The Tears of the Sun (Emberverse, #8)

The Tears of the Sun (Emberverse #8)

3.72 of 5 stars 3.72  ·  rating details  ·  972 ratings  ·  118 reviews
Rudi McKenzie-now Artos, the High King of Montival-must fulfill his destiny. He wields the sword crafted for him before he was born. He has made friends of his enemies. He has won the heart of the woman he loves.

And now he must defeat the forces of the Church Universal and Triumphant, knowing he may lose his life in the final battle...
Hardcover, 530 pages
Published September 6th 2011 by Roc Hardcover
more details... edit details

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Community Reviews

(showing 1-30 of 1,679)
filter  |  sort: default (?)  |  rating details
Kris
The eighth book in the Emberverse series picks right up where the seventh book ends. This story was a depature from the previous books in the series as the author felt the end to explain events from the past as he also keep the present story line moving forward. This was done as a series of flash backs told by various characters and seemed to be an unecessary digression as it could have been told very quickly at one time. This makes me think that the author is setting up something in the last tw...more
John Patrick
This was actually somewhat disappointing compared to the previous books in the series. The plot had no real focus and jumped around the timeline trying to hit on plot points that were happening currently in the timeline and filling back story with flashbacks. I very much liked all the previous books in this series but "Tears of the Sun" spends the whole book building up to a payoff that you won't get untill the next book. When I finished the last page it almost felt like it was a chore to have r...more
Matt Mitrovich
In The Tears of the Sun, Rudi Mackenzie, now Artos the first High King of the Kingdom of Montival, must fulfill the prophecy first spoken by his mother Juniper at his wiccaning. He wields the Sword of the Lady crafted for him by the gods whose war in heaven has spilled over onto Earth, which twenty five years ago lost the ability to use high technology due to an event known as the Change (which happened right after the island of Nantucket was sent back to the Bronze Age). He has forged a string...more
H Gilbert
It was just OK.

I really enjoyed Dies the Fire and the Protectors War. I liked Meeting at Corvallis.

However, when we jumped ahead - what - 15 years to grown up Rudi and his friends who grew up post-Change and seeing a world in which magic is reappearing...well my suspension of disbelief started to fray, and it's been getting more so with each installment.

There have been a few books that haven't advanced the plot much at all, and this one seemed to be little snippets about things that happened at...more
Roberta
The Church Universal and Triumphant with the United States of Boise start the campaign against Montival and their allies.

Unlike the earlier books, this book is not about the quest but what happens now that Rudi has the sword. All of the questers get their points of view told along with Grand Constable Tiphaine, Oduard Liu's brother and sister as well as the story as to why his mother was so foolish.

Most of the book leads up to the start of the full fledged campaign with skirmishes and what not....more
Anna Erishkigal
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
Gabe
I feel this book was rather insubstantial. Not a lot of interest happened, and there was a lot more time spent describing outfits and cuisine than advancing the plot. Every time anyone ate anything, which was frequent, it seemed like entire adjective-laden paragraphs were dedicated to describing each food item in the meal.

There were several flashbacks explaining events surrounding the Liu's treason while Rudy and company were on their journey East and back. Personally, I felt the events of the...more
James Mackay
Though it was engaging enough to get me through it's 500-odd pages, I'll confess to being somewhat disappointed. The further we get from the Change itself, the less I enjoy the series. Rather than being a story about how people adapt to the loss of modern technology, it becomes more and more a traditional fantasy series, which simply doesn't interest me that much. As others have noted, the fact that this volume is largely covering ground that's already been covered, albeit from a different pers...more
Gouty
This is the 8th book in the series. When I read the one before this one (#7 in the series) I thought "Great! They got the sword, they got back home. The next book will be the final battle and that will be it. A nice and tidy end to the story." Instead this is almost a digression back tracking and telling the stories of what some of the secondary characters were doing while the main characters were on the quest. While amusing these stories don't drive the main story forward.

Now people who look a...more
Ken Hoffman
I have been a big fan of the Emberverse series, especially the first three, but it seems that this series is going the way of all long series: it is starting to change and be drawn out, much the way the Robert Jordan's the Wheel of Time became, Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth books, etc. Sometimes you get the impression the story is being embellished not because it should be, but because the author simply can. After a while, a reader just rolls their eyes, and continues reading them not because...more
Donna
After four books of travel and Rudi Mackenzie's triumphant return from his quest, I was excited to read, at long last, about the war he'd have to wage to secure his newly-formed kingdom. Too bad this was not that book.

