Stone of Farewell (Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, Book 2) Mass Market Paperback – August 6, 1991

This book arrived in the best condition and was early in arriving as well! This seller is the best! Can't say enough good things or recommend them highly enough!

As the second novel in Tad Williams four part trilogy, "memory, Sorrow and Thorn" "The Stone of Farewell" suffers from very few of the defects that made the first book, "The Dragonbone Chair" kind of hard to like-at least in it's first forth or so.From page one this book is all action. Josua Lackhand, the high king's brother, stronghold has been broken by his brothers new and very deadly and evil allies the Norns-along with one of the red hand, the Storm king's undead five fellows. Josua himself escaped with a very small band of followers but in the falling of the castle not only men were lost-precious knowledge and the last remaining master of the league of the scroll are gone- leaving massive riddles to be untangled.But nothing can be figured out if there is no safe haven for Josua's people. And so along the increasingly unsafe dream road and through wise women and men it is passed that they must go to the stone of farewell-an old Sithi gathering place where they can regroup. But first they must win their way through the oldest and deepest of Osten Ard's forests and across leagues held by unfriendly peoples.Simon and his mixed bad of human, troll and Sithi seekers succeeded in their quest for the great sword Thorn in the frozen north but a high toll was taken by the minions of the Norn Queen and an ancient ice dragon. But their mission is by no means over-many things hinder the group in returning the sword to Josua.Miriamele, the high king Elias' daughter, abandoned her father in favor of her uncle but is determined not to sit about and wait-so she took off for Nabban, the lands her mother hails from to try and gain support for Josua's cause-with only a corrupt and highly secretive monk Cadrach, who has an extremely mysterious past. Once again Miriamele travels as a black haired boy instead of a blond noblewoman- but even in disguise a princess may be recognized-and used as a powerful bargaining chip...And in the swamp lands of Osten Ard-a place called the Wran-a man named Tiamak sends and receives small gray birds of the very kind used by the scroll league-but of the very little news he receives from the few members still answering him, all is troubling and indicates he may have to leave his enclosed society behind and seek out things he has only every dreamed of.Filtered through the rest of the book are more questions-about the Sithi, about the three great swords and how to use them, about the Storm King-about the very nature of Osten Ard itself. And more then one battle-as nearly all free people in the nation have come under attack from Elias and those loyal to him.Like I said this book moves at a breakneck pace. From crisis to crisis, fight to fight and flight to flight we follow the action of this wonderfully complicated story. The characterization remains very real (especially Simon's continued evolution from boy to man, mooncalf to, well, man) the detailed description of the landscape is almost unreal and the shivery nature of the threat faced is almost leaping off the pages.It may have taken him a while but when William's got this story moving he really got it moving!Five stars.

The Stone of Farewell is Tad Williams' middle book in his epic fantasy saga Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn. It is a definite improvement of the first book, though it doesn't shake off all of the first book's ills.The prose is much improved. Williams finally finds his knack for incredibly descriptive and oddly intriguing metaphors. Gone are the obtuse puzzlers from the first book. Williams' ability to compare unlike things to really draw a mental picture is quite good and will leave you with some very striking imagery.Having said that, the editing is still terrible. Misplaced punctuation marks, especially periods, really break up the flow and pull you out of the moment. As with the first one, I'm not sure if this is just poor editing or a byproduct of converting the paperback to the Kindle edition, but it's terrible.The plot and characterization are a mixed bag, but the bad parts aren't so unpleasant as to drive you away from the book. The pacing is still very off, which I think drives the oddities with the plot and characters. Williams spends a lot of time showing that Simon, now a more mature young man (sort of), is still just a teenage scullion-turned-warrior who doesn't want to get up early, doesn't feel like saving the world, just wants to go home to be a scullion again. While intriguing at first, by the end of the book Williams presents so many examples of this that eventually you get tired of Simon's whining and just want to reach through the book and slap him. Even by the end of the book, after all the horrors Simon has lived through, he still acts like a whiny brat at times. Williams drags Simon's hero's journey out just a little too long, making Simon's in-between phases just a little too pronounced. This seems to throw the character into fits of going a little out of character one way when he's been acting the other.Miriamele's journey with Cadrach is another example of a plot line drawn farther out than it should have. At first, the odd pairing of a princess with a drunkard, thieving priest seems interesting, but after the umpteenth time that Cadrach gets drunk and does something shady to or with Miriamele, you begin to wonder when it's all going to come together.In all, the second book does a serviceable job of what most "middle of the trilogy" books should do: It serves as a bridge between the first and third books, getting the characters from the end of book one to the beginning of book three. If the entire book could have been trimmed by 50 or so pages, it would've been splendid.

