The Sum of All Men: The Runelords, Book One

Exceptionally good book! Magic, romance, and characters that you love and others that love to hate.

It has been awhile for me to find a new series that is similar to and as good as the "Wheel of Time series" by Robert Jordan. Like the "Wheel of Time series", I am totally engrossed, sitting on the edge-of-my-seat listening. The plot is very interesting. Also, the book is up-beat (most of the time anyway). But, like George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" series there are some tragedies.

NARRATION: The narrator reads the Prolog in a way that seems too overacting, but after that his style of reading changes and I enjoyed listening.

At this point, I have commited to purchasing books 2 thru 4. Book two, I downloaded. Books 3 and 4 are not available on Audible(at this time), so I ordered them 'used' from Amazon.

David Farland has created a land where the rulers take advantage of a magical process by which one person can acquire the attributes of another, such as strength, stamina, glamour, metabolism, or grace. The person that gives the endowment loses the attribute and is "crippled" while the receiver is enhanced. These Runelords approach the process of receiving endowments from multiple moral perspectives and this adds to the richness of the story.

This ability to take/receive endowments re-defines how people live, rule, and fight wars and Farland goes into much detail explaining how this ability can be manipulated by good or evil. Rarely is such a structure governing magic so well defined in Fantasy books and for me it really helped make the magic seem more realistic and plausible.

Endowments aren't the only magic in this series and there is also a whole range of wizards that use various elemental magics, as well as strange creatures that live underground known as Reavers. Ray Porter does an excellent job of bringing all of these various characters to life with his narration.

This book hooked me pretty quickly and I have now listened to the first 4 books in the series. I have enjoyed them all, so this book is an excellent start to an excellent series.

I hope audible gets the rest of the titles in these series. This book is basically about a race of people who can steal others traits, such as intelligence, beauty, grace etc.

The story is about a young prince and his desire to thwart a villain who has enslaved and killed many people in his quest to be the perfect 'some of all men' an immortal being with thousands of human traits taken from others.

At first, I found the story a bit gruesome. It *IS* gruesome. But eventually I became engrossed. This is a tale about people with morally questionable habits. Can you take talent from others and still be human? Does the end really justify the means?

It poses some interesting ethical dilemnas even if the author doesn't go there as much as he should. But the talented people are very difficult to resist.

There are two things not mentioned in the description and reviews of this book so far that you should probably know:

1) The rune endowments are more complicated than it seems from the description.
2) Its not the only type of magic present in the book, its just the most common one. Nearly every character has an endowment of some sort, but a few characters (including the main character) have other magic.

So if like your like me and didn't think the rune system seemed that interesting don't worry about, theres much more to the book than that.

Interesting approach to the concepts of destiny, empowerment and the obligations of the privileged vs the commoner. Definitely worth the read, or listen. I hope the rest of the series makes its way onto
Audible.

Surprising, Epic, and Magical

Gaborn-reading about a character become the hero of series is always interesting and the way in which Gaborn comes into his own is great and worth the time it takes to read/listen to this book and those that follow in the series

The death of King Orden how tried to save the world from a man who takes from others to make himself the king of all. This sets up the rest of the book and the change that needs to happen in Gaborn for him to become something more than himself in which is the only way he can save the "earth"

This universe is setup great. The elemental magic system is not very original, but there take on it is different from most books. The real stand out element of there magic system is the concept of rune endowments, which can leave characters vulnerable through out the story; allowing for a dynamic change in a characters role in the story.

The main character or at least the character that the story centers around is well developed and is portrayed as a protagonist that relays on intelligence and cunning. In general the whole cast of characters are well developed. The only weakness in cast characters is the antagonist who is your typical take from everyone world domination bad guy that is a bit overplayed. However, it is a minor weakness and does not keep you from enjoying the story.

The narration is better done than most audio books.

Overall, this is a great beginning to the story and balances sword, sorcery and the overall story. This could stand to be a true epic fantasy classic. There is a minor political aspect to the book, but if you more interested in political balance than warfare it may not be for you. The book is set over a matter of days and alot happens for just a few days. However, everything around the characters is supposed to move at a slower pace the characters because of "metabolism endowments"( a day can seem like a week or weeks) ; it causes you to be okay with the fast pace of the story.

Very impressed with the story overall!! A very original idea that sparks a pretty incredible world and equally incredible characters that are constantly changing and evolving...literally. This world also leaves a lot opportunities for the story to go anywhere, and I enjoy the fact that the characters are grounded in good morals. Excellent narration by Ray Porter, and believe me I've suffered through some doosies but Mr. Porter really defines every character with their own tones and inflections. Not sure if it's the narrator or the director of the the narration, but I like that every break or chapter or change in story line is clearly defined.

This book has possibilities. It attempts to be an epic fantasy series and succeeds up to a point. The story line is great with great powerful lords and the poor wretches on which the lords step on. I liked the length and the narrator was good. Although there were some mispronunciations, they weren't terribly annoying. Other than a few gramatical mistakes the writing was interesting and the dialogue of "Gaborn" (I have NO idea how his name is spelled having only heard it.) was deep and thoughtful. I really liked his character because how many men are really going to behave that way?! Loving a woman no matter what is an attractive quality in a man! The thing that disappointed me, or made me not rate it 5, was the constant explanations of how the gifts affected the lords in general. It was good in that you really could begin to imagine it, but once you understand it, you don't need it explained again and again ;) I'm listening to it again before I get the 2nd book in the series. I'm hoping for lots of growth. This was a really good start.Let's hear it for honor, goodness and true love!

The story was interesting but there was no performance. The rate and tone of the reading in the middle of a battle is the same as during a courtship scene... all the same- very boring reading. I would like to get more of the books of the series but maybe I'll get them paperback not audio because of the narrator.

There is very touching moment that is indicated by the cover art of the paperback version but it would be a spoiler so I don't want to put it here.

Reading all the words in the right order is not a performance. It was very hard to listen and I didn't understand way because the story was interesting until I realized the reader reads all the scenes exactly the same, no excitement no tranquility just a steady sad reading.

Can we get the last book read by someone else?