A review by slothika
The Runelords by David Farland
3.0
Read this over a decade ago... I don't remember anything except for its unique magic system. People can permanently gift someone else their share of certain attributes (intellect, beauty, strength, eyesight, charisma/voice, etc.) via runes. It's a zero-sum game, meaning if you give away your beauty (which is some magical unit of x), you become ugly and the recipient because x amount more beautiful until someone dies, breaking the bond.
The author explores the concept one level further with ways to take advantage of this magic system. There's a chaining effect where if A is the recipient of these endowments from B and B from C, then A gets everything from B and C (B just passes it along, essentially). This allows for the deployment of supersoldier chains that won't waste all that Rune-ing effort if the "head" (current recipient of all the attributes) dies--the next "head" of the chain would just step up. Also, this means A can ride off to war while B stays at home and racks up more attributes (from D, E, F, etc.) to pass along to A. I don't remember if he explained what would happen with loop, though.
The author explores the concept one level further with ways to take advantage of this magic system. There's a chaining effect where if A is the recipient of these endowments from B and B from C, then A gets everything from B and C (B just passes it along, essentially). This allows for the deployment of supersoldier chains that won't waste all that Rune-ing effort if the "head" (current recipient of all the attributes) dies--the next "head" of the chain would just step up. Also, this means A can ride off to war while B stays at home and racks up more attributes (from D, E, F, etc.) to pass along to A. I don't remember if he explained what would happen with loop, though.