David Farland
The Runelords
The Sum of
All Men. I.
1998
1998
A good
book, one that I would have loved to love, but ultimately couldn’t.
First, the racial divide: the “Arabic” people are uniformly hard, servile and stupid_ the bad asses of the tale_ while the Whites are in 3D, with varied personalities_ the victims. If fantasy is to represent the physical and cultural races of our world so obviously, then it may want to show some respect in doing so and grant each and every one human with credibility. Too often did this first volume read like a nod at the great patriotic flag of whiteness.
Beyond this, imagine the board of a fantasy game with great obstacles, cards of power, heroes and foes, and a complete inventive lore at hand to make you truly get into it. The systems of endowments, the Days, and the House of Understanding work to form a clever and deep context that really sets the story going. Too bad, then, that in this first book Farland never tackles them too seriously. From one adventure in the woods to the next, the pages read fast, too fast to let you ponder the underdevelopments and the character complexity that should have necessarily flowed from them, yet didn’t. All in all, The Sum of All Men lays the ground for achieving an emotional and philosophical masterpiece, but never reaches.
First, the racial divide: the “Arabic” people are uniformly hard, servile and stupid_ the bad asses of the tale_ while the Whites are in 3D, with varied personalities_ the victims. If fantasy is to represent the physical and cultural races of our world so obviously, then it may want to show some respect in doing so and grant each and every one human with credibility. Too often did this first volume read like a nod at the great patriotic flag of whiteness.
Beyond this, imagine the board of a fantasy game with great obstacles, cards of power, heroes and foes, and a complete inventive lore at hand to make you truly get into it. The systems of endowments, the Days, and the House of Understanding work to form a clever and deep context that really sets the story going. Too bad, then, that in this first book Farland never tackles them too seriously. From one adventure in the woods to the next, the pages read fast, too fast to let you ponder the underdevelopments and the character complexity that should have necessarily flowed from them, yet didn’t. All in all, The Sum of All Men lays the ground for achieving an emotional and philosophical masterpiece, but never reaches.
P.S. That
Iome character is one insufferable girl. 5 pages after meeting her, I started
to call her ‘Princess Useless’.
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