Customer Reviews

The Last Book of Swords: Shieldbreaker's Story (Swords Series)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

If you enjoyed the rest of the series, stop and don't read this book. Yes, you will be left wondering what happens to the rest of the swords, who is the Emperor, what happens to Mark and the rest, but live with the curiosity. This book goes beyond anticlimactic, it is just awful. The ending and the explanation of the Emperor is so...I can't even find words for how disappointing it is.
I'm left wondering if Saberhagen didn't outgrow the series and quickly wrote Shieldbreaker's story to bring the series to a close so he could move on to other endeavors. I can not believe that he actually thought that this ending would satisfy his readers.

I can not stress enough how thoroughly disappointing and frustrating the ending of this book is. Saberhagen should personally apologize to everyone who read this book

I've been following this series all the way from its beginning with the Empire of the East series and I was extremely disappointed with the seemingly rushed way this one was written. Egad, what a goofy way to explain the Emperor figure. I was hoping for an intelligent tie in back to the Empire of the East premise, but ah well. The rest of the series is great.

I bought all paperbacks from the first trio through last book and sat down and read them from beginning to end. I have to conclude that this story was the most disappointing of all of them. Unfortunately for me Sheildbreaker's book was the reason why I force fed some of the other bad ones. This book in paticular is bizzare and inconsistent as far a as plot and environment with respect to the series. In summary, I didn't like the way the other swords played out and I thought the characters were neglected and unengaging. As far as I am concerned this series found a creative niche to add personality and intrigue to all the swords, quite uncommon for this genre surprisingly, however, the plots, stories, chararcters, ideas and action scenes fell well short of a great series let alone good stories. I am sorry, but I cannot recommend this book (or series) to anyone. For what it is worth, Book 2 of swords was the best of them all. In some way, I wish the author could have a do-over with the swords concept. Great ideas, not so good implementation.

I just finished a rereading of the entire Swords series, from The First Book of Swords, straight through to Shieldbreaker's Story. I first read these books in high school, and was interested to see how everything would hold up.

The answer: not well. While I absolutely LOVE the idea behind these books-- Twelve nigh-invincible, God-forged swords that give their owners specific powers that also come with amazing drawbacks-- the writing throughout the series just doesn't hold up. Often times it feels like one is reading the minutes of some board meeting, rather than an epic fantasy tale set in the far-flung future.

But let's get to this particular book, Shieldbreaker's Story. I actually like the ending of this book, I like where it goes, even if it is poorly written and clunky. My main issue with this book is the MASSIVE character and plot mistakes that make me feel as if the author had completely forgotten the previous books.

***SPOILERS BELOW***
At the end of the third book (the last in the Complete Book of Swords compilation), The Dark King Vilkata is thrust down an anonymous mountainside by the dying god Vulcan, where he ostensibly remains until The Mindsword's Story, when he returns to the Great Game. Meanwhile Baron Amintor, a general of the Dark King's enemy Queen Yambu, has his own series of failed adventures in other books.

Then, for some reason, in Shieldbreaker's Story, Fred Saberhagen writes that Amintor and Vilkata had been associates in the past, and that they had worked together previously. As far as I can tell, that is exactly opposite of what has been told in previous books.

Secondly, many characters refer to The Emperor as Queen Yambu's husband (even she does this) while in previous books it had been stated that Yambu had turned down the Emperor's proposal of marriage more than once. All of the sudden in the last book this changes.

***END SPOILERS***

These are just a few of some fairly egregious mistakes and plot holes in the book, which cast a shadow on the series as a whole. For me, they do a lot to ruin the experience of reading the book.

While some people suggest skipping this book, I can't advise that... I always like to see things through to the end. Just know that it will not be a completely satisfying end, due chiefly to the author's laziness or confusion regarding his own tales.

I followed the Swords series when I was a kid in Jr High and later High School. The concept really is fantastic, one of the best premises I've seen in a genre that generally recycles the same tired old Tolkeinesque tropes over & over. The execution is a bit uneven from book to book, but it almost always stays engaging and entertaining.

This final offering, though, is a total disaster. With the exception of the first couple of chapters, the entire tale is a hastily delivered headlong rush to nowhere. Characters that have been mainstays of the previous ten books are dragged onto the stage for a couple of paragraphs for reaction quotes, engage in brief, pointless skirmishes, and then disappear again for several dozen pages.

There really is no coherent plot thread to bind all this frantic action together. The entire story is a transparent exercise to both destroy all of the iconic, titular Swords and grope for a plausible connection to Saberhagen's previous "Empire of the East" books.

Fans of previous Swords books will find this a dull & prolonged anticlimax to an previously imaginative and often entertaining series.

Coming down off reading the other seven Lost Swords books, I was terribly disappointed with the end. We learn many answers to the questions Saberhagen has raised in the previous hundreds of pages of text, but we see just as many questions go unanswered. Really a rather shoddy ending to such a grand detailed story. The Armory of Swords (short stories) show more promise, in that they aren't all going to be finished by Saberhagen

I loved all of the swords series leading up to this book. The plots and characters were intrigueing and well woven. The first three are the best with the Lost Swords continueing admirably. The last book Shieldbreakers story is a fizzle of epic proportions. With the tremendous build-up from the rest of the series the ending was trite and hurried. The setting and explaination for the emperor was horrible. From the other books we see a great figure in the emperor, noble and mysterious. The explaination we end up getting is shockingly boring and increadibly disappointing. This book leaves the reader thinking, "What? That's it? Where is the rest of it?"

I was totally enthralled by this entire series, even the Sherlock Holmes style story of Stonecutter but this ending was horrible. Took a perfectly good sword and sorcery series and turned it sci-fi. I'll read sci-fi when I want that, I read this series for magic and swordplay. I'd read the entire series again and simply leave this one out.

I have read all of the series and I thought this was definately one of the best ones. I hated to see it end. My favorites though are the first 3 in the series. But this one was good and it had a surprise ending with some sci-fi thrown in. Fred Saberhagen is one of the all-time best in this genre, do yourself a favor and read his books.

the only problem i had with the book is the bizarre location towards the end(others who have read it will know what im talking about, but i dont want to ruin it for people who havn't read it).but other than that it was my favorite of the books of lost swords.