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Stone of Tears (Sword of Truth, Book 2)

Stone of Tears (Sword of Truth, Book 2)

List Price: $7.99
Your Price: $7.19
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 1 stars
Summary: This book is complete garbage. It is bad, bad, bad!
Review: I managed to make it through Wizard's First Rule. I was hoping that Goodkind's writing would improve with later books, but I only managed to get through the first third of Stone of Tears before I had to stop. What is wrong with this book?

My biggest problem is the characters. Their behaviour isn't consistent with the lives they've led. Richard has lectured (several times) about how important it is to "focus on the solution, not the problem" and how he's always lived his life by those words. Yet anytime he is reminded of his significance in the future of the world, his reaction is to curl up in a little ball and put his hands over his ears. The other main characters have similar behaviour problems. Is Khalan supposed to be a helpless, whining Snow White wannabe or a powerful, influential, decisive leader?

Running a close second in annoyances is the way Goodkind always feels he has to be ridiculously extreme with almost every event in the book. Richard couldn't just be beaten. He had to be beaten to the point where his blood covered the walls, floor, and ceiling of the room. Wait a minute, wouldn't he be dead if he lost that much blood? Also, a certain pattern is WAY overused by Goodkind:

"'What was that great wizard?' The wizard's face had a look that could have shattered stone. He said 'It was a shadow demon!' Khalan's blood turned to ice. She could not speak. A shadow demon!"

You can get away with something like that every couple of books or so. But when you use it every 200 hundred pages, it gets old fast.

Basically, Goodkind is a bad writer. There are much better fantasy books available.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Page Turner
Review: I found my self unable to put this book down. Danger, and thrills happening at every turn. With as many twists this book has, i couldnt stop reading till i was finished with the entire book. The wonderful pictures this book creats , yet leave it up to you to design the places the travels take.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The best book in the best series ever
Review: Stone of Tears is the best book in the best series I have ever read. It is the perfect match to WFR. Everything is done in the way that something actually would be done, by real people living in that setting. A whole new dimension is added to the series, the best start possible to the story arc of the rest of the series.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A Fantastical Writer!
Review: I truly find it hard to believe that the negative comments for this book, are really talking about this book. Stone of Tears is prehaps the best fantasy I have read thus far. The vividness of this book has granted me an unlimited enjoyment. The characters were down right likeable, and blievable. Richard and Kahlan are greatly executed, and I honestly can't find a single fault with this book, or this author. Mr. Goodkind is like known other, the world hasn't seen an author of his magnitude since Tolkein and Jules Verne. Mr. Goodkind is a man of pure talent, which won't be contested prehaps many years from now.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Great Fantasy world where logic has no say !
Review: First off, I would begin by saying this is a good fantasy book for those who love the genre (as I do). Second, I'd like to quickly address the copycat issue regarding Wheel Of Time: if you dig deep enough you will always find similarities between 2 stories especially when they dwell upon the same genre, however unless you happen to be in the head of the author (or unless the author confesses) you can never know which idea was consciously stolen or borrowed or which ones just happen to be in another book.

However what interests me more in this book is the fashion with wich Goodkind ignores all logic. For instance take Kalhan. Unless you tell me that confessors have super-human agility and strength Kalhan makes no sense at all.
First why would you need 4 man to kill a confessor when just one arrow would do the job. In the first episode they even say that Kalhan could easily evade a sword thrust by a Quad (swordman expert I presume) and then advance close enough to touch him before he can swing again... Wow !!! In SOT Kalhan also leads troops in battle, however not only does she plans the battles (which is quite possible) but she's also a front soldier in all of them (and when I say front I mean she's the first one out there)... She seems to thrive in the middle when surrounding by dozens of elite swordmen and she never gets cut. She goes on solo suicide mission and then come back victorious (after dispaching the ennmy by the hundreds... Unless she's got superhuman combat abilities that's quite the little soldier she is (No amount of training could yield such results)!! On another matter, Kalhan also like to kill her victims AFTER she's taken them with her power... Correct me if I am wrong, but once somebody's been taken by a Confessor, their personality is dead no ? All that remains is an able body 100% faithfull and dedicated to the Confessor... So why kill them ? That would make sense if the Confessor's magic was reversible... But it's not... In my opinion that's the beauty of the Confessor's magic. It's definitive, unlike every other magic I've ever read about where there's always a counter spell or a mean to reverse it etc.

