The Rose of the World (Fool's Gold, Book 3) (Hardcover)

by Jude Fisher (Author)
Key Phrases: grey wolf, nomad woman, nomad girl, Jude Fisher, Tycho Issian, Katla Aransen (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
The Sesame Street song "Everyone Makes Mistakes" could easily be the theme for Fisher's ponderous finale to her Fool's Gold trilogy (after Sorcery Rising and Wild Magic). Whether beguiled by magic or maddened by blood lust, or because they're just not very bright, none of the residents of the fantasy world of Elda seems capable of making a sensible decision. The goddess-like Rosa Eldi struggles to regain her memories and control her power after centuries of enslavement by Rahe the Mage. As war rages, the insane Lord Tycho Issian of Istria steals Rosa away from her husband, King Ravn of Eyra. Rahe teams with Ravn in hopes of taking Rosa for himself, but in their desperation, Rahe and Ravn ignore their better judgment and seasoned advisers with predictably disastrous results. Meanwhile, assorted other characters fight, die, are resurrected and die again, mostly due to hasty or uninformed choices. The incongruous all-is-forgiven conclusion, wherein the united deities magically enforce peace and generously re-resurrect their favorite mortals, just emphasizes the apparent moral that people are incapable of running their lives and need gods to make them behave. Only readers who already hold this belief are likely to find Fisher's preachy approach appealing. Agent, Scovil, Chichak, Galen. (Feb. 1)
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From Booklist
*Starred Review* Elda lived in harmony and prosperity for centuries under the gentle, compassionate guidance of its deities: the Man (Sirio), the Woman (Feya, aka the Rosa Eldi), and the Beast (Bast, or Bete). Then, 300 years ago, Rahe the Mage, the greatest sorcerer Elda had ever known, imprisoned Sirio in a volcano and spirited the Rosa Eldi and Bete to Sanctuary, his northern arctic stronghold. He erased their memories and for ages enjoyed his two greatest treasures undisturbed. Arrogance and complacency dulled him, however, and the two gods escaped, aided by the sorcerer's doltish apprentice, Virelai, who harbored ambitions of his own. During a year spent among men, the Rosa Eldi slowly recovers her memory and understanding of who she is. Her cool, unearthly beauty and enigmatic character inspires all-consuming male lust; once roused by the Rosa Eldi, men generally go temporarily mad. Tycho Issian, lord of Cantara, stops at nothing, leaving blood and destruction in his wake, as he relentlessly pursues her. As men's conflicting desires cross political boundaries, unrest and then war come to Elda. Only the fully awakened Rosa Eldi, reunited with Sirio and Bete, can stop the carnage. The nerve-wracking, intoxicating conclusion of the Fool's Gold series is the fabulous, multilayered, poetic story of a world, full of complex, painfully real, endearingly vulnerable characters, on the very brink of either enlightenment or extinction. Paula Luedtke
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 592 pages
• Publisher: DAW Hardcover; F First Edition Hardcover edition (February 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0756401879
• ISBN-13: 978-0756401870
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #408,246 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars THe Rose Of the World, March 20, 2005

