Edward Cutler

This is an omnibus, so I'll be adding reviews as I finish the books.

Woundhealer's Story:

We meet up with the main characters of the Books of Swords (Mark and Ben and their families) about ten years later. Mark's a ruling prince, his firstborn son is blind and epileptic, and he decides to go chase down Woundhealer to cure him. In the meantime, his nephew Zoltan takes over the young adventurer role and wanders off on his own.

The framing of this series is a little odd - the book is not really much about Woundhealer, although it's the spur that starts off much of the action. This is really just the first entry into the larger arc about Mark and his family's adventures (although they are all certainly related to the Swords.) It's not bad, although Zoltan's little offshoot tale feels a little unbalanced, and while the main arc is resolved, it doesn't have much of a climax. Not perfect, but not bad.

Sightblinder's Story:

Sightblinder's is a tighter story arc than Woundhealer's, and that helps, although it's a little impersonal - despite the peril our regular heroes are put in, they're still far from home and fighting an enemy that's a little too mythic to be really engaging. The character that really starts to shine here is the ex-queen Yambu - she was interesting in The Third..., and is even better now that she's a free agent and more or less one of the good guys. This is not my favorite of the stories, but like Woundhealer's it's solid enough.

Stonecutter's Story:

This is probably my favorite Swords book overall - even more so than The Second... It's a Sherlock Holmes pastiche set in a distant city with all-new characters and only the most indirect relationship to Mark. Stonecutter would be a tricky Sword to write about - it's awfully specialized - but the murder mystery format brings out many of the possibilities without losing focus in mundanity. The Watson-analogue is delightful - intelligent but naive, earnest without being tedious - and the Holmes-analogue is suitably mysterious and is shown to have a deep and interesting background. The complicated triple-bluff of the plot is well-executed, and there are enough hints throughout that an alert reader could conceivably figure out what's going on before the reveal. It's really a very solid mystery.… (altro)