Toll the Hounds

[steve bolger]

I'm just collecting my copy to-morrow!
I can't wait to start.
The series is the best thing i've read,can't get enough!Has everybody read ICE's novels?Equally good in a different style IMO

 

[hikari-sa]

I had my copy to keep me company when the hurricane hit houston. It was a welcomed diversion. I do have to say that the Iskarul Pust and Kruppe scene with the war donkeys had me holding my sides and rolling on the floor. I have fallen in love with the majority of the characters that i have been introduced to. I didnt get my copy early but it took me 3 days to read it. I am now chewing on my fingernails for the next one. I dont like that waiting

 

[Rosemary]

I’m half way through Toll The Hounds. Erikson is also very good at describing the situation that confronts us. Also the state of a low-down dwelling, the large estates and his characters. The conversations between the same two characters in other books, are still written in the same way as before, with dry wit. He’s also extremely good at describing the various types of countrysides – the plains, the areas which grow fruit and other produce, the sea and it’s coastal villages. This gives a long journey something to break the monotony!
I haven’t notice it in previous books but in ‘Toll The Hounds’, there is some action but seems to be more emphasis on the ‘thoughts’ of his characters. Has anyone else noticed this?
It's taken me longer to read but I am enjoying it.

 

[hikari-sa]

My favourite line ever comes form toll the hounds "The souls greatest anguish is a breath taken in love that ends with grief" For some odd reason this line just jumped out at me.

 

[terracapri]

Just a question fella's:

What does the title "Toll the Hounds" imply?

 

[Koopa]

Spoiler-filled:

The hounds maybe because they get a lot of action, both the hounds of shadow as the hounds of light. Toll, maybe because of the price that needs to be paid for making the wandering gate of darkness into a permanent gate, toll --> hood dieing, and no longer the keeper of the dead, the dead, who fight against chaos to keep it at bay, ...
In short, i'm not too sure myself, but you can give plenty of reasons i guess.

 

[terracapri]

Verb: toll tówl
Charge a fee for using
"Toll the bridges into New York City"

I was thinking along these lines and was wondering that shadowthrone used the hounds, but who pays?

 

[Koopa]

Doesn't the whole book revolve around the deal made between Hood, Shadowthrone, Caladan Brood and Anomandaris Rake?

 

[nj1]

Isn't 'TOLL THE HOUNDS' mentioned in one of Kruppe's narrations near the end?

 

[Kvothe the raven]

Isn't 'TOLL THE HOUNDS' mentioned in one of Kruppe's narrations near the end?

Aha! Found it- he just tells a guard to beware of the toll (page 793)

Also- toll can also be referring to bells ringing, or to a call. I always thought the title meant it in terms of a call- calling the hounds in. I never thought of it in terms of a price, just because that wouldn't be very good english. Maybe if it were Toll of the hounds...

But when you look at all the different meanings, there are lots of options. It could even be that Erikson made the title ambiguous on purpose- to include all the different meanings.

Toll \Toll\, v. t.
1. To draw; to entice; to allure.
[1913 Webster]

2. [Probably the same word as toll to draw, and at first
meaning, to ring in order to draw people to church.] To
cause to sound, as a bell, with strokes slowly and
uniformly repeated; as, to toll the funeral bell. "The
sexton tolled the bell." --Hood.
[1913 Webster]

3. To strike, or to indicate by striking, as the hour; to
ring a toll for; as, to toll a departed friend. --Shak.
[1913 Webster]

Slow tolls the village clock the drowsy hour.
--Beattie.
[1913 Webster]

4. To call, summon, or notify, by tolling or ringing.
[1913 Webster]

When hollow murmurs of their evening bells
Dismiss the sleepy swains, and toll them to their
cells. --Dryden.
[1913 Webster]

 

[Urien]

I have at last finally finished Toll the Hounds, the final quarter reawakened my dying interest in Erikson's world.

Thirty (at least) POV characters, with two pages each before a scene change. For seven hundred of the nine hundred pages (forty lines a page so perhaps 250,000 words), this army of characters muses... and muses on the meaning of everything until the last section. Not only that but we seem to be getting Erikson's personal (very 21st century) view being voiced by characters from a distinctly medieval society... it is starting to jolt the narrative.

The last two hundred pages of the book are stunning, is it worth the quagmire of the first three quarters? Only just in my view.

 

[svalbard]

I have read a few comments about how drawn out this book is and that it is not as as exciting as earlier installments. For me that is the beauty of Erikson. I love how I am pulled into his world. The 'Toll the Hounds' climax is as good as any you will get, but apart from that I found the build up of tension outstanding knowing that, as a reader, I was in for a stunning finale.

Having re-read Memories of Ice and House of Chains recently I have come to appreciate the man's detail in his writing and how events and characters in the story develop through the eyes of others.

 

[Urien]

I'm a fan, I want to like his books. I admire the writing skill demonstrated... and yet, at times he felt like Lance Armstrong only on a stationary bike, great skill and stamina, yet going nowhere.

I do feel that you don't need seven hundred pages to build tension. I thought it was risky and potentially alienating strategy. Nevertheless, I will be reading the next book, he did enough for me, a fan to keep going. I fear the marginals might have dropped off the radar though.

 

[adaephon]

late to the party here but brilliant book, as for the cover, thats the one i got ive seen some o fthe others and my god i think the european ones are far superior! mind u im colour blind and short sighted so take that as u may!

a lot of people seem to have struggled with this book but by now they have it finished and all still remain in awe of s.e!