By	K. Sagers (Salisbury, MD) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Don't you absolutely hate it when an author takes perfectly good characters and ruins them? What is with the women in this story? More selfish people you could hardly find, and dumber than a chicken with its' head cut off. Lets take Katla, for example, a good, strong female character, talented swordsmith and rock climber, smart, well-liked by others, and since all the men are just dying to marry her one can only assume that she's very attractive. Yet, she has still managed to bumble her way through all three books. It's as if almost every trial she faces, she meets with success simply due to sheer dumb luck, and not terribly much skill or wits on her own part. She gets down to the bottom line, and then just can't hack it. OK, fair enough, she's young and naieve when she arrives at the Allfair. She lacks respect for societies and cultures outside her own. But hello?! After almost being burned alive for her own foolishness and overblown pride, you think she'd take a freaking hint, but no. She makes no real effort to learn from her mistakes, just blames them on someone else (the Istrians, her mother, her father, brother, etc.). She takes no real responsibility for her own actions. Ms. Fisher isn't a bad writer. But maybe this first attempt at an epic trilogy was overreaching for her. None of her main characters actually grow as people during her story, and are in the end saved only by their "gods", seemingly stating that people aren't really capable of making the right choices when left to their own devices, and it is only with the help of a higher power that they are able to. She seems to say that men are slaves to their desires, self-delusional fools, and even when forewarned by wiser people, turn a blind eye in the face of their greed. Aran Aranson chooses his great quest over his wife, his family, his very people. If I were his wife I'd have clubbed him over the head one night, tied him up and proceded to beat the stupid man senseless. I'd have burned the map, and the damn ship too. Then there's the King. King Ravn of the Northern Isles is a stupid little boy who spends all three books thinking with the wrong head. He resents that he is king, that he is responsible for so much, and most of all that he must give up some of his personal pleasures and freedoms for the overall good of his people. He's a whiney little boy, who needs to be put quite firmly in his place. Well, life's not fair, and sometimes we must give up our dreams in order to do the right thing. And damn! I think the only character out of the whole lot that even tried to do the right thing, make the right choices, even when the decision was not weighted in her favor was Hesta Rolfson, Katla's granny, and maybe her mother, Bera as well, and they weren't even main characters!
Then there are the women of Rockfall. What a bunch of ninnies! Most of them were only interested in getting and keeping a good northern man. Now there's nothing wrong with wanting a good man to start a family with, but one can't spend all their time either trying to impress the boys, or talking about trying to impress the boys, bragging and gossiping. Then they get so down on Katla for being such a wild little hoodlum. After all that talk about how bold and wild the women of the north are, the women of Rockfall as a whole are a rather large disappointment. They lack spirit, save the crazy old women, Bera and Katla herself. Wouldn't it occur to at least one of those silly little girls that obviously the boys don't mind in the least that Katla is a wild little terror, as there are more than a few of them who wish to marry her. In fact, maybe that is exactly what they like about her. Oh, I could go on and on and on, and that's not even taking into consideration Tanto, Saro, Virelai, Rahe, the Lord of Cantara, the Lord of Forent, or Fabel and Favio Vingo. Oh, don't even get me started on them.
All in all, a valiant effort by Ms. Fisher, but with some poorly developed characters (not all though, after all there was Erno, Joz Bearhand, and Mam <--I liked her too) predictable plot twists, and a convenient ending (what's with all this resurecting the dead at the end? Happy endings are good, but hello? It's a war! There are going to be some losses, and by bringing the characters back, the author takes away from the impact, the reality, and basically negates the worst of the consequences, and life just doesn't work that way. The basic story itself is still good, just don't look beyond it's surface, or you'll find it sorely lacking. The great sci-fi/fantasy writers know that to make a story great they must make the world in which it takes place as real to to the reader as possible. They've got to pull us into that world, and make us feel for the characters, make us feel as if the world they live in is as real as the world that you and I live in. This trilogy had the potential to be great, but sadly that potential went unrealized, and though I read the story still, and could somewhat picture it in my head, all I really felt for the characters, was a great frustration with them really. You know when you read a book, and it's ok, but you just know that it could be, should be better, and you think, "Damn! if I could just get my hands on the author right now... I'd ring her fricking neck!"

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Very disappointing, June 5, 2005

By	Barnes Ready (deep in the heart of Texas) - See all my reviews

I am a big fan of Robin Hobb and G.R.R. Martin's type of fantasy novels. In short, I appreciate well-crafted prose, well-drawn characters, and compelling plots. In the first book of the Fool's Gold series, I thought that while in my opinion Fisher may not be quite on the level of Hobb and Martin, she still had a lot to offer the reader. By the end of the second book, I was no longer certain of that. I still looked somewhat forward to reading the third book, however. I had planned to buy The Rose of the World, but found it on the "new" shelf at the local library before I could do so. How fortunate! Buying the book would have been a tremendous waste of money. The writing is, for lack of a better word, clumsy. The dialogue is often painfully awkward. Whatever had made me interested in the characters had vanished. I found myself wondering if Fisher wrote The Rose of the World merely because she had to fulfill a contract.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Completes the trilogy, but that's about it., March 17, 2005

By	Kathleen (St. Louis, MO) - See all my reviews

The first two books were good enough that I couldn't wait for this one from the library, but I should have. This book is long, complicated, and kind of depressing. There are about 6 story lines going on continuously, and characters sometimes move between them, so there's a fair amount of work remembering who's who, where we left them, etc. Characters are killed, then later brought back to life, which doesn't help the matter. This book is strictly for those who've read the first two and want closure.