’s not that good, but still, I’m addicted. So I guess there must be something to it. For heaven’s sake, even Paul Krugman reads that darn books. May Tor is putting something in the binding glue. Like opiates, maybe.

Are there any big Wheel of Time fans who can explain it me?

I couldn’t find my copy of book eight (eight?! that means, yes, I’ve already read seven of these freaking novels; glaciers advance faster than this), so I wound up getting another darn copy the other night (fortunately, these are mostly all cheaply available as mass market paperbacks).

Even though it had been sometime and the thing is massive, it is easy to jump right back in. The classic fantasy tropes and types are there and it’s not so hard to remind one’s self of the major players and their positions and roles in the series (I don’t even bother to keep track of geography; I swear, he just added new countries and major players that didn’t exist before in every book – and that he did this just to keep dragging this thing.

However, like it or not, this may be the defining fantasy epic of the last twenty-five years (I don’t count kid’s lit like Harry Potter and I can’t if Martin’s Song of Fire and Ice will wind up supplanting Wheel of Time or if it has too much sui generis in it to fit the bill).

So, I don’t want to do that Al Pacino routine from The Godfather III but heck if it don’t keep dragging me back in anyway.