Stone of Tears (The Sword of Truth #2) (original 1995; edition 1996)

Okay, I'm going to have to give you all a little bit of background information before I can give my review of this book, so bare with me!

This last spring my husband and I decided to get another cat, a kitten to be exact. We already have two and knowing that this will probably label us the "crazy cat people" of the neighborhood we decide to go ahead and do it anyway. Our oldest cat is, well, a bitch and hates the sweet fat cat with a vengeance. Tas (aka The Fat Man) seemed a bit sad and we wanted to get him a kitten to play with and nap with and generally buddy around with. I insist on a rescue kitten, no pet store kittens, Larry agrees. So we find the most ADORABLE little (part I'm sure) main coon and bring her home. She's an extremely loving kitty that likes to sleep right under my chin. That's were the first spot appeared. I hardly noticed it, other than the itching. I figured I'd been bitten by a bug...then I got one on my arm! I freak out and make an emergency vet appointment, which Larry thinks is a huge over reaction. Sure enough...the rescue kitten has ringworm ! Apparently cats, when they have ringworm, produce spores and shoot them all over your house, bed, carpet, couch, blankets, pillows, hardwoods...anywhere they can manage to get to. These spores, according to the vet, are highly contagious and can live up to a year in you carpet etc. A YEAR! June, July and most of August is spent with our house quarantined. For weeks I am lathering up cats with lotions and shampoo. Have you ever tried to shampoo your cat? Well, if you have, imagine that you have to let the anti-fungal shampoo sit on them for 10 minutes before you wash it off. Yeah right. If you didn't already know, ringworm is actually a fungus, like athletes foot...on YOUR FACE ! Or, arms, legs, whatever. At one point I was going to work with at least 20 of those little round band-aids stuck all over my arms and legs. It was ridiculous, I was getting new spots every single day! I was obsessed with washing, mopping, vacuuming...like when your kid brings home lice from elementary school. You know there was nothing you could have done to prevent it, you know you are a clean person, but everything feels...dirty. For weeks after the spots were gone and we'd shampooed the carpets I was still slathering Lotrimin on anything that remotely felt like it might be an itch, just.in.case!

I said all that to say this, I would gladly go through that all again, start to finish rather than ever have to read this book again! It only gets two stars, because I am the biggest sucker that ever lived for a happy ending. In that, Mr. Goodkind (Oh, the irony of that name!) did not disappoint. It was as happy and icky sweet as you could possibly ever want and more.

I'm pretty sure Mr. Goodkind has to be a closet sexual sadist. Nearly every woman in the book was either raped or nearly raped, someone attempted to rape her or promised to rape her but simply didn't live long enough. It started in the first book with the rape and torture, but this book took it to a whole other level. Torture is also a pretty constant theme, hence the sexual sadist rather than wanna be rapist. It got to the point that it was actually wearing on me, starting to annoy me and then even piss me off. His picture at the back of the book didn't help, it was the most smarmy, self important, arrogant picture I've ever seen of an author (that I can recall). Unfortunately I accidentally saw it rather early on in the book (all 900 or so bloody pages!) and I have to admit that it did taint my reading experience in a VERY bad way.

Photo of which I speak: http://aidanmoher.com/blog/wp-content...

Of course, he was horribly repetitive and overly descriptive, even more so than in the first book. I think that part of the reason I liked book one so much better was that I hadn't yet seen the above photo and I had watched the entire first season of The Legend of the Seeker, a poor Sci-Fi Channel adaptation of the book and the book was so much better that it seemed not too bad. Unfortunately for the second book I wasn't able to stomach the second season of the show and therefore had nothing worse to compare it to.

You know how annoying it is when someone learns a new vocabulary word and insists on using it at every given opportunity until you begin to hate that person and by association that word? As if the word has some how done something to you, personally, offended you so grievously that you now loath that word and cringe when you hear it? Well, Mr. Goodkind, at some point around 200 pages in had this epiphany that if the word "invincible" meant immune to harm then "vincible" was just as good of a word for "vulnerable"! He used it so often that it once appeared twice in the same paragraph and three times on one page! I now completely hate the word "vincible" and eventually had trouble restraining myself from scratching it off the page!

What also occurred to me while reading this was that it read more like a romance novel with some wizards 'n junk than it did a fantasy novel with some romance thrown in. The whole deal with the collar and "she doesn't love me anymore" boo hoo crap. Gah! I had to skip huge swaths at the end where he rambled on for a page of description for him getting from one end of the palace to the other. Who does he think he is Herman Melville?

Let me put it into context for you, Davey. If David Eddings (a contemporary fantasy writer of Goodkind) is The Cure, then Terry Goodkind is Julian Lennon. They're both English and were recording at the same time. One is fabulous and the other makes you want to claw at your own ears, or eyes in the case of Mr. Goodkind.

I read a review of his first book by this girl who's boyfriend wanted her to read it. Out of love for him she tried, but said that she would rather "smell her dogs breath and then lick his teeth than read that book". I anorted. I now know exactly how she feels. ( )

The writing has improved slightly with this one, but you can't really take them seriously. Poor old Richard seems destined to be tortured by every woman he meets. This is only book two, but they seem to be following a pattern of woe, disaster and then Richard saving the day at the very last minute. Ah well, sometimes you need books like this to read... ( )

This is the second book in «The Sword of Truth» series and I think I liked it even more than the first one. This time Richard, Kahlan and Zedd are separated from each other and have to deal with their own adventures in order to be together again. Kahlan stands out as an amazing feminine character, more similar to the one portrayed in «The Legend of the Seeker» TV series.
This is the kind of book that independently of its thickness you simply can’t put it down and lasts only for a couple of days. When you’re not reading it, you’re dreaming about what happened and what is going to happen. And a lot does happen! There’s barely a second of peace for the lot of them!
And then the amazing philosophy lessons embeded throughout the actions of every character and in the laws of magic are amazing and make me think of life. ( )

After finally finding a way to be together at the end of Wizard's First Rule, Richard and Kahlan are separated by sinister forces beyond their comprehension. Each must undergo a perilous journey: Richard through the Wilds and beyond the great barrier into the Old World, a vast land beyond the three introduced in the first book; and Kahlan northward to Aydindril, through the harsh winter climate of the Midlands with a Mud-People escort, to seek the help of First Wizard Zeddicus Z'ul Zorander.

While Richard's is the more essential for advancing the plot of the series as a whole, this is really Kahlan's story. We finally get to see the Mother Confessor in action, as she confronts vast armies against impossible odds, and scheming politicians at home. Her journey and fate are breathtaking and moving.

If you liked the first book in this excellent series, you will love the second. ( )

I have to admit--I rather giggle at some of the rather snarky reviews of this book. There are times I found this book cheesy, and its sadomasochistic touches disturbing. Enough that I feel a bit sheepish I do like it that much (after book 7 I didn't like the series at all, so fair warning) but yes, overall I did greatly enjoy this sequel to Wizard's First Rule--and that book I loved.

A blurb for that first book from Piers Anthony called the book "endlessly inventive" and I do think that's a lot of the book's charm. I've seen some parts of the books in the series compared to Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time, of which I only have read the first book. But what I liked, at least at first, and certainly in the first two books, is that the magical system and world-building felt fresh. This did not, unlike Jordan and Brooks, feel like a Middle-Earth wannabe. And if I liked Richard and Kahlan, well I loved Zedd. So I was happy to follow their adventures here as they sought to save the Midlands. This starts off just as Wizard's Last Rule ends, and I found it a seamless continuation. ( )