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16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Many strong points, but ultimately frustrating, October 24, 2000
By A Customer
There are a lot of things I liked very much about this book.. The background premise (the mysterious Stone, and the division of the mindpower and handpower worlds) is interesting. The writing is technically excellent, particularly good at evoking moods. The characters are likeable. The plot setup (evil theocracy, boy with a Destiny, etc.) takes standard genre tropes and twists them into something a little out of the ordinary, and the way it was developing toward the middle of the book was both unusual and unexpected. So why did I want to throw the book across the room when I finished it? Put simply, the story Ms. Strauss chose to focus on was not the story I wanted to read. The thing that hooked me most in the early and middle sections of the book was the gradual discoveries by the 2 main characters that their childhood assumptions and goals were based on misconceptions about the Way Things Were, and that the real world, and their real places in it, involved a lot more ambiguity and compromise than they expected. The middle sections of this book portrayed very sensitively the process of disillusionment, and the replacement of illusions with genuine understanding and idealism, and I was fascinated with the way the characters were developing. Unfortinately, what followed was not a continuation, but a contradiction: the story did a jump-cut across the following 20 years, and the characters have both arrived in places that are perfectly consistent with their early illusions, not at all so with the direction they seemed to be moving in before the break. How did this happen? We get a bit of backfill and narrative explanation, but the real answer can only be, that's what had to happen because the author needed it so to make her plot work out. There are a number of clumsy elements in the final third of the book (important things happening offstage, for instance, and repetition of events from different points of view) that show a significantly lower level of craftsmanship than the earlier portions. The handling of several characters in that section was also unsatisfying, and inconsistent with what had come before. The final twist of the plot was indeed unexpected, but I wasn't in the mood to appreciate it. What I wanted, and didn't get, was the 200 pages of the Missing Years. Enough is implied and reported that it seems likely some of the missing material may have actually been present in an earlier draft of the novel -- if so, I'm afraid it was a mistake to cut it out. The imperative to bring the paths of the 2 main characters into convergence may have been overwhelming -- but I would have been much happier with the result had it been resisted, and the plot allowed to take a different shape.
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Bare, Ruined, but Magical Choirs, February 25, 2001
"The Arm of the Stone" is a fantasy about religion gone bad - not my favorite type of reading - but this is a very powerful, intricately plotted book. It is chronicle of hatred, prophecy, and a very, very conservative religious elite who govern through magic (the Domain of the Mind)and forbid any kind of mechanical innovation (the Domain of the Hand). The 'Stone' of the title is the magical equivalent of a fragment of the True Cross. A millennium before this novel begins, the Stone was stolen from its loving and noble caretakers who are hunted to extermination over the years. As you begin to read, the Stone's true caretakers are reduced to a single family, and ultimately, to a single boy. How he seeks to recover the Stone and wreak vengence on those who stole it is the heart of the story. Now the bad news: reading this book was a lot like being a spectator at a chess match. If the cold, logical intricacies of the religion that play out through this book are of interest to you, you won't mind sitting still until the end game. The story's climax is certainly worth the wait. However, if you're like me you'll put "The Arm of the Stone" aside, maybe for a week at a time, and look for something a bit more frivolous. I read all ten of Roger Zelazny's Amber novels ("The Great Book of Amber") before I picked up "The Arm of the Stone" and finished it. The contrast between Zelazny's Amber and the grim, cold world of the Stone is like the difference between winning a vacation to Venusburg, or spending an eon in the refrigerated compartment of Purgatory. Zelazny's plots skip forward, driven by his wise-cracking, laid-back characters, while "Arm of the Stone" inches forward with all of the grim momentum of a glacier. All religious quibbles aside though, I'm ordering the sequel, "Garden of the Stone". I really did come to care about the Stone's two main characters, chess pieces though they were. And it's hard to find fantasy as original, and intricately plotted, and well-written as was "The Arm of the Stone." Read it out of duty, if not for fun.
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9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Kept me up all night, June 17, 1999
By A Customer
A gripping story which takes a standard fantasy story - the hero's quest for some stolen magic artifact - and makes it new. Lots of unexpected twists. I was especially intrigued by the world which Strauss created. The story is told from two points of view - one male and one female. Both characters are fully realized, complex people with conflicting goals. Read it just for kicks and you won't be disappointed - but thoughtful readers will also find lots to ponder here. Highly recommended.
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