Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Stop me if you've heard this one already. Okay, so there's this evil overlord, see. And he wants to take over the world, all right. But there's this young man who fights to stop him. And the young man turns out to be the reborn version of an ancient hero, as predicted in legend, see. And there's a gratuitous love interest thrown in, all right. And a wise old wizard who's the man's mentor. And there's... Well, you get the idea of "The Runelords", the latest unfortunate edition of copycat Tolkien-clone fantasy to mar the once-proud fantasy shelves of bookstores and libraries around the world. Our hero is Gaborn, a young prince who's riding through the woods of a foreign country when he happens to notice an army of foul-smelling bad guys preparing for an attack. Gaborn heroically rides to notify the King, but this proves futile as arch-baddie Raj Ahten easily conquers the capitol city and then spends several chapters putting his evilness on full display by tormenting a variety of innocent people. The central gimmick in this novel is the idea of endowments, a magical process by which qualities can be transferred from one person to another. For example, if you give an endowments of sight, then you become blind but someone else can see twice as well. This concept allows the author to easily divide up his characters among good guys who only accept voluntary endowments and bad guys who take endowments by force. Exactly why anyone would be willing to give up their entire hope of a productive life just to give an endowment is never explained. Raj Ahten has so many endowments of glamour that anyone who looks at him is forced to obey him, although this inexplicably only works some of the time. Exactly why nobody ever thought to do this before is never explained either. But if I tried to list all the plot holes and continuity lapses in this book, we'd be here all day. Astonishingly enough, Farland's writing manages to fall below the very low standard that Robert Jordan and other mediocrities have set for the fantasy genre. He's unable to create any sense of urgency even though he's supposedly writing about a huge conflict between ultimate good and evil incarnate. For instance, consider one seen where two characters are in a city that's under siege by an army of monsters and bad guys, yet they keep chatting away as if they don't have a care in the world. Or consider the fact that after his father is killed, Gaborn can't come up with anything more convincing to say than "I reject you, Raj Ahten. I will destroy you." We get stupid place names (How on Earth do you pronounce "Muyyatin"), stupid character names (Steveford Hawk?), bad similes (Gaborn sees a woman with "hips moving like boiling waves"), misused words (fire is described as "topaz"), and silly figurative language ("He felt sure to the marrow of his bones".) Farland often grows repetitious. When Gaborn becomes saddened, "He felt as if the fabric of his mind ripped." A little bit later, we get "he felt as if the fiber of his sanity was shredded." The fiber of somebody's sanity has certainly been shredded, but I don't think it's the character. Oh, and let's not forget nonsense like this: "He spurred his horse west, deeper into the forest, shouting, 'Spirits of the wood, I am Gaborn Val Oredn, Prince of Mystarria. I beg you, protect me!' "Even as he called for aid, he knew it would do no good. The spirits of the dead care nothing for the concerns of mortal men. If Gaborn attracted their attention, they'd only seek to make sure he joined them in the afterlife." (p. 85) So in the second paragraph, we learn that Gaborn will be killed if the spirits notice him. But in the first paragraph, he's trying to get the spirits to notice him. What's up with that? And last but not least, we wouldn't want to forget to mention Farland's social sensibilities. The bad guys are all dark-skinned and they come from the South, and the archvillain is even named "Raj Ahten". All the other bad guys also have names suggestive of Arabic or Hindi origin. We also get classic stereotypes such as Mr. Ahten maintaining a harem and using opium. Meanwhile, the White heroes who dwell in the North are universally strong, noble, courageous, courteous, and morally upstanding. On top of that, we get rampant sexism; the lead female character doesn't do much besides sit around whining while the men do everything that requires effort. Mr. Farland, if you're reading this, would you please wake up and realize that the 50's are over?