Stone of Farewell
4.3
68
5
1
Paperback(Reprint)
USD
16.2
$16.20
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780756402976 |
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| Publisher: | DAW |
| Publication date: | 04/05/2005 |
| Series: | Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn Series , #2 |
| Edition description: | Reprint |
| Pages: | 608 |
| Sales rank: | 353,262 |
| Product dimensions: | 8.78(w) x 5.92(h) x 1.29(d) |
| Age Range: | 18 - 17 Years |
About the Author
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Stone of Farewell
4.3 out of 5
based on
0 ratings.
68 reviews.
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This book is absolutely awesome. Tad Williams has an almost over descriptive way of wrighting. However, this fact only increases the image you attain by reading this book. I could often imagine a battle scene or one of the huge sprawling city of the Sithi. This book also includes a 14 page long appendix. This only makes it all the easier to rememer the foreign names and places. This book (and the series for that matter) is by far one of the best i have ever read. I even worked hours to buy the next book in the series.
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By the end of the first book you had followed simon from being a scullion boy to a dragon slasher. By the end of Ths second book, he makes it down the mountain to the stone of farewell. Many things happened to him and the other characters, but nothing truly exciting. i found this frustrating when coupled with Tad Williams over descriptive writing style. Despite all this i enjoyed the book and highly recommend it to anyone who enjoy a good and fulfilling fantasy story.
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Great story, beautifully rendered world and characters.
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good
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The plot thickens... This is one of those fantasy novels that you finish feeling that both a lot and very little has happened -- it's very detailed and kind of dense, and follows so many threads of the story, that the actual plot tends to progress a little slowly. I'm not complaining, really; I never had the feeling (as I have had with Robert Jordan's works) that Williams doesn't have an ending in mind, and I basically became helplessly engrossed in the lives of all the characters. I like the way that Simon is growing up; it pleases me that he's not a preternaturally great leader or warrior, as the young protagonists of these books often are. He has more in common with a character like Taran in Lloyd Alexander's Prydain Chronicles, who is brave and eventually grows to be a strong leader and fighter, but who more often than not messes up, or saves things in spite of his own shortcomings.
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Better than I was expecting. I know that when I finished the Dragon Bone Chair (the first in the series) I was way excited about the next book after a long and mostly boring book, but I didn¿t get around to reading it for quite a while. This book was pretty much the same, but that might be because I spent a good portion of the book trying to remember what had been going on and who these people were. Once I figured out what was going on though, the book was great. When it ended I was once again very excited about reading the next. I don¿t have it yet, but I¿ll probably buy it just soon enough for me to put it off.One thing that really annoyed me was the way that Williams developed the relationship between Simon and Miriamele. They don¿t see each other once in this whole book, but almost every time that the characters are pondering their current state of affairs they both think of the other and wonder if they are liked. BLECH. It¿s just too obvious. Other than that, though, the book was very good. I really liked the whole situation between Miriamele and the rich ship-captain guy.
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While the very end seemed a bit rushed to me, Stone of Farewell is decent. Williams' writing was good enough for me to buy the entire series.Unfortunately, this second part suffers from the same downsides as the previous one: unpronounceable names (specifically any of the long Sithi ones) and an obvious copy of christianity as the land's main religion. Some of the names are so garbled that someone (either the editor, the typesetter, or perhaps Williams himself) misspelled them a few times. The Aedonic stuff bothered me less in this installment of the series, though.
