Books are very expensive in New Zealand, so I just had my parents ship me a big box of every single book I had on my bookshelf growing up that I had never gotten around to reading. Most of them were from the local used bookstore, so they were purchased in large stacks without nearly as much thought as went into buying new books. So there are going to be a few questionable reads in the box. I'm hoping there will be at least a few gems! 
 The Runelords was the first book I dove into from the box. So, so many things bothered me about this book. A few have been reflected in other reviews I've read, and others didn't seem to bother anyone else. It was readable, but the plot and characters were so painful. 
 So, in no particular order, everything that bothered me about The Runelords: 
 1. It took a VERY long time for the plot to go anywhere. First Gaborn randomly goes along with a girl who grabs his hand in the marketplace, then he's trying to escape the castle with a random girl he just decides to swear he'll protect (why??), then he's trying to get back into the castle, and then he's trying to escape yet again. It took until very, very late in the story before anyone had any sort of plan as to what they intended to do about the evil Raj Ahten. 
 2. Why on earth did Gaborn swear to protect that random girl? She was just an inconvenience, and we could've cut out quite a bit of useless toing and froing if she hadn't been in the book. And then (view spoiler)[ she ended up dying anyway, because it was convenient. (hide spoiler)] 
 3. This is something that really bothered me as a writer myself--there were several scenes where two characters would go into a very lengthy set of fairly personal, important dialogue, and only about five pages later would the author remember that a third person was actually there as well. It wasn't just the Days, either--the first time I noticed this, it was the random girl. But the personal conversation wouldn't have made any sense with a random onlooker, because the characters would have realistically acted and spoken much differently knowing there was an observer. 
 4. Raj Ahten was too powerful. After the first easy takeover, I was afraid there would be no way for the good guys to defeat him realistically without a deus ex machina sweeping in to save the day. I was starting to have a bit of faith in the author when he began weakening Raj Ahten and his forces before the final showdown, (view spoiler)[ killing off two of his flameweavers and making his reinforcement army a no-show, but then Raj Ahten unveiled so many ridiculous forces at the final battle (explosive powders! fire-lizards! a voice that can destroy castle walls!) that the heroes had no chance whatsoever. So what makes the almighty Raj Ahten retreat at last? Oh yes, his overpowered voice also cracks a large branch of the tree that just happens to be sheltering a wagon filled with his most important Dedicates, who just happen to die on impact. So he's suddenly weakened and flees. And of course there's an extremely large open field in front of the castle, so why the Dedicates would have been parked beneath a tree is beyond me. (hide spoiler)] 
 5. Only about three or four days pass in the entire book. Not only is it unrealistic for people to do that much fighting and message-passing and marching and fleeing in that amount of time, especially since not everyone has endowments of boundless stamina, but the two relationships that developed in the span of three days seem way too serious for what could have happened--especially since the involved characters would have spent most of that time apart! The devotion between Borenson and Myrrima is especially hard to buy, since she was looking for a marriage based on purely mercenary grounds and Borenson doesn't come across as a romantic until he's suddenly head-over-heels for his arranged match. And he only spends a couple hours with her before spending the rest of the book running around following orders. 
 6. I wasn't nearly as bothered by the whole concept behind the endowments as some people, because I thought it was a fascinating premise that really had the potential to twist the boundaries of good and evil, but there shouldn't be so many people desperate to give up endowments. Broke, starving older people with no remaining family I can understand, but anyone with a family at all would surely want to stay at home and look after their own family rather than being taken away and living uselessly in the castle. Any mother or father would be horrible to abandon their family in pursuit of their own (questionable) comfort. 
 7. I was, however, bothered by the dark-skinned race with Middle-Eastern/Indian sounding names being the bad guys, while the European-esque race was the good guys. If you've invented an entirely new fantasy world, that's just lazy writing. If something like this was published today, it would probably cause quite a stink. 
 8. Finally, I was annoyed by the amount of times the characters stopped whatever they were doing to ponder, in great detail and spanning many pages, the long history of everything that us readers needed to know about whatever it was that was crucial at the moment. These big explain-o passages never quite diminished as the book went on; somehow there was always a new aspect that needed to be expounded upon at great depth. 
 That's everything I can think of at the moment, though there were a number of smaller details that irked me as well. Like the seven standing stones only getting mentioned and explained after the last one had fallen (it would have been a lot more interesting if we'd known they were important before they were gone!), the way the whole scene with Myrrima grabbing Gaborn's hand at the beginning went (why on earth would anyone indulge a random stranger who grabbed your hand in public? I would be freaked out and immediately suspect someone of pickpocketing me, regardless of how beautiful she was!), Borenson's stupidity at the end (really??), and the whole love at first sight deal with Iome and Gaborn. 
 After writing all of this, I think I probably should dock another star from my review! 
 Hopefully the next book in the box will be more enjoyable.