The Tears of the Sun has a massive problem with structure and focus. Half of it bogs down the arc of the series with a full account of Odard Liu's family. There's zero suspense about their fate, because we learn what's happened to them before their story is told. The flashback tran...more
Melody
Where was Stirling's editor? Ay-yi-yi. Eight books into the series, you needn't tell me about all the players in detail. Especially the dead ones, for pages and pages. Yep, Norman was a bad guy, got it, now let's move on already.

The Liu backstory was entirely too detailed, and the way it threaded through the entire book was fairly annoying. As others have said, there are about 200 pages of actual new book here, and nearly 400 of filler, backstory, rehash & description of the freaking gloami...more
Chris Bauer
I'm rounding up for the 8th book of the Emberverse series. Just taking a quick glance at the 60+ other reviews confirms the way I felt about the book. I've enjoyed tremendously the entire series and have the utmost respect for the author's writing style and research when crafting these works.
But Tears of the Sun was a "placeholder" "series of short stories" and just about every other observation made in reviews. I guess my biggest gripe with the book is the interesting but overly long extended...more
Geoffrey
Tears of the Sun feels like a series of short stories fit together to make a novel. Rudi and Matti play very small roles in this book. Instead it focuses on the stories of several secondary and tertiary characters. There are visits to the past explaining the treason by House Lui and its consequences. There is a visit to the Buddhist monastery in Wyoming. There are a couple great battles including a covert op into Boise. Individually they are each good but collectively they just don't have the fe...more
Annette
Just to clear something up: No, this is Not the last book in the series. And yes, this book felt like a holding pattern. The timeline was only moved up about 3-4 months, and 90% of the action took place in a single month. The rest was flash-backs to events that took place in Montival while Rudi and co were on their little quest. Unusually, most of the action is from Tiphaine's POV, although there is one major action from the Rangers. Rudi and indeed the Mackenzies in general get very little scre...more
Joy
I hadn't realized this book was out until last week, and I bought it and started it immediately when I did, as I am very interested in seeing how the story plays out. Another review described this book as almost a series of short stories set in Montival during the great Quest, and that description is rather accurate although I think the stories are still important. Some of the covert ops in Boise and other locations were amazing, both in the concept, the execution, and description, and one broug...more
Mieczyslaw Kasprzyk
"Tears of the Sun" surprised me. I was expecting something much worse.
Recently, Stirling's Emberverse series has developed into some sort of pastiche, a mixture of Tolkien, Hollywood and some guide to foods eaten at great feats in post-apocalyptic America. The story has dragged as it has been drawn out. No-one, reading this series, would believe that this is the same author who wrote "Island in the Sea of Time" or "The Peshawar Lancers". Stirling has obviously decided that this is going to be t...more
Jen
This is one of the very few series I've ever read in "real time," i.e. as they come out rather than years later when most of the books have already been published. I'm not doing all that well with it, because I totally forget who all the characters are and their relationships with each other in between--it took me a third of this book to remember who some people were, which is not that great. So that helped me enjoy this a little less, but so did the nature of it.
We continue the great wars of th...more
Jo
This series is taking too long. The first three were great; after that it lost focus. This book doesn't end any story arcs but does advance them. That said, I'm enough of a fan that I did enjoy the book even more than the last one -- probably because Rudi & Matti didn't have much of a part in it (I'm a little tired of them). This book is largely about Tiphaine D'Ath, a character who has become more important as the overall story has advanced and the older generation has faded into the backgr...more
Marin
Ugh, in for a penny, in for a pound I s'pose. But damn, the quality of these books is declining faster than Astrid's grip on sanity. I'm three quarters in and finally got to an actual battle instead of a bunch of people sitting and describing things or having flashbacks. Eesh,

I'll finish the series more out of obligation than enjoyment.

Update... Does Sterling no longer have an editor? "...thick with blooming thickets of purple lilac and wild roses gone feral into impenetrable tangles..." Thick w...more
Dawn
The last two novels of the Emberverse series seemed to not flow as naturally as the previous works, perhaps due to the increasing complexity as the scope of this world expands from the Northwestern US to include more and more of the world. However, in the last, we return to the Willamette Valley, and so in this newest episode we find ourselves anchored again among familiar characters and locations.

The transition from post-apocalyptic alternate-worlds fantasy into Arthurian legend rework has bee...more
Unwisely
I have adored this series since I read the first book. I enjoyed this book (and stayed up Too Late several nights in a row reading it), but didn't think it was quite as good as some of the others. It really felt like just Some Stuff That Happened Before The Big Denouement, rather than a fully contained story. Maybe it's because I've read several 1200 pagers this year, but this just didn't feel like a whole book.

