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kartik_nagar 's review for:
Stone of Farewell
by Tad Williams
3.5 stars.
While a cursory read of the Memory, Sorrow and Thorn series may lead a reader to judge it as a ripoff of the Lord of the Rings series (elves, dwarves and giants, a big bad evil and dangerous magical objects), and there are some other influences which are painfully apparent (the Aedonite religion is a really poor disguise of Christianity), the deeper you go into the series, the more richer it gets, and by the end of the second volume, Stone of Farewell, the series has well and truly carved its own path and has a unique story to tell. In particular, the elf-like Sithi are a very well-crafted and original creation, and their philosophies of life (and death) are very thought-provoking. The meticulous nature of the Sithi, their slow and brooding lives, their technological development which is closely tied to flora and fauna, these are all closely tied to their really large life-spans, and the slow reveal that almost all the plot developments may also be the result of this large disparity in the lifespans of humans and Sithi is really fascinating.
While a cursory read of the Memory, Sorrow and Thorn series may lead a reader to judge it as a ripoff of the Lord of the Rings series (elves, dwarves and giants, a big bad evil and dangerous magical objects), and there are some other influences which are painfully apparent (the Aedonite religion is a really poor disguise of Christianity), the deeper you go into the series, the more richer it gets, and by the end of the second volume, Stone of Farewell, the series has well and truly carved its own path and has a unique story to tell. In particular, the elf-like Sithi are a very well-crafted and original creation, and their philosophies of life (and death) are very thought-provoking. The meticulous nature of the Sithi, their slow and brooding lives, their technological development which is closely tied to flora and fauna, these are all closely tied to their really large life-spans, and the slow reveal that almost all the plot developments may also be the result of this large disparity in the lifespans of humans and Sithi is really fascinating.