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STONE OF TEARS (second Sword of Truth novel)
Terry Goodkind
TOR 1995
Pb 982 pages
ISBN # 0-812-54809-4

 

Would you like to escape into a fantasy story that keeps going and going and going like the Energizer Battery?  Do you like to see wizards magically throw their victims up against walls, pinning them there with feet dangling?  Do you become entranced by agonizing torture endured by the hero?  Do you appreciate a distinct line between good and evil?  A plot line where everything is as bad as it can get?  If you say yes to all of these questions then the Sword of Truth series is for you.

Richard is the Seeker of Truth, a young man discovering not only his dark heritage but that he has inherited wizardly power of violent proportions.  He's going to need this power, if he can learn to control it, because the veil between the living and the dead has been torn and prophecy says only Richard will be able to save the world of the living from the Keeper of the Underworld.  The Stone of Tears came out of that open Box of Orden (from book one).  Yet, is this stone evil magic... or good?

That's all this reviewer can offer you, though, because boredom with redundancies closed the book on page 215, and I can't say yes to any of those questions in the first paragraph.  I am drawn to Goodkind's intricate plotting but flinch at passages where three pages could easily have been condensed into one paragraph -- again and again, and again.  This book did not promise to take me into new and unexplored countries, it didn't introduce me to a new (and dramatically varied) culture (from the first book), the description was too brutal for my tastes, and the heroes seem to suffer the same torment as in book one instead of a different kind of angst with each ordeal (which would have been much more interesting).  It does have lots of tension, so much in fact that I plateaued out into numbness.

There's another novel on my shelf beckoning.  And it promises new adventure.