Stone Of Tears (Sword of Truth, #2)

by Terry Goodkind

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[a:Terry Goodkind|3441|Terry Goodkind|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1209913798p2/3441.jpg] is an author who knows the meaning of the word atrocity. His one saving grace is that he doesn't go into detail enough to make it unreadable. And it's not just physical atrocities (like dead bodies and rape) but also emotional ones, infusing love with horrendous pain and watching prophecies unfold knowing they lead to nothing but pain and torment. Sometimes it's fascinating, when a character walks to the edge of darkness and finds triumph and a lot of times it's just horrifying and revolting.
So a 3 star book loses a star for awful, awful moments.

It's also slow in some places, particularly the side stories in the middle (around pg 400 or so - really 900 pages?!) It just felt like everything he was saying wasn't moving the story forward at all.
It totally loses a star for being boring for about 250-300 pages (that's almost a whole other book).

But the storyline that works, is really, really interesting. Absolutely intriguing and kept propelling me through the boring parts because I wanted to see what happened (even though I watched the tv show so I kind of knew what happened). All the stuff about magic was interesting and most of the stuff about prophecy was too (except pages trying to explain forked prophecies that were mind numbing). Richard's journey is really interesting to read.
It's absolutely good enough to get a star back.

I *loved* seeing Cara show up at the end and the Mord-Sith being devoted to Richard and badass. I totally want more Mord-Sith.

And the Sisters of the Light were incredibly arrogant. I enjoyed watching Richard decimate their ideas and expectations and put them in their place. I hated them for a long time. And I kind of marveled that they actually made Shota look like a good guy. But then when we met the Prelate she was kind of awesome and I forgave the Sisters for a lot.

It's really interesting to me that Goodkind has created a world where his hero is surrounded by three different groups of incredibly powerful women. They all are wrapped up in pain in different ways but they're all also really strong and influential so I don't know quite what to make of it. But I still kind of enjoy it.

But then I figured [a:Terry Goodkind|3441|Terry Goodkind|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1209913798p2/3441.jpg] out (around page 829 - yes, it took that long). He actually isn't going to let anything really awful happen to his characters. As much as he talks about dreadful things around them, and as close as they get to things worse than death, they're ultimately going to be ok. Once that clicked I enjoyed reading the rest of the book much more.

So, it totally gets one star back for ending with a sense of closure. I was afraid, with a 13 book series, that this story would be dragged on for another book or two at least. That could seem like a spoilery comment, but I think it's worthwhile to know that a 900 page book is worth getting into because you won't be frustrated at the end. It closes every box it opens and it does have a happy ending and I forgive it immeasurably for that.