My Top Fantasy Picks of 2025: A Year Back in the Wheel of Time

My fantasy picks of 2025 come from one place, and it won’t surprise anybody who’s been reading the blog this year. The Wheel of Time is probably my favourite series of all time, it used to be an almost annual reread or listen for me, at least until it got past ten books, and now I get through it every couple of years. So in January I restarted it from the very beginning, and I wrote each book up as I finished it, with the show running alongside it on Prime. Every pick below comes from one of those posts, all of them up on the site by the end of the year. I didn’t put a number on any of them, so I’m not going to invent one now, and they’re grouped by how they felt instead. If you’d rather see my earlier fantasy list, my fantasy picks of 2015 is the other one.

It’s a slightly odd kind of best-of list, because it’s the same series all the way down, but going back through it a book at a time showed me just how different they are from each other. Some of them I raced through in a few nights. One of them I had to actually push through for the first time ever. And a couple of them were better than I remembered, which is a lovely thing to find out about a series you’ve already read more times than you can count. I’ll start with the two that hit hardest, then go back to where it all began, then the one perfect battle, and then the book where the pace started to slip a bit.

The high points: The Shadow Rising and The Fires of Heaven

The Shadow Rising is where Rand, Perrin and Mat go their separate ways for the first time, and instead of the story feeling like it’s splitting apart, it finally has room to let all three of them breathe. It’s the biggest book in the series so far and it doesn’t waste a page. Perrin hearing that Whitecloaks are hunting him in the Two Rivers and just turning round and riding home, with nobody asking him to, is Perrin all over and exactly why I love him. These are farmers and sheepherders, people we’ve known since they were background characters, and by the time the banners go up over Emond’s Field I was completely locked in. Perrin marrying Faile in the middle of a siege works too, because here it’s earned. Add Rand in Rhuidean finding out what the Aiel used to be, and four big storylines that never feel like too much, and it’s one of my favourites in the whole series.

The Fires of Heaven might be the book on the reread that surprised me most, because I’d forgotten it’s specifically Mat’s book. When Rand needs someone to run the military side of taking Cairhien, it falls to Mat, and Mat hates every second of it, complains constantly, swears he’s not the man for the job, and then wins, decisively. The Battle of Cairhien is one of the best things in the entire series, and it isn’t magic that wins it, it’s Mat’s brain, all those other men’s memories from Rhuidean finally paying off. He’s easily my favourite character at this point. Throw in Rand keeping one of the Forsaken on a leash as a teacher, Nynaeve finally getting her rematch, and Moiraine’s ending, and it’s a big, confident book where every storyline lands.

Where it all starts again

The Eye of the World is always a strange one to finish again, because I know exactly what’s coming and it still works. It gets called derivative a lot, and sure, a farm boy swept out of a quiet village by a mysterious woman in grey isn’t the newest idea in fantasy. Doesn’t matter. It’s done so well that I fall for it every single time, from Trollocs pouring into Emond’s Field on Winternight to Moiraine’s half-answers and Lan being quietly, effortlessly competent. I’d forgotten how much I enjoy Nynaeve’s introduction as well, going after the village’s young people on her own with nothing but stubbornness and a real talent for reading the land. Shadar Logoth is genuinely creepy and I think it’s underrated as horror, and Mat picking up that dagger is such a throwaway moment the first time that on a reread I wanted to reach into the page and stop him.

The Great Hunt takes everything I loved about the first book and cranks it up, more magic, more danger, more complicated people and a whole lot more world. The Horn of Valere gets stolen, Mat’s still being eaten alive by the dagger, and Rand and his friends go after Padan Fain with Ingtar’s Shienarans, through the Ways and out across the map to Falme. Loial’s a joy, Selene is suitably mysterious, and the Seanchan turning up changes the shape of everything. The Battle of Falme, with Mat blowing the Horn and Rand facing Ba’alzamon in the sky, is a breathtaking finish, and that ending leaves me breathless and eager to keep going every time. The show doesn’t follow it to a tee, but it’s close enough for a fan.

One perfect battle: Lord of Chaos

Lord of Chaos has Dumai’s Wells in it, and that might be my favourite single battle in the entire series. I remembered it being good. I didn’t remember it being that good. A faction of Aes Sedai decide they need to control Rand rather than support him, and they set out to capture and leash him like any other male channeler, presented completely matter-of-factly by people who are supposed to be on the right side, which is properly uncomfortable. Then the Aiel turn up to save him, and just when it looks like it still might not be enough, the Asha’man arrive, and after thirteen hundred years of male channelers being hunted down, I was practically cheering when they came into view, even knowing exactly what was coming.

The rest of the book is more of a mixed bag for me, honestly. Taim running the Black Tower is exactly the kind of character this series does well, too. And Egwene being raised as Amyrlin by the rebels in Salidar, expected to be a puppet and then out-thinking women with decades more experience, is a slow burn I really like watching. But this is the first book on the reread where I noticed the story spreading out wider than any one plotline can comfortably hold, and there’s a lot of quiet table-setting sandwiched between the loudest moments in the series so far. None of it’s bad, it just makes the book feel a bit uneven, even when individual bits of it are excellent. Dumai’s Wells alone makes the whole thing worth it, though, and Rand coming out of it furious and shaken rather than triumphant is one of the smarter choices in the series.

The first one I had to push through

A Crown of Swords closed out my year, and it’s the first book on the reread where I had to actually push through some sections instead of racing through them. There’s still genuinely good stuff in it. Rand finally moving directly against Sammael and taking Illian is satisfying in a way that rivalry had been building toward since the book before, and having to actually run a conquered city forces him to start acting like the ruler he’s going to have to become. Cadsuane arriving to take him in hand is interesting, though I found myself wanting her to just say what she means.

Nynaeve and Elayne chasing the Bowl of the Winds through Ebou Dar is solid, and I liked meeting the Kin, ordinary women who could channel but never became Aes Sedai and kept using the Power quietly for generations. Mat spends most of the book laid up, which gives Thom some real room to show how much he cares about him. And the end of the book had me genuinely rattled on Perrin’s behalf. But this is where I’d call the pacing a real issue rather than a matter of taste, there’s a good three-hundred-page book in here surrounded by stuff that could move faster.

Looking back over the whole year, what I keep coming back to is how much these books still surprised me. I’ve read them more times than I can count and The Fires of Heaven still caught me off guard, Dumai’s Wells was better than I remembered, and even the slower ones had a moment or two that made me sit up. If you’ve never read the series, start at the beginning and give it until The Shadow Rising before you decide. And if you have, it holds up better than you might remember, so go and give Emond’s Field another visit.

Which Wheel of Time book is your favorite so far in this reread of mine? Tell me in the comments.