Customer Reviews

Stone of Tears: A Sword of Truth Novel

5 star:		(147)
4 star:		(67)
3 star:		(28)
2 star:		(15)
1 star:		(33)

 

 

Great story, and a fun read. More in depth character development, and story progression.
If you like great fantasy series this one is worth your time.

This book is great! The plot is good, the characters are well presented. A tad more details than necessary. The first 300 pages are good, it's interesting and fun to read. Pages 300-600 are SOOO long and should have been shortened by half. 600-850 are AMAZING. But the last 150 are too short if you see what I mean. All of the action is concentrated in the end and you really feel like the author had to write the last pages in a hurry and this is a bit frustrating when you read 300 pages in a novel when it should have been 100 and the last and more important pages last 100 when it should be at least 200 or even 300. This is actually the only mistake made by Terry Goodkind.

Less enjoyable than Wizard's First Rule but you'll like it too.

Honestly, it was almost like he read wheel of time and used it for the inspiration for this book. If I was Robert Jordan I think I would have sued him for this. Or am I wrong and this one came out first? Well hardly mattered since I read the other first which made this book very hard to read. I loved the first book. What a letdown.

The first book in the series is one of my top 21 books. (21? I've never felt a need to cap the number of books I have really enjoyed.) Even so, I never jumped to read the sequel. How would the followup followup? Would more to the story just be more to the story? Would it pull down my experience of the first book?
Well I finally picked up the second and started to read. My exact rating would be 3.75. A 'good' opening got me interested.
Then 200 pages into the book I was straining to be drawn into the story. I kept being left with the feeling of 'get on with it'. And suddenly it did! The last 700+ pages were (are) worth reading.
Overall, not as good as the first book, but a good maybe very good followup; but unlike the first book that was good enough to stand on its own, I feel this book needs the next book to be good enough to lift this volume up. Which I now have to go buy.

Stone of Tears The second book (now considered the third because of a new prequil) in the Sword of truth Series by Terry Goodkind Picks up from the previous tale, Wizards first rule. Darken Rahl has been defeated by richard but now it seems a new evil is spreading throughout the world which only Richard can stop, with the help of Kahlan and Zedd and many others of course.

I found this book to be less enjoyable than it's predecessor, and although I was drawn in toward the end of the book to keep reading, it was still somewhat of a let down. I found Goodkind to have a little less faith in his readers than I would have enjoyed. I often found him reminding the reader what had happened in the last book so often enough that it drew away from the story (not just minor details but major events). Also it was still quite predictable, while I could tell that Goodkind tried ever so hard to not be so. I was also unamused at the authors repeated use of prophecies, I kept hoping that he would stop using them in the same fashion, and yet he never did. The author seems to also have trouble putting characters away for good. On the bright side there were some good aspects of the book as well. It read amazingly fast for bing near 1000 pages long. Also as far as fantasy books go, the author did manage to define his own creatures and rules rater than relying on others to show him the way.

All and all I would not suggest this book for everyone. If your a big Goodkind fan already it might be worth your time, although I would warn those that have already read the first book in the series that this was definitely no an improvement

After reading 'Wizard's First Rule,' I was a apprehensive about 'Stone of Tears.' WFR involved some child torture that I thought was over the line, as well as some other, very bloody, torture I thought was a bit excessive.

Terry Goodkind is a good writer and does a nice job of building his world and his characters both in terms of visual detail and in terms of historic depth. While once in a while his prose is just a litlle ham-fisted, normally he is very precise and eloquent.

Stone of Tears is not for kids. It is replete with rape. In fact, it seems that the baddies in this world seem to know of no other real way to deal with women. While I got tired of it, it did not seem unrealistic for the world created. There is even a scene of a demon having sex with a woman, with a special description of his anatomy to heighten the idea of the pain it caused. However, there was no child torture (if there had been any as in WFR, this would have been my last Terry Goodkind book).

As it is, I will continue to read the series, though I will not give it to my nephews to read, as I feel they are too young.

Overall, Terry Goodkind is one of the better writers in this genre. He has a a smooth writing style and develops the story well. His world is a bit rougher than most, but this can be seen as a necessary addition to the genre. If you want something a bit different, but still well-done, I guess this is it.

very good book. its that simple. long and good i wish #7 and 8 had been this good-read other reviews of these books for longer thoughts about these books- ok i may go into some detail- very good book be cause this book is all creation- the whole book is furthering the plot of the series definetly worth reading- some people are turned of by books that are just under a thousand pages- don't be this book is worth the effort to read and you will enjoy it- if you don't enjoy it at least you don't know where i live... oh wait you do, well not my address at least... hahahahaha ok thats enough

If you are looking for a way to kill a few days reading an below par book then this is the one to get. This author does his best to drag out a book that should be no long than 400-500 pages into one almost 1000. He does so by repeating lines of characters over and over, adding in openings for future books, and constantly describing Richard and Kahlan's feelings for each other.

These books have the weakest plot line I have ever seen and left me with a bad taste in my mouth for wasting the 12hrs it took to read. The author seemed to focus more on side plots in order for him to write even more crappy books than on actually getting to the point and finishing this one.

Dont read these books. Instead look into George R.R. Martin.

I just had to write about this book. Well, it's not about the book per se, which by the way I thouroughly enjoyed. I read the reviews of others but rarely do I base my opinion on what they say. I enjoyed this book immensely and will be running out to get the third on very soon!!

Now for my gripe: Who is this guys flipping editor? With the first book, there were stupid errors in grammar and sentences that had the wrong words in them, things spelled wrong and just not making sense. In this one, I find the lack of punctuation to be very disconcerting. It is annoying as I am reading to come to what should be the end of a sentence, but because it lacks the appropriate punctuation, not knowing it is the end and having the entire sentence make no sense to me.

While this book also has a few grammatical and spelling errors, I find the lack of punctuation to be appaling.
How the "editor" missed these things is beyond me!

Mr. Goodkind, if you read this, e-mail me! I will happily become your editor!!!! :-)

Many people that read Terry Goodkind's first book in The Sword of Truth Series give up in the beginning. Goodkind is a decent writer but honestly, I think declaring him one of the best fantasy writers today speaks words about how bereft the fantasy genre is of talented authors. I almost gave up on book one myself and I'm glad I didn't because in the end, I enjoyed the book and had a merry time reading about the adventures of Richard, Kahlan, Zed, Chase and others. I purchased book two the day after completing the first book and initially, I zipped through it like I did book one but something happened along the way. Stone of Tears isn't a bad read but it just didn't pull me in like the first book. I think the biggest point of tension in book one was Richard and Kahlan's relationship and now that they're together (sort of) and know each other so well, their characters don't have the same zip they used to. I don't mind long reads but I feel like Goodkind could shorten all his books by AT LEAST a hundred pages. In book two, I started feeling like I was slowly churning along and I stopped reading about midway through after reading Ada's (Is that her name?) background story. I won't ruin it for any potential readers but the story about her split from her ex-lover smacks hard of that typical Goodkind nonsense that he sometimes uses as origins or motivation for his characters. If you enjoyed the first novel, I'd give the second one a try. After all, enough people have enjoyed this series to allow it to continue to book eight, nine or whatever it's on now; but in my opinion, if you want a new fantasy series, check out George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire Series or Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time Series first if you haven't already. Jordan's series gets slow in the end but the first few books are much better than The Sword of Truth Series. Overall, Stone of Tears is a decent read but not everyone will enjoy it.