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Next on the list is the fantasy trilogy by Tad Williams. This author's debut novel, Tailchaser's Song was quite well received. It was similar to Watership Down in terms of being an animal story, in this case cats, that involves dialogue and a certain amount of animal society, but without completely anthropomorphizing the critters. I thought it was okay, but not worth acquiring.Then Williams came out with The Dragonbone Chair. Friends of mine attended a convention where Michael Whelan was a guest artist, and they were kind enough to get me a prepublication copy signed by my favorite cover artist (still is, but I am apathetic these days). I read this story and was blown away. I was similarly impressed with the rest of the trilogy (itself called Memory, Sorrow and Thorn): Stone of Farewell and To Green Angel Tower. It remains among my all-time fantasy favorites and I reread it at regular intervals (as it's appearance in this list demonstrates).Keep in mind that at the time I was well into my period of swearing off fantasy, since I was sick and tired of repetitive knock-offs built around medieval European cultural elements and generally being Tolkein derivatives. And this book has all of the classic fantasy tropes: a small band of heroes who begin separately but come together for a good cause, an evil threatening the land, a quest to save the world so lots of moving around the landscape fleeing bad guys and seeking the key to defeating evil, battles, the inevitable romance, and happy ending. And it has all of the standard fantasy characters: a hero of humble origins who turns out to be more than first appears, a wise old mentor who guides our heroes and has some share of magic, princesses in disguise, elves, dragons.It is also entertaining to match up the cultures that appear in the book to the real-world inspirations. The elves and the Norns are clearly inspired by Asian cultures (Japanese probably, among others). The Rimmersmen are Vikings, the Hernystiri are Welsh (or maybe more generic Celts), the Thrithings are horse-riding nomads (Scythians? Mongols? more of an eastern European feel), the Erkynlanders are Anglo-Saxon, the Nabbanai are Italian/Holy Roman Empire, with Perdruin being Sicily, the Wrannamen may be Irish or another marsh-based culture, but I tend to think more of the bayous of the American South (perhaps the Seminoles?), and the Yiqanuc trolls are like the Inuit or perhaps the Sherpas in the Himalayas. Now that I'm writing it all down, the fact is that all of the humans in this story are white, and any people of color are represented by nonhuman cultures. And of course there's no black folk here.While this trilogy has all of the standard, well-trodden features, many that can be correlated directly to The Lord of the Rings, it is still original and fresh, perhaps because in many ways it subverts the standard tropes, and perhaps the many, many secondary characters that provide dimensions and depth and bring the world and its many cultures to life. The narrative is filled with stories and songs, and the characters speak in a range of dialects reflecting their cultural differences. The dialogue is quite good, as is the prose in general, and the character development. It is, ultimately, a very long coming-of-age story, as a teenager matures into manhood and learns wisdom in the process of surviving many harrowing crises. It is also a meditation on love, loss, grief, despair, sacrifice, longing for peace/annhilation/the end of existence, honor, legends, human limits, and all of that good, big stuff.
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Fabulous series.. well drawn out, complex characters. Top notch writing. All the books in the series are fairly generous in size, particularly the final 2, but the series is good enough you won't mind.
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No drop off in this second, huge book in this trilogy. The action moves away from the castle and the capital, as our heroes are on the run, trying to find allies against the evil forces that threaten the entire kingdom, and perhaps all humans. The ancient fued between humans and elves is on again, at least for some of the elves. These books had a very unique feel to them, and were really enjoyable to read.
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As our adventure continues, the fight to save the land gets more intense, the strangeness of the icons needed and magic woven into them becomes more alien. Tad takes the readers futher into the strange world and gives you a taste of what you might be missing.
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Horrible horrible series. Absolutely juvenile.
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Readers of fantasy know that, quite often, the second book in a trilogy suffers from the dreaded "black sheep" syndrome. Book two is the slightly overlooked middle child. Less respected than the first and less spoiled than the last -- but necessary nonetheless. Characters often go on long journeys in the second book and think about things ad nauseam, all in preparation for whatever climax awaits in book three. Luckily for us, Tad Williams is a master of the genre and handles this unfortunate yet necessary anomaly with such grace as to make it almost non-existent. Yes, there's much trekking in Stone of Farewell. There's a lot of introspection, as well. But rather than plodding through as I often do, I found myself enjoying every detailed moment.In Stone of Farewell you will find that the cast of characters have diverged into separate adventures and the storytelling jumps between each of them in turn. The world building continues, and Osten Ard becomes an even more developed backdrop on which these adventures play out. The final scene brought actual tears to my eyes. An extraordinary read for lovers of epic fantasy -- I cannot wait to get my hands on book three.
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This is an excellent book! Th
e characters are well developed and the world building is fantastic.
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A fitting sequel to the classic "The Dragonbone Chair", "Stone of Farewell" continues the story. This book actually feels, in some places, like reading poetry. I'd recommend for any lovers of epic fantasy... with a twist. The immortal Sithi remain one of my all-time favorite depictions of an alien, vanished race.
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Stone of Farewell....the whole book picturises the journey of its various characters towards this destination....and its TAgic( Tad William's magic) that the reader travels along with them..The places mentioned are so perfectly narrated that they loom infront of u...and each character in this fantasy is so finely made...it almost makes it difficult if not impossible to forget their names for a long time even after reading..The fear of Inuleki deepens with evry chapter and the hatred for pryrates grows in the similar fashion...Josua captures hearts with his determination evn if its feeble at most of the times ..Binabik..the bestest of all buddies and sweet Qantaqa ...Simon...my Paul Jonas here.....proves to be brave but still full of mysteries.. The stretch of the author's imagination is higly commendable...In simple words..read the book..its breathtaking.
Stone Of Farewell
The Safehold of A Reader's Heart.
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Although this book is used to set up the final book, i found it to be a very enjoyable read.
Tad Williams is truly a master.
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Another great installment in the trilogy, though I didn't think it was quite as good as the first and third volumes. This is EPIC fantasy at its best.
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