It is an excellent book to begin an excellent series. It is a very familiar plotline of the boy from a small town destined for great things, but I like this trope. It promises much more after it's all been written, and I love the descriptive style. I love medieval fantasy, and this provides it in spades. I also like that, unlike older fantasy, women are front and center as the Aes Sedai, and are the only people who can use magic. Of course, it does appear that the ultimate hero is a man here, but this is still light years ahead of other fantasy tropes, and this is 30 years ago! This contrasts nicely with older fantasy with barely any female characters and those that were there are rarely fully developed.
I also like the different creatures in this world. While it is clear that Tolkien influenced Jordan, he also created a new set of creatures, such as Trollocs and Myrddraal, instead of rehashing Tolkien's creatures. This, along with what they've changed regarding gender roles, means that there is enough difference in this world that it is not just another Tolkien story, but great writing on its own.
Well, I was hoping I liked this book more than the last, and I wasn't disappointed. While certainly not on the caliber of the first half of the series, this is a good book, and I liked it much more than Worldbinder. Farland seems much more sure of himself in this book, and seems to be developing characters that he's sticking with, instead of the situation as I felt in the last book, where he seemed to be uncommitted to either the world he had created or the one he was creating, he seems invested in this one. I'm getting to know these characters better, instead of seeing them as the bastardized versions of the previous characters I'd enjoyed. After too much turnover, and then several key characters only lasting one book, this one makes it seem that we'll be sticking with them for a while.
I enjoyed in this book the fact that we're getting to see Wyrmlings as people, far more than we ever got to know the Reavers. Of course, the Wyrmlings are definitely portrayed as inherently evil and knowing it, vs the Reavers, who were only evil, IMHO, the way an antelope sees the lion as evil. I also love the way that Vulgash was dealt with! I'm not sure I could have come up with that interesting way of doing it without “attacking” him!
Overall, a worthy addition to the Runelords saga! Yes, unfortunately, it means slogging through Worldbinder, but this book made it worth it!
What more can be said? A classic. I try to read it every year in December. If only the message resonated more clearly...
Well, for starters, this book goes well beyond the sentence “Do whatever it takes to win.” Detractors, chiefly those who want morality to rule all dealings, paint this book as advocating stabbing everyone else in the back at the earliest possible convenience. They take the whole book as being the line “It is better to be feared than loved.” In reality, the book is so much more than this.
As has been stated ad nauseum by others, this book is ultimately about realpolitik. Bottom line, others will stab you in the back, so you need to be prepared for it and be willing to stab others in the back yourself. It doesn't advocate breaking alliances but says that there will be times that doing so is necessary, as will be breaking one's word. Anyone who thinks honesty is the best policy at all times is living a fantasy. Anyone who lets their hated boss know what they really think of them is likely to find themselves not working for this boss sooner than they had planned.
Finally, surprisingly, he is a big fan of the people. He states in several sections that it is more important to have the people on one's side than the nobility, if for no other reason that the nobles have more means to depose the prince, while the people outnumber the nobles. Whoa, betide the aristocracy of today if the masses were ever to remember this seemingly obvious fact.
Some criticisms, the thoughts do seem a little swingy in places. He seems to be a fan of republics, but then in portions of the Discourses, included in this edition, he says that republics oppress their people, while claiming that princes do not. In the meantime, in the Prince, he is a fan of republics. When he claims that multitudes are more constant than masses, he seems to jump through quite a few hoops and does quite a bit of cherry picking to “prove” this. and I'll grant that he did this because both of these works had intended audiences and purposes, but one should be aware of this fact as they're reading either one. I also wonder how one would take modern nationalism and mass media into account. Obviously, we can't fault him for not knowing that newspapers, and then radio, and then television, and finally the internet right on portable viewing devices, but these technologies make it very different how the people are impacted. In his view, the people won't care who the ruler is so long as they can prosper, but we see how proud modern people are to be American, or French, or Japanese, or whatever. I think these change the reality from anything he could have discerned from his time.
All in all, this is a must-read. The only thing, I would suggest a different edition. Daniel Donno, the translator of this edition, says he omitted some chapters that related to the military. Presumably, this is because they discuss military tactics and technology, which have obviously both moved on since Machiavelli's day, but I can't tell because they're not in this edition. Donno stated that he felt those chapters would be of little interest to modern (1966) readers, however, I would prefer to make that choice myself. I would also prefer to read the Discourses in their entirety rather than the piecemeal selections included here.