Dennis L. McKiernan

Stunningly awful. McKiernan writes battle scenes with all the flair of Kent Brockman describing a futbol game. He pads the novel by having characters recount to each other scenes we just read. And he still couldn't finish it, so he added some totally unnecessary appendices. It is hard to believe this was put out by a major publisher.

Maybe I was supposed to read it more like The Silmarillion than Lord of the Rings, but I don't think that would have helped.

I know some people consider McKiernan the poor man's Tolkien and that's not off base - he's stated many times he did his Iron Tower trilogy as a tribute. Still, I enjoyed them and though I recognized the heavy inspiration Tolkien provided, I think they can stand on their own. I corresponded with McKiernan years back and had my first editions signed by him - he's a really nice guy.

That's why I was bummed by this novel. It's dated, so some of the info on AI (artificial intelligence) has been show more beaten to death, but I bet if I read it at the time of its release, it would have been somewhat groundbreaking or at least not mainstream understanding. McKiernan must really enjoy the topic - he delves deep and so many years later, so much of it still holds true. That said, the intro was way too long. I just didn't want a heavy thinking read and wasn't expecting one, but the "modern" or "real world" aspects of the book were a heavy mental lift. The other problem was the characters. They seemed less believable in the earth realm than in the other world where they were warrior healers, shadow thieves and other magical beings. I just didn't care for them like I did with his characters from his other books. I think I have one or two other books from his Mithgar world to read, I'm still looking forward to them, but I wouldn't want to revisit this crew. show less

This one is strictly for fans of Mithgar and the previous novels set in that world. It occurs after City of Jade, as the crew of the ship Eroean comes to port for some rest, and proceeds to tell tales about the past of Mithgar. Since some of the crew are very old elves, some of the history is very old and touches on many of his novels, going all the way back to the near beginning. Mostly, these tales are intended to fill in some gaps in the novels, or answer questions. The stories are fine, show more but I found myself not really interested in the subject. If you've ever wondered how or why there was a Balrog under Moria, McKiernan answers that with his own version of that story and so on. It was nice to go back to Mithgar, but not great. show less

This was...not good. I have nothing against Tolkein-esque fantasy, or even epic/high fantasy from this era more broadly, which does tend to follow a certain formula. I'm reading enjoying my first time read through of Eddings stuff for instance. This pastiche though was brutally difficult to get through. Its kind of the worst of the Tolkein style, turned up to eleven, without a lot of the positives. The action, what there is, is a little better described perhaps.
I was bound to hit some show more disappointments in my quest to try to go through a lot of the fantasy series I missed in my childhood, and this was definitely one. show less