New Spring

Most readers recommend reading it after the main series, or at least after the first several volumes. Although it is a chronological prequel, it was written and published much later and assumes familiarity with characters and concepts the main books introduce. Reading it first can blunt some reveals.

Yes. It began as a novella in the 1998 anthology Legends, edited by Robert Silverberg, and Jordan later expanded it into a full novel published in 2004. The novel adds considerable length and detail to the original.

Jordan planned New Spring as the first of a trilogy of prequels, with later volumes covering other early events. He set the plan aside and never wrote the others, and his death in 2007 ended it. New Spring remains the only completed prequel.

It takes place roughly twenty years before The Eye of the World, around the end of the Aiel War, and centers on the Foretelling that the Dragon has been Reborn. It depicts the events that send Moiraine searching for the child who becomes the series' central figure.

No. The fourteen-book main series stands on its own, and New Spring is optional background. It deepens the history of Moiraine and Lan but introduces nothing required to follow the central story.

At around 300 pages it is roughly a third the length of a typical Wheel of Time volume. It was conceived as a focused origin story covering a brief, specific span of events rather than a sprawling installment.