title: Untangling Tolkien: A Chronology and Commentary for The Lord of the Rings
author:  Michael W. Perry 
description: Mike Perry is a writer living in Seattle. He first read The Lord of the Rings while riding across the Sinai desert bouncing around in the back of a Bedouin truck. He now rereads it to beat the boredom of Seattle's gray and rainy winters.
zlib_text: ![](Images/image00387.jpeg)
  
  **Praise for T** **HE** **W** **HEEL OF** **T** **IME **®****
  
  > “Unlike some of the authors of mega-sagas, Jordan chooses his words with
  > care, creating people and events that have earned him an enormous
  > readership. For sheer imagination and storytelling skill . . . The Wheel of
  > Time now rivals Tolkien’s _The Lord of the Rings_.”
  
   _—Publishers Weekly_ (starred review)
  
  > “Jordan succeeds in carrying forward his stunning world-building in this
  > detailed story of a struggle between good and evil. The story continues with
  > its myriad threads and subplots, carrying the reader inexorably toward an
  > unpredictable conclusion.”
  
   _—SF Site_
  
  > “The battle scenes have the breathless urgency of firsthand experience, and
  > the . . . evil laced into the forces of good, the dangers latent in any
  > promised salvation, the sense of the unavoidable onslaught of unpredictable
  > events bear the marks of American national experience during the last three
  > de cades.