The Fires of Heaven is the 5th installment into the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. A book that is more heavily following Rand, the dragon reborn and his attempts to seek out the forsaken while also balancing the care and leadership of the Aiel.

This book strikes a noticeable tone difference between the first three books in the series and grows on that which we were starting to see out of the Shadows Rising (Book 4 for the Wheel of Time). Rand and all the other main characters from Edmonds Field are noticeably behaving more grown up.

Relationships become more complex while stakes are raising. The world know fully knows of the Dragon Reborn, and are picking sides. The White Tower has been fractured with events of the past book that lead to an interesting dynamic to the overall story.

Matt, is another standout character in this book. He shows incredible growth as a character, more so than even in the Shadow Rising. His character turns into what can only be described as a world renowned fighter and war general. His luck and combat skills that have been not so subtly teased through the course of the series finally display what his purpose in all of this actually is.

Absent from this chapter in the Wheel of Time is Perrin. He remains in the two rivers, where the events of the last book continue to settle. He to has come into his own, but for Perrin fans, they will miss his character in Fires of Heaven. I am sure that he will crop back up in the Lord of Chaos.

Nynaeve and Elayne grow as characters as well as they flea another forsaken over the course of the book. Their end to this book is particularly satisfying and opens a world of possibility as to what is possible within the dreamworld they have been continuously exploring over the past few chapters of the series.

This book also marks a sending off point at the end of the story. Without getting into spoilers, the end chapters of this book lead to series alerting events for the main characters of the overall story that has consequences that up until this point did not appear as a route that Robert Jordan was willing to take.

In the end, The Fires of Heaven sits as a great read in the series, it has substantial gain for me from the dragon reborn, and is more enjoyable than even the shadows rising. The pace of the book progressively increased leading to a “cannot put the book down” ending that was really enjoyable and let me to immediately want to hop into the next book in the series, “Lord of Chaos”.

If you liked this review, you can check out the other reviews to the Wheel of time below. We have also reviewed other series in full such as Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, or the Sword of Truth by Terry Goodkind.

I plan to pick up the pace of reviews of this series going forward, I thank anyone that has been sticking around for the couple years that have lead to only the first 5 books in the series being reviewed. Expect a quicker turnaround on the next few books in the Wheel of Time series.