STONE OF TEARS
by Terry Goodkind

Reviewed by Eoghann Irving

This is actually book two of a series (of indefinate length).  Its a damn
big book (1000+ pages) and it has a feeble map near the beginning with daft
names like Westland, The Midlands and The Boundary.

All of which raises a number of questions:

1) Why did I buy book two when I haven't read book one?

I do stupid things like that.  I did it with The Riftwar books by Raymond
Feist, and with the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant by Stephen Donaldson.

2) Why did you buy what appears to be a fantasy cliche?

I was bored and a book that big was bound to keep me occupied for a while.

Now despite that negative start, the book is really not bad.  The central
character, one Richard Cypher, is a man with the gift of magic who refuses
to believe it.  He's just killed his father, although he didn't know it was
his father at the time, the love of his life is a seriously powerful woman,
and the Keeper of the Underworld is after him.

The actual number of cliches in this book is kept to a reasonable minimum.
The characters are well thought out and nicely rounded.  Too rounded in
some cases.

The author haa a bad habit of giving us loads of background on a character
who appears for about 30 pages and then disappears for the entire rest of the 
book.  Somewhat disconcerting.

Its a slow book, too.  Surprisingly little happens in the thousand pages.
Well our hero does save the world of course, but...

What you do get is lots of character interaction, some nice cultural and
historical details for the various cultures, and a generally entertaining
read.  You also get an ending that screams for a sequel.  Well this is
fantasy.

Still, generally entertaining but could have done with a good editor.  I'll
give it.

7/10