The Book of Swords

One of the things I like about Gardner and GRRM anthologies is that they both tell you about the author and give you a list of their previous Works before presenting their novelas. That is especially useful in the audiobook version of Book of Swords as it\’s divided into 260 – 5 minute chapters. So if you want to skip ahead to Scott Lynch in the chapter hundred 50-ish range you just keep clicking forward until you hear an author description chapter. it\’s jarring because of the change of narrator. I have to mention that almost all of the narrator\’s here are very good. that is rare. There are a number of very solid stories in this book. Robin Hobb, the aforementioned Scott Lynch. George RR Martin throws a chapter from the Blood of the Dragon series he\’s been working on forever. it\’s a fine elaboration on the chapters from the History of Westeros. the Riverside story in this book is an odd one, but apt. I would say if anything this book suffers from a number of notable absences. There\’s no Brandon Sanderson or Joe Abercrombie. There\’s no Patrick Rothfuss or Jim Butcher. I would have liked to have heard the words \”Would you like to destroy some evil today?\” or have taken a journey with a certain dozen and a certain father of swords with a certain crack nut narrating the tail. One of the best reasons to pick up an anthology like this is to discover or get into somebody who has a great series that you might not have heard of or have been hesitant to try. So I\’m writing this in direct response to anyone who would buy big giant book filled with stories by dozens of authors to only read one and review it based on that one story.. don\’t publish reviews.

because every story came up different. I hated that there is no way to go through and pick out a story. Some were so badly written or badly narrated that I couldn\’t stand them and tried to skip forward, but each track is only a few minutes long and there are over two hundred of them called \”chapters\” but they\’re only five or six minutes each, so they\’re really just anonymous tracks. There is no \”table of contents\”. It would take forever to find the beginning of the next story. Easier to just let my mind wander until another story started. I did bookmark a couple to go back to re-listen (and only a couple). Each story has a different narrator. Some stories were boring but the narration was good. Some were good but the narration sucked. One story was by a favorite author (CJ Cherryh) and a large reason why I bought this. After plowing through many others, I finally got to it, and then had to grit my teeth to listen — the narrator sounds a drill sergeant reading military lists. He drops the ball at the end of every sentence in a droning manner, and speaks so fast and choppily, I had to slow the speed to below normal (first time I\’ve ever done that) just to understand what he was saying. Don\’t ask me to tell you his name, because there is no listing whatsoever of which narrator reads which story! I love S & S more than fantasy per se, but many of these stories have nothing to do with a sword or very little to do with sorcery. The one thing I liked was the bio of each writer before the story, because I like finding new writers. But it\’s nearly impossible to go back and listen to a particular bio and note their name if I decide I want to read more of their work, unless I bookmark it, but I don\’t know if I want to do that until I\’ve finished the story! So then I have to try and find the beginning again. This might have been a good book to have in print, but I consider this audiobook a huge waste of my credit.

not worth it. some stories extremely inappropriate only the last one on here is related to the game of thrones series. many of the others are overly vulgar and with too much explicit sexual content for comfort. and with unnecessary vulgarities too.

The concept is great. The fact that each story has it\’s own narrator is awesome. The first story was absolutely amazing and I loved it. It immediately declines afterward. Every single story written by a female is about women\’s rights and half of the male characters are homosexuals.One is fine, make your point and move on, but this just felt like it was trying to make a point and it just ruined the whole experience for me.

Very disappointed with this book. I expected better quality than this and only 3 of the stories were decent

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