It is no great secret that David Farland is a pseudonym of Dave Wolverton, author of bestselling Star Wars novel The Courtship of Princess Leia and other science fiction novels. Just thought that I'd set that straight in case you actually have read some of this author's works without realizing The Runelords was also one of his.

In this book, he turned to epic fantasy for the first time, but unfortunately followed in the footsteps of that great trailblazer, Robert Jordan, in at least one important item, an item which I deeply wish Jordan's colleagues would adamantly refuse to emulate. That item is to publish the first book of a long-winded epic fantasy without giving the readers any clues to just how many more of these books you intend to toss out before mercifully calling it a day and unleashing the grand finale upon the characters you've been tormenting for so long. Terry Goodkind was quick to follow this noble example with his Sword of Truth series; John Marco followed it with his Tyrant and Kings; Raymond Feist actually had a head start on Jordan with his earliest Riftwar books, but has since continued to bring back his major characters for one subseries-within-a-series after another in the worlds of Midkemia and/or Kelewan, and George R. R. Martin boldly promised that A Game of Thrones would be the first of a mere four volumes in his epic A Song of Ice and Fire, but by the publication of the second volume, he was recanting to say actually there would be four more, for a total of six!

Well, enough of my maunderings about the most disturbing new trend in epic fantasies. Let's discuss this one. Farland put a lot of thought into the principal magic system being used by the characters in this world (although there are other varieties of magic which are rarer). As the title of the book may have informed you, it has to do with runes. There is a special metal called "blood metal" which, when formed into certain runes, can be used to transfer endowments from one being to another (usually from human to human, but it works with other combinations of donor and recipient as well). If you give an endowment of sight, the recipient now has vision twice as sharp as that of a normal human, and you are blind. If you give an endowment of strength, he is now twice as strong (approximately - depending on how strong you were to begin with) and you are weak as a kitten and will spend the rest of your life in bed having people spoon-feed you and change your bedpans. If you give an endowment of wit, your brain stops doing you much good and instead is used to upgrade his own data-storage abilities - i.e. he now has a perfect memory, since he's using your brain to increase his potential. There are many other types of endowments which can be given, and I'll leave it for you to discover most of them for yourself. I will mention, however, that royal families normally pay handsomely for endowments of various types for their children, which explains why princes are always handsome, strong, and otherwise superior to mere commoners, and why the princesses are always beautiful (their doting fathers buy endowments of glamour, i.e. beauty, for them). I always thought it was a bit odd that heroic fantasies almost never had any princess who grew up to be less than breathtaking in her physical appearance, but this is the first time I've seen a really logical explanation for why that is so.

Since the aristocracy obviously has most of the money and political power, they tend to collect most of the runes and endowments. Hence the title "Runelords." However, endowments can be arranged between commoners if both sides are willing. It appears that the process doesn't really work unless the donor is actually willing to go through with it, which prevents kings from simply grabbing unsuspecting people at random and stealing their strength, wit, glamour, sight, hearing, and so forth at the drop of a hat. In general, it appears that you have a pattern of poor people offering to sell one thing or another in order to get money from the rich people who can afford to stock up on lots of endowments to make themselves even tougher than they already are.

Death is important here. If the recipient of an endowment dies, then whatever ability he had taken from the donor is instantly returned. Vision or strength or whatever. Likewise, if the donor (called a Dedicate) dies, then the recipient instantly loses the use of whatever endowment he had been siphoning from that person. Accordingly, standard operating procedure when Runelords go to war is to try to have small groups of assassins infiltrate the areas where the enemy keeps the Dedicates of himself and his enhanced soldiers under armed guard, and start slaughtering them. The more Dedicates your assassins can cut down, the more you are weakening the enemy army before you ever fight a pitched battle with them.

The major good guys of this story are the royal families of the nations of Heridon and Mystarria. (Also some loyal retainers and such, but we'll skip them.) The king of Heredon has a charming daughter (Iome) who's about the right age to get married, and the king of Mystarria has a charming son (Gaborn) who's about the right age to get married, and the two kings are old friends, so I'll give you one guess where the king and crown prince of Mystarria are planning to visit in the near future. Yes, the royal palace in Heredon! The idea was to let the two adolescents meet for the first time, get to know each other, then see if the princess would accept the prince's offer of marriage. This plan got cut short when a war started, however - so Gaborn and Iome just had to rush through the getting-to-know-each-other-better part as quickly as possible. The opening sentence of Chapter 8 is: "An hour is not enough time to fall in love, but an hour was all they had that cool autumn afternoon." By the end of the scene, Farland has emphatically disproved his own thesis that an hour simply is not enough time, which came as no surprise to anyone who saw the cliched situation coming a mile away (which means all of us, I suspect).

