Amazon.com Review
The Runelords is that rare book that will remind you why you started reading fantasy in the first place. Much of the setting--and even some of the story--is conventional fantasy fare, but David Farland, aside from being a masterful storyteller, has built his world around a complex and thought-provoking social system involving the exchange of "endowments." Attributes such as stamina, grace, and wit are a currency: a vassal may help his lord by endowing him with all of his strength, for instance, and in turn the vassal comes under the lord's care as his "dedicate," too weak to even walk. A Runelord might have hundreds of such endowments, giving him superhuman senses and abilities, but he then must care for the hundreds that he has deprived of strength, or beauty, or sight.
Runelords excels because this novel idea is not mere window dressing--Farland uses it to explore fundamental questions of life and morality. The story's hero, the young Runelord Gaborn, struggles to define his role in this "shameful economy" while keeping his commitments to himself, to his people, to the woman he loves, and to the earth itself. We end up asking ourselves the same questions: Should you choose your friends based on insight or virtue? Is it better to be just or good? Competent fantasy lets you escape to adventure in faraway lands, but exceptional fantasy makes sure you have something to think about when you get back. Runelords accomplishes the latter. --Paul Hughes
From Publishers Weekly
The intriguing hook behind Farland's first novel?and launch of a new fantasy series?is a complex magical technology whereby abilities such as wit, brawn and stamina are transferable from person to person. Most royalty and high-level soldiers take or pay for some endowments, often from those in lower strata of society, but the Wolf Lord Raj Ahten intends to add, by whatever means necessary, whole kingdoms'-full of abilities to himself, becoming the Sum of All Men. His opponent, Runelord and prince Gaborn Val Orden, matures during the novel, falling in love with Princess Iome Sylvarresta, whose kingdom is overrun by Raj Ahten. Aided by the herbalist and wizard Binnesman, Gaborn makes a mysterious vow, becoming the Erden Geboren, or Earthborn, heir to a different magic. An apocalypse may be approaching, in which Gaborn's elemental kingship provides the only hope. The magic is basic to Farland's story, not just painted on, and it and the society in which it plays out are rigorously and imaginatively elaborated. The author's characters, however, are less vivid and original. And with Raj Ahten triumphant for most of the book, and with such grim sources of even the heroes' power, readers looking for uplifting entertainment, or even for particularly convincing fantasy, may be disappointed with Farland's first novel, despite its many fine qualities.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.