Not that a few notable things didn't happen, or that I didn't like it. But the dual...more
Marsha Wilcox
I started to get a little bored; there were a lot of flashbacks (not a bad thing) but way too much troop movement and weapons description & placement and not enough human interaction. Actually, for a few chapters, I actually considering not finishing, and I am a sincere devotee of this entire series, Nantucket as well as Oregon! But I pushed on, for no other reason than I trust the author. In this novel, the author spent almost no time on battle scenes, which caught me by surprise, but I fou...more
Starfire
Considering how little actually happened in this instalment (and how much the narrative jumped around in time), I'm surprised how much I enjoyed it. I think part of it is that I LOVE Stirling's characters and just enjoy the chance to spend time with them.

However, yes, this one could have done with some editing ESPECIALLY around the phonetic renditions of some of the characters' accents. Please, Mr Stirling, we KNOW John Hordle has a rural English accent. We don't need it transcribed (and if you...more
Leons1701
Should have been a 4 or maybe even a 5 star book, except for the fact that it mostly feels like a placeholder until the next book. Almost as much a collection of shorts as a cohesive novel. I can't really say nothing happened, even if one of the more important developments was told through a series of flashbacks, but noting really moved the story forward. There were some really nice bits, the transformation of the series from post-apocalyptic survival to Arthurian fantasy is largely complete. No...more
Skip
I have yet to read a Stirling novel that I didn't like, and Tears of the Sun is no exception. I will say, though, that the novel is definitely not at its best as a stand-alone. You'll certainly get a lot more out of it if you've read the prior novels. For best results, go all the way back to the Nantucket series, and read the whole Emberverse series. Or if you're not up for quite that much reading, at least start with The Sunrise Lands for the most recent storyline.

Tears of the Sun shares with e...more
Onthevirg
Need to start putting in some ratings that aren't all rainbows and puppy dogs, hence my review.

I still have to rate the books in between, but it's starting to reach the point that the Jordan (before Sanderson took up the torch)/Goodkind books did for me as they progressed, though in admittedly different ways. I like rich detail describing the environment and world building as much as the next guy but let's try moving along the plot without getting tied up for two & three paragraphs describin...more
Mitchell
Book 5, Series 2 - the series is definitely showing its age. An awful lot of time is spent visiting in with characters and not moving the plot all that far along. And yet the characters are mostly worth visiting. A bit uneven - some vignettes were rushed enough that they might as well have happened off-screen. Others though were fantastic, worthy of standing on their own as short-stories or novellas. And unlike previous book in series 2, there were no 100 page long battle scenes - which probably...more
Tia Jones
So disappointing. After coming off the disappointment of A Dance With Dragons and all the filler material presented therein, I was hoping for a good story. Instead I get more filler material. Sigh.

I was annoyed with the flashbacks, because I could not have cared less. I'm sick to death of the repetition, because if you pick up the 8th book in a series and you don't know what's going on it's your own damn fault. I do not need, want, or require a recap of everything that has happened thus far in...more
Nicole Luiken
Enjoyable read. As always great battle scenes, detailed world and intricate politics. Plotlines: Ritva's back with the Dunedain Rangers, she has a love interest and a rescue mission. We see some Ingolf, and a lot of Tiphaine, who as Grand Constable, is directing the fight against the CUT. However the backstory plotline of Mary Liu's fate (which involves both Tiph and some new viewpoint from her daughter Yseult) is threaded throughout the book and actually provides the book's climax, which I foun...more
« previous 1 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 55 56 next »
topics  posts  views  last activity   
Anticlimactic ending 3 17 Sep 09, 2012 10:11am  
The Tears of the Sun: A Novel of the Change (ebook)
The Tears of the Sun: A Novel of the Change (Paperback)
The Tears of the Sun (Emberverse, #8)
The Tears of the Sun: A Novel of the Change (ebook)
The Tears of the Sun: A Novel of the Change (Audio CD)

14002
Stephen Michael Stirling is a French-born Canadian-American science fiction and fantasy author. Stirling is probably best known for his Draka series of alternate history novels and the more recent time travel/alternate history Nantucket series and Emberverse series.

More about S.M. Stirling...
Dies the Fire (Emberverse, #1) The Protector's War (Emberverse, #2) A Meeting at Corvallis (Emberverse, #3) Island in the Sea of Time (Nantucket, Book 1) The Sunrise Lands (Emberverse, #4)

Share This Book

Your website
“It was hard, to be stripped of the cold comforts of her simple atheistic faith in middle-age. The more so as the evidence seemed to lead to the conclusion that all the religions were true, including the ones that flatly contradicted each other.” 1 person liked it
“. . . you should always kick a man when he's down. It's much easier then.” 1 person liked it
More quotes…