There are at least two big problems shaping up for the good guys in this story, and they have no discernible connection. One is the recent increase in the big ugly toothy bloodthirsty evil creatures called "reavers" which have scarcely been a problem in the area called the "Kingdoms of Rofehaven" for centuries. We suspect they're making a big comeback, however, but not much is done with that concept in this first volume. The other problem, which hogs the limelight, is the approach of the incredibly powerful ruler from lands south of the Rofehaven area: Raj Ahten, the Wolf Lord of Indhopal. A Wolf Lord is an unpleasant variety of Runelord: I said the endowment had to be voluntarily given, but "voluntarily" covers a lot of ground, and different Runelords have different senses of morality on the issue. A Wolf Lord is the type who would say to a man, "I want you to give an endowment of strength. You don't want to? First I'll have my soldiers skin your son alive, then I'll have them molest your daughter - wait, what did you just say? You want to give me an endowment of strength so I'll leave your kids alone? Hey, since you absolutely insist upon offering me that endowment, I'll take it!" By use of such pleasant negotiating strategies, Raj Ahten has collected thousands upon thousands of endowments and is practically a living god (and is not yet satisfied with the present levels of his immensely superhuman abilities, either). Naturally, Raj Ahten claims he is only using money and power and extortion and inhuman charm to dominate as many people as possible and strip-mine attributes from them so he can use his resulting power for the good of humanity. That worthy goal obviously justifies any amount of bloodshed as his conquering armies sweep across the map telling everyone to knuckle under to his tyranny or else perish for their defiance. (Where have I heard that one before? Hitler would be so proud! Not to mention lots of other conquerors before him.)

There are a couple of times when it seems Raj Ahten might be about to die, despite his vast strength and speed and all those other perks of rank. I might actually have felt lots of suspense and believed it possible that this would happen, if I had not known that this was only the first book of a series and I simply could not imagine Farland going to all the trouble to develop this fascinating superman type and then killing him off for good when the series was barely getting started. It would be like killing off Darth Vader in the middle of the original Star Wars movie when it came out in 1977: blatantly ridiculous on the face of it!

So, how do I feel about the book overall? I gave it four stars principally for all the effort he went into in constructing the endowment system of magic and thinking about how it would influence the customs of what is otherwise your typical medieval society. Also, to some extent, for the interest I developed in the major villain, Raj Ahten. I could not actually say that his writing style was much better than average. I had read a couple of other books by this author (although I did not realize Farland was also Wolverton until later on) and I'd never been wildly impressed by his way with words. I admit he really tries to develop the characters, but that doesn't mean I find myself breathlessly interested in everything they say and the descriptions of their every action and philosophical internal struggle. That was true when he wrote about the classic Star Wars characters, and it's true in this volume. I gather, however, that a great many people disagree with me.

Note: Other SF/Fantasy authors of whom this could be said include Mercedes Lackey, Terry Brooks, Tanith Lee, R.A. Salvatore, Melanie Rawn, and Arthur C. Clarke. Although there have been exceptions where a particular short story or novel by one of those authors struck me as quite readable. As you can see, winning my personal approval is not an absolute necessity if you want to become successful in the SF/Fantasy industry. These reminders that my tastes are not universally shared help keep me humble.

Or, to put it in very simple and practical terms: I first read this book when I saw it on the shelves at the library in 1998, but I didn't feel any need to buy a copy until it came out in paperback the following year. I believe that was right about the time the second book came out in hardback. I checked that out from the library too when opportunity permitted, but didn't buy a copy until the paperback release. The third one recently came out in hardback and I haven't read it yet, although I will when I can do so cheaply or for free. Farland has managed to qualify for my "buy in paperback" list, but he's nowhere near having me so fascinated that I'd consider letting him join the very exclusive ranks of my "MUST BUY NEWEST INSTALLMENT RIGHT AWAY IN HARDBACK!" list. If you buy this baby in hardback and then regret the wasted money, don't say I didn't warn you!

P.S. Farland also has some rather strange ideas of what constitutes a terrible moral quandary, but I prefer not to go into details. One of the big examples comes at the very end of the book, and I'd have to explain much of the plot to you first. Suffice it to say that I was scratching my head and saying, "What a no-brainer! Why is everyone getting so upset over what that one guy felt he had to do, under the circumstances?"


Recommended: Yes