Probably somewhere low 4* not quite 4.5, the author has excelled in inventing a MC that not only is tedious but feels like he is purely there so that the other characters "do things"! As far as Simon is concerned there has been little to no character development & he is still an annoying teenager, unfortunately he has also decided that Miriamele should go the same way.Again this is a tome & I did find myself struggling at the 3/4's mark but a lot of this is the authors tendency to take 5 pages to say the same as he could in a short paragraph. Also a couple of story arc/plot devices that just make no sense - the sword Thorn, firstly no-one can pick it up, then it's as light as a feather for Simon, then it's not but still other characters can pick it up .....Very strange in that I sort of like it enough to want to finish the series but to be honest if I had to wait for the next book, I probably wouldn't bother- if that makes sense.

Tad William's Memory, Sorrow and Thorn trilogy (+1) of books is a thoroughly engrossing read. I enjoyed reading them in paper back form in the dim and distant past. I decided to grab a new Kindle version for convenience of reading ...Unfortunately, the conversion to Kindle has errors. Mostly, it's just missing the breaks that show that the story has moved onto other things ... but reading just now the chapter 17 "A wager of little value" (loc 7623 on Kindle) I find myself irritated enough to write this review. In the middle of Joshua's encounters in the High Thrithings (no details; I won't spoil the story) the Kindle text goes straight to a discussion of Eolair's pending journey with nothing more that a comma for punctuation. This continues for a couple of pages before jumping back to Joshua (with a chunk of the story missing).I've had to grab my old paper back copy off the shelf to read the story as intended!Not good enough. Message to the publisher: please try harder! Choosing Kindle format shouldn't mean the text of the book gets messed up.

After reading 'A Song of Ice and Fire', I found myself craving more dark and gritty adult fantasy. After an extensive search via Google, this kept coming up as a recommendation for anyone wanting a George RR Martin style story.Honestly, this is just about made it in the category of mediocre for me. While the initial set up of the story was interesting, Williams failed in his delivery and ending. Considering this is the last book in the series, none of the characters really develop or grow. Particularly Simon; everything he has been through should have made him more interesting, but Williams still portrays him as a dumb teenager, full of hormones and unrealistic dreams of glory and honour. Binabik and Josua were the only interesting characters that proved to be multidimensional in the end. Also, the story still felt like set up, needlessly so. The climax happens in last few chapters and it was meh. The main villain finally appears, in all his might and power, only to disappear in the same chapter and how it happens is quite confusing. I had to read it a couple of times to realize what happened, and what happened was stupid to be frank and reminded me more of Disney than adult fantasy.Also, Williams' overly rambly and waffly style just got too much for me in the end. Some chapters, which were several pages long, were literally description and internal monologues/thoughts of the character and nothing else. This could have been redeemable, but the descriptions/introspections were just boring and I found myself skipping most of it because it did not really add anything meaningful. Similarly, the character dialogue was very, for lack of a better way of describing it, cringy. Williams uses modern day style language and phrases that just feel out of place in the world he has created. While not necessarily a problem, it is the fact he has juxtaposed it with archaic (medieval style) language and it just does not work.Honestly, I just forced myself to read this because I bought all the entire series at once. There are plenty of better series out there for anyone craving adult fantasy.

A okay entry in the series and nothing more.First of all the kindle book has some real issues in one spot. At one point I am pretty sure paragraphs are missing as we are talking about some companions in the middle of the forest and within the same sentence it jerks to a ongoing fight halfway across the map that started earlier in the book within the same sentence?!?!?In terms of plot, being perfectly honest it does not move the book forward that much at all which is a shame. There are some intriguing elements but at the same time so annoyed with battles being told from a persons POV who ends up fainting or some faff then the other half of the book is everyone falling asleep or thinking or falling asleep.Character wise we seem some development in some and I really do love some of the secondary characters, on the other hand I am once again disappointied by how a certain strong female character in the first book becomes well a child again in this story and reminds me so much of the painted man series in some ways.In all this is a mediocre middle of the series, possibly in part down to the kindle issues with the version. However being half way through the series I will conclude it, but it does fall someway short of the first book. Not a bad read but not great.

Some of the best writing I have ever come across can be found in this book; I would often reread a passage as though reading poetry, marvelling in the descriptive power of this great author. But the story, the most important element, is sooo slow and so often boring, with the main character barely getting much "screen time". As I am re-reading this series twenty-five years after the first time, in order to prepare myself for the new series, it was even harder to get a grip on it, taking me over a year to finish it. A series worth sticking with, but the worst of the trilogy for overall entertainment.