I enjoy a good book, but over the last few months I've been experiencing a frustrating slowdown when it comes to reading. It's because I started reading the fantasy series The Runelords, by David Farland. This is a four book series (well, now five -- I heard another book was recently published) I picked up because of rumors that a film was in the works.
The concept is really pretty intriguing. In this fantasy world, a person is able to use magic to give one of his physical attributes to another person. He can donate his strength, or intelligence, or sight, hearing, smell, stamina, speed, you name it. The recipient then has the attributes of two men. The "runelords" of the title are powerful people combining the attributes of dozens or hundreds of people, who must mantain vast "harems" of mostly invalid people who have donated their various attributes. These attributes must be given voluntarily, but some runelords bribe and blackmail people into donating.
This backdrop all makes for some pretty fascinating questions about the nature of morality. It raises interesting situations of evil vs. good that must engage in necessary evil. In short, the concept and the story of the first book-and-a-half that I've read thus far have been great.
But the writing is dreadful. The characters aren't very well-drawn, the dialogue creaks, and the pacing is pretty rotten. You have to slog through 50 pages or more sometimes to get to an interesting event.
And therein sits my frustration. When I get to one of those one-in-50-pages events, it's fascinating. I get stoked, and want to keep reading. And then I have to trudge through the bog that is the next several chapters. I lose interest. I'll go days without reading a single page.
So it is that, while I haven't quite been able to make myself quit reading these books, I've finished nothing else for several months now. I tried looking for a synopsis of the books online, thinking maybe I could get the story (which I like) without having to put up with the rest of the writing (which I don't), but I came up empty.
Has anybody else read these books? Want to fill me in, or compare your experience to mine? Or can anybody find the synopsis that eluded me?
Or, failing all that, can anyone think of the "magic thing" to say to snap me out of reading this so I can move on to something else?
1 comment:
they should have playtested those books more. :)
I can relate to the unfinished-thing bothering oneself. have a cookie and by the time you are done eating it everything will be right as rain.
my advise would be to blow the dust off of your Final Fantasy X and start playing that. that story is very good (and I'm guessing you still haven't played it yet?)
the mole
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