chilledbeansoup 's review for:

The Stone of Farewell by Tad Williams
4.0
adventurous challenging emotional mysterious slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

4/5

Man this book took a while to get going - I very nearly DNF’d at 32% (200+ pages) since nothing had really happened. Book 1 had a similar issue, but at least in that time period lots of mystery had been seeded. Book 2 didn’t even have that. 

The glacial slow start aside, I did enjoy this book, although most of this book was to move the various characters into position for Book 3 and to give the reader more insight into the world and plots at play. I am looking forward to seeing the fruits of all the sewn seeds, but I’m also dreading how slow the next book will be to get going. 

Too much of a slow start and character moving to be a 5 star, but definitely a solid 4 star read. 

What I loved: 
* Simon’s mourning of Haestan and the questioning of the existence of God, and if he’s real, then he’s a bastard to let life be as brutal as it is. A very close to home anger-ridden grief 
* Holy crap is Pryrates even more terrifying in this book than in Dragonbone Chair! 
* I loved the chapter “Within God’s Walls”…it felt akin to the Red Wedding scene from Game of Thrones 
* Although predictable that she was going to screw them over, I found Skodi to be an interesting character and and enjoyable few scenes
* Thoroughly enjoyed the reveals and manoeuvring in Part 3! I was correct in my initial suspicions about Minneyar from way back at the beginning of Dragonbone Chair, though I had forgotten about these until just before the reveal 
* I need to know more about Cadrach! And I hope that Miriamele will be safe - I don’t trust, or like, the Earl! 

What I didn’t love: 
* The pacing was a big problem for me - if did make it hard to pick the book up at times