Customer Reviews

The Price of Immortality: Swords of Life and Death

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

I'm a long time fan of fantasy. I appreciate Jordan and most recently George R.R. Martiin. After reading the positive reviews I was very disappointed with this book. I generally criticize authors when they put in too much description but this book was just the opposite: it was like reading a Cliff Notes of a gigantic fantasy novel. Needless to say it was a great story-severely hampered by poor writing. I don't usually have a problem with profanity but it's use in this novel seemed gratutitous given the lack of adult depth in any of the characters.

Sadly I cannot recommend this book at all. It was a waste of time.

I only bought this book because of the rave reviews I saw for it. I'm not even half way thru this book and I'm already regreting buying it. I came back here to warn others away, when low and behold (after I buy the book...), I see horrible reviews for it. This book was obviously written by a first time author and maybe later on he'll write great books, but this isn't one of them. The actual storyline/plot is great but the story-telling is done horribly. One of my major pet peeves in a book is a bad job of editing. I lost interest when right off the bat, I saw typo city. Anyway, I could go on and on but I'd just be repeating Ken's review. He hit it all right on the nose. DON'T BUY THIS BOOK

The prelude to this story seemed fascinating--until I started
reading the rest of the book. I threw it down after page 50. Although I admired Mr. Whitlock's concept of a sword and its control over the main character, I felt the story lacked the quality and style of writing which would allow some kind of cohesiveness and flow to a story.
I would recommend you read Robin Hobb's Farseer trilogy to see
what I mean in terms of reading a story that just "flows" and
sinks its teeth in your imagination!

I read this book anxiously; based on all the great reviews I've read about it on-line. I am a huge fan of "good" epic fantasy: Jordan, Martin, Goodkind and haven't seen a good epic series come out in years. So I thought "finally! this is it..." Well, not really.

Don't get me wrong, it's not bad; it's just very underdeveloped. There is no detail in this book. The plot is awesome....but there's no sub-plots. The characters are great and aplenty, but you never get to know them very well except the 2-3 main characters, and even these we're rushed to develop.

This book spans tons of major quests and the building of two very powerful parties of characters, yet the entire time I felt as if I were reading cliff notes to the real story. We get through all this in about 350 pp. I felt like the writer was taking shortcuts to get the payoffs for each scene. For instance, the characters never have to travel anywhere they convieniently have a mage at the beginning of the book who can create traveling portals (uhmp! W.O.T.) Immediately everyone is equipped with auto-armor (which is actually the coolest thing in the book), super-powerful weapons, the strenght of giants, infinite magic powers, etc...There is just no storybuilding or detail to this book what-so-ever, and there should be...because the storyline has potential and the characters are imaginative. To bad the author rushed it along and didn't build sub-plots or backgrounds around the characters.

Speaking of characters, it just kills me (and I roll my eyes) when an author describes a character,in one paragraph, right out of the Dungeons and Dragons Player Handbook. It makes it read like it's written for a 14 year old...and this book was. This book could have been brutal with the amount of evil that takes place. Instead, it definatley rated PG, and not PG-13. (Oh, if only Terry Goodkind could have gotten his hands on this, you'd be cringing after every page....oh what could have been).

Also, I guarantee you that the characters in this book are based on the PC game by EverQuest. It is just way too coincidental that the races and characters are identical in background and description. Just an observation, but that appreared to be pretty weak in my regard.

Although, I have alot of complaints; the plotline is good enough to make it entertaining. Warning: This book is not geared for the hardcore dark fantasy reader, but a teenager will probably like it.

I gave this book 2 stars but it should only get 1, only due to the lack of good writing in the fantasy genre did I bump it up.

I eagerly purchased and read this book based on the rave
reviews below. YUCK -- what a disappointment! Typographical and
editing mistakes on nearly every page. This book appears to have been
written once (without review) on a computer, spell-checked once (if at
all), and thrown directly to print. Unbelievably bad writing; even
worse editing.

While this book may be a rudimentarily entertaining fantasy, as well as
interesting philosophically for the teenage crowd [in terms of seeing
shades of gray in characters which could otherwise be painted in broad
strokes of black or white], it does a complete disservice to any
audience with its exceedingly poor grammar, misuse of homonyms (words
that may be pronounced or spelled the same way but have different
meanings), anachronistic use of modern slang in a supposedly ancient
world, and on and on. Shame on the publisher, for putting this into
print.

A complete waste of time/money. "CAVEAT EMPTOR" (let the buyer
beware).