In my opinion, the way I see her, Kalhan should remain well beyond ennemy fire(at camp pref) and control the battle from there with her military mind. Plus when they capture an ennemy alive she should take him with her power, debrief him for information on the ennemy (plan, location etc) and then send him in the ennemy camp as a spy (with order to bring back a commanding officer for instance). Sooner or later she'll have her own army inside the ennemies army, and with the 100% reliable info gathered by her 'conquest' she can devise even more deadly military plans... Not to mention that if she 'gets her hands' on a high ranking officer she can the use him to give false orders and such... Plus, by keeping everybody she takes(the guilty I mean, not the ones like Brophy) with her Confessor's power she will rapidly have her own bodyguards (and none other will ever be more dedicated to her safety and no 4 quads will be able to squeeze through that!!)

That's the biggest logical flaw in Goodkind's story but not the only one.
However as I said in the beginning, this is a good book because it's a fantasy book, and the defining traits of fantasy is certainly not logic... So for those who don't ask too many questions, this is your kind of book. For the others (like me) why don't you just go read a mathematic essai or go debug a software code or the like ;-)

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Ingenious Engrossing tale
Review: After I read Wizard's First Rule, I was addicted, but I didn't think it could get any better. However, Stone of Tears surpassed my expectations. This is one of the best books I have ever read. It's a great story and it has deeper value as well. I really care about the characters, and everything that happens to them is just so engrossing and complex. I had a hard time putting it down and lost sleep over it. My mind has been miles away, in the Midlands and the Old World, not in middle class suburbia where it belongs. I think that the author is a genious.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The Continuation of an Epic
Review: In SOT, Terry Goodkind picks up where WFR left off -- and with no slackening of the pace. Just when everybody is getting all warm and gushy inside over the victories of the previous book, we come to find that the solution to the last book's problem has become the problem now in the second book of this series. While many would rather skip some of the rather graphic details, I find it rather refreshing for once to be told what is happening instead of the events being merely alluded to.

Again, another highly detailed body of work that is extremely hard to put down, as was the previous opus. You simply can't just wait to see what happens next, and I know I've spent several nights up late rereading this novel.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: I'll give it -1 if I could
Review: I can't believe so many people like this guy. If you want to read porno, why don't just go and buy some. Why take the effort of reading a tedious boring book just to get into some juicy part. As for the plot, well some of the ideas were nice but portrayed childishly. I don't mind a hero who can slaughter everything he comes upon with a flick of a thumb, but not in this sort of long saga that tries to look at itself with serious mind. If I want Invincible Hack and slash, I'll read Gotrek And Felix book, even there the characters portrayed are more realistic. To sum it up, I hated this book from the moment I picked it up, I started skipping lines and then whole pages from the middle of the book (which is a rare occurrence for me).

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Another accomplished work for Goodkind
Review: I want to start this out by saying that I have been a fan of fantasy for the past 20 years and started out with the Tolkien and Terry Brooks novels. I have read the WOT by Jordan (all 9 volumes) and I am not easy to please.

I want to address some of the plagurism issues that have been brought up. I wholeheartedly agree that many of the associations between Goodkind and Jordan have been made by Mr. Goodkind, but how many other authors have used the concepts of J.R.R. Tolkien's works.

I beleive Mr. Goodkind to be a blend between Jordan - because of his ability to spend some time on details and then to bring the cataclysm in a speedier fashion; and Terry Brooks - for the manner in which he can spin a tale.

As opposed to lovers of Robert Jordan, Goodkind's books only seem to get better. SOT is a wonderful book that I found the story line to be very emotional and with a few twists that keep me wanting to go on. SOT is another step in the tale of Richard Rahl and there are many other characters being introduced.

Try not to look at this as a Jordan purist or we can all make references to Tolkien from Jordan. Merely read this book because it is highly entertaining and I read it in a week which means I could barely put it down and I have already ordered Blood of the Fold.

Make sure not to miss this book

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Not great, but better than its predecessor
Review: A much better piece of work than WFR. Much more focused. The dialogue is a bit weak, and the characters are somewhat inconsistent. Also, some of the sexual refernces are a bit adolescent. Furthermore, why would a woman over 100 years old behave like a young, teen-aged girl? Addtionally, some of the obstacles that the protagonist must surmount are overcome rather easily. If you thought the ending to book 1 was brief and anti-climatic, this was was even more so. Still, it was an ok read. Hopefully, book three will be even better.


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