The Sum of All Men (The Runelords, Book One:) (utgåvan 1999)

Innovative fantasy that takes the Dungeons and Dragons concept of different levels of wit, stamina, and other abilities to a way of life, privilege and power. ( )

This book makes me feel conflicted, on one hand I enjoyed it to where I had a nagging feeling of wanting to continue knowing more. On the other the writing and descriptions at times made me roll my eyes and sigh.

To start the magic system is interesting. I like the idea of Runelords having endowments to make themselves stronger, and I like that as each endowment is added to a person their actual life expectancy is affected. Most of these endowments speed up ones life cycle and I really like how that was thought of and added, I enjoy that the use of magic has consequences to the user. I also liked that the original endowment holder gained their attributes back if their off host died. A lot of thought went into creating this magic system and while at first it was a bit confusing, once it got fleshed out, I found that I really enjoyed it.

Now as for the writing and descriptions, these at time were eye roll worthy. It was frustrating that every time a female was described her breasts had to be mentioned. I don’t need to know if they are perky, or flabby, bouncy, or stiff. It’s unnecessary and does nothing. There was also a lot of usage of the word Ugly, in referring to any woman who had zero glamour endowments, Borenson referred to his own soon to be sister-in-laws and mother-in-law as ugly a few times and that was frustrating. It’s definitely a fantasy world where women are only important based on their beauty which is a bit of a let down.

There was also the fact that a lot of the dialogue felt heavily scripted. In a conversation most lines ended or started with “Gaborn said, or Said Gaborn” it was over used and made the conversations aggravating to read. There was no emotion put into the conversations, most of the time I just visualized two people staring at each other talking with zero movements.

The overall story was compelling enough for me to keep coming back. I want to know how Gaborne is going to take down Raj Ahten, I wanted to read the battles, which while being short honestly make sense for the amount of endowments some of these men have.
The fight between King Orden and Raj Ahten was short but heavy because these men were so beefed up with endowments each hit was a devastating blow, which again goes back to whole endowments taking a toll on the human body, so in my mind it was a great fight.

I also enjoyed King Ordens character, I read a lot of fantasy books where the kings die out right at the start and you never get to know them and only hear of their great feats and wits, with King Orden I actually got to see and read of him being the king he was described as which I throughly enjoyed.

I will be continuing with the series as I am actually pretty interested in the world, magic and story, hopefully some of the writing gets better as the story progresses haha. ( )

Man versus Nature. Writ large.

Or larger, if you consider we're dealing with whole armies concentrated into a single man or the Earth in the other.

This is an epic fantasy that's competent in characters if not in extensive worldbuilding. But more importantly, it runs with a very, very cool idea. And cool ideas are COOL.

The skinny? Attributes can be given or taken from people and added to other individuals. Use runes plus guile, absolute force, or desperate pleading, and then you've got some insanely powerful superheroes and supervillains. Think that Jet Li movie, One, but instead of sucking, make the possibilities unlimited for all characters. Want super eyesight? Take 100 the good eyesight from a hundred people, let them go blind, and become hawkeye. :) Same for Wit, Endurance, Metabolism, Glamour, or others.

Have the big bad become a god with all these attributes. He is the sum of all men. Now set the overmatched hero against him.

Cool, right? Simple, fun, and interesting. Not classic literature, but FUN. :)
( )

I thought this book was amazing!! I would have given it more stars if I could. There was so much magic and imagination in this book. I would recommend this to anyone who loves fantasy. ( )

I couldn't get past the first couple of chapters in this one. The writing style was just so clunky and awkward, with so much telling rather than showing. The characters didn't engage me either, which is a death knell for me as a reader. ( )