Being a multi-genre reader, I have recently been going through Fantasy withdrawals after chewing up Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series, and following it up with George R.R. Martin's Song of Fire and Ice series.
Martin left me hungering for more good fantasy, and someone recommended this book.
If you are in the same frame of mind that I was, I caution you to avoid this book at all costs.

It has a great synopsis on the back, but the writing is so terrible that I could not finish it. I did peek at the ending, and the writing did not improve.
Realistic dialogue does not exist in this book, what dialogue exists is stilted and extremely "Dick and Jane" in nature. The punctuation is atrocious; missing periods, misspelled words, added question marks where they don't belong, etc.
A sample of the blending of descriptivism and dialogue straight out of the book is as follows:

"He could see the gate out of the graveyard ahead; he felt a sense of relief wash over him. They had made it. "We made it," he said. " (page 21)

The writing is flat, stilted, repetitive, amateur, and geared to an "under 10 years old" crowd. It follows far too closely to a D&D theme, but as a comparison it would be like playing your D&D computer game on a 286 computer (circa 1990), jumpy and inconsistent.
The idea, and the storyline, are intriguing and would have been an excellent book if they had found a actual writer to pull it off, and an editor that could spell.

Ok, so if you are under 10, and a big D&D fan, you will probably like the book.

If you like writing that flows together, brings you into the world you are reading about, and involves you directly with the characters, leave this book on the shelf.

As a very experienced reader of fantasy I have to put my 2 cents in. Of course everyone is entitled to their own opinion but it grates on me to see such golden ratings on this book. People who say this book is one of the best ever written are very mistaken. I don't know what they have been reading to judge this as a great book but something very poor indeed. I also noticed that the ones who say so are very young. I keep on seeing 'rated by a 11 or 12 year old'. Yes the grammer is bad, even the ones who say the book is wonderful agree with this. There is just so many errors that it takes away from the book. It becomes distracting, trying to figure out what the {hay} he's trying to say. As far as the story goes, it's a good idea but just written very poorly. Although the idea of the sword remind me of a twist to Soul Caliber, a game on the Dreamcast. Anyway, the idea of the sword and its properties are the only good thing about this book. I forced myself to read the entire thing, hoping that it would get better but it did not. As for the author making such realistic 'grey' characters, I find that point laughable. The author made it way too obvious trying to make them grey(having the 'good guy' fighting for evil and the 'bad guy' fighting for good). If you truely want to see grey characters read Margaret Weis's 'Star of Guardians' series. Overall I agree with another person here who stated that this book is a scam. I find it very hard to believe that people really think this is a great book.

If on a VERY boring day, you happen to walk by and see this book -- RUN, POKE YOUR EYES OUT, SET YOUR HAIR ON FIRE. It doesn't really matter which of these you do (or all of them) but under any circumstances DO NOT READ THIS BOOK!!! Nononononono! DO NOT!

Good God! By the time I got to page 10, (gnashing teeth and groaning due to the HORRIBLE editing and grammar)my brain had had enough, my eyes were refusing to see, and my teeth were of a mind to turn around in my mouth and start eating my head from the inside out.

I urge you to find a different book and a different author unless you want to waste your money and fall for this [book] as I did. I have never heard of CM Whitlock or this book prior to reading several customer reviews under my favorite titles raving about CM Whitlock and how this book would change the fantasy genre forever. It certainly changed my view on the fantasy genre and I now appreciate the works of Tolkien, Donaldson, Martin, and other good authors so much more. If you do order this book you will quickly find the worst "B" book you've ever read. In just the first ten pages, I can name numerous grammatical and editing errors and they continue throughout the book. But the horrendous grammar is only the tip of the iceberg. The true problem with this book is the writing style and the plot. The characters have no emotion and when they do, it is totally unbelievable. The author fails to paint a picture of what this world is and is about. There is no local flavor. The author completely fails to paint a story that a reader can connect with. When I read a fantasy, I want to get spend my time in another place and connect with the characters, not read a script that seems to be generated straight from a computer. The plot is staggered and this story has no flow. I think there is a good reason that the editorial reviews posted above are really just a reprint of the summary on the back of the book: Because legitimate reviews would tank this book. Do not trust the positive reviews about this book unless you want to waste your money as I did. I might be willing to spend some pocket change on it, anything over that is a mere waste.

This is, without doubt, the worst "novel" I have ever had the misfortune of picking up. The author apparently put this thing together in his "spare time" and believe me, it shows. This is raw text, a first draft of a story that probably wasn't worth putting on paper in the first place. Misspelled words, stomach-turning grammer and... Oh My God ! It's awful !

I managed to hold on until about page 40, at which point I was forced to throw the novel at the far wall of my room - cold shivers.

Steer-clear of this. It's that simple.