What made you first pick up a Wheel of Time book and why did you start reading that series over some other fantasy series?

For me, it happened that Fires of Heaven was the biggest book I saw on the bookshelf and I was looking for a challenge as a kid. My fifth grade teacher started myself and a couple other kids in my class on the Redwall series by Brian Jacques. I really got in to the series after reading Mossflower and Salamandastron. Eventually, I outgrew the story lines and I was looking for a new series for young adults.

I knew nothing of the Wheel of Time books. Only that they were the biggest books on the shelf and therefore were the perfect book for a seventh grader looking to prove something. I think I first bought The Eye of the World, The Great Hunt, and the Fires of Heaven. The Redwall books didn't need to be read in a specific order as most of them were stand alone stories. I didn't realize WoT were consecutive books so I started with Fires of Heaven not knowing any better. I got about 100 pages in and the series just wasn't making sense to me and I just sat it down for a while.

Move ahead to about 8th grade (1997-199, and I picked the series back up with the Eye of the World. Needless to say, I kept reading the first couple chapters and was finally hooked once the group travelled out of the Two Rivers. It was a continuous adventure after that. I think it was right as the Path of Daggers was coming out that I started reading the books one after another for months. I had to wait for Winter's Heart to come out and then each book after that until the final book in 2013. That's my story. What is yours?