The Runelords

     Hello everybody.  Today I’m continuing my break from my story because I just finished a book series that would like to write about.

     Last summer I went to the Martinsburg library and got the first book in the Runelords series, called The Sum of All Men.  It was an amazing fantasy book by David Farland  written 1998.  As soon as we went back to the library I acquired and devoured the second book, Brotherhood of the Wolf.  After that I was saddened because the library had no more books in the series, due to them being lost and never replaced.  However for Christmas my grandparents came to my rescue and bought me all of the rest of the books except the last.  The series is split with the first four books centering around Gaborn Val Orden and the last 5 books starring Fallion Val Orden.  I recently finished the first half of the series and that is what I’m writing about today.  

WARNING: SPOILERS FOR THE RUNELORDS SERIES IF YOU HAVE NOT READ THE FIRST 4 BOOKS AND ARE INTERESTED IN THE SERIES PLEASE DONT READ THIS.

     This was an amazing fantasy series.  Anybody that knows me knows that The Belgariad and The Mallorean by David Eddings will always be my favorite fantasy series but this one offered some very interesting and entertaining viewpoints of the fantasy world.  One of the biggest differences between the two is pacing.  In The Runelords the pacing was very very good.  Some fantasy series get ridiculously boring because everything is very drawn out and prolonged and story progression just does not happen.  For no reason.  Other series (liked Belgariad and Mallorean) are very fast paced and you learn about the characters through their actions and not chapter long deep self reflection.  The Runelords offers a very good mix between these two pacings because it takes it’s time with events that are important and lengthy such as battles or traversing beautiful landscapes, but instead of focusing on a single character’s lengthy, lengthy, perception of boring events, it quickly shows different viewpoints from different characters that invigorates and immerses you into the story.  

     The Runelords also has very good character building and writing.  The main character, Gaborn is not the extremely powerful, confident character you seen in some fantasy stories, but he is also not the extremely innocent farm boy with a destiny trope (i.e. Garion, Frodo.)  A huge part of the series is about learning how to be a king, a king to the world if necessary, and learning how to deal with the power, responsibility, and consequences that come with your decisions.  One of my favorite characters is Borenson.  Borenson is truly a tragic hero.  He comes from a poor, fatherless background and rises to become a huge man, a knight of the king’s guard.  In these four books he has to deal with some truly harrowing sacrifices and is one of the characters that suffers the most throughout the series.  Whether or not he comes out on top is still left to be seen because although he settles down with his wife at the end of the first four books, he reappears in Fallion’s story…

     That was my review for the first four books in The Runelords series, I highly encourage you to pick it up now if you are a fan of intense, high quality, fantasy.