The Warlords of Nin

#136 [The Warlords of Nin] - Stephen Lawhead

This is the second in the Dragon King series - an early Lawhead trilogy. As per my thoughts in the first book, this is an early work and this shows! The characterisation is not great. The book is reminiscent of Narnia stories in the high degree of metaphor used to impart spiritual truth.

Comparing this with the whole of the Narnia series, this book comes up wanting I think. This is because the prophecy surrounding the hero, Quentin, is that he will be the priest king who wields the sword that will defeat the hordes of Nin. But in Christian theology the prophet, priest and king is Christ. Quentin is an exceptional protagonist, but I cannot see him as in th eplace of Christ in this story. Of show more course, in Narnia, it is Aslan who has that place, and who is so clearly set apart from the protagonists of the stories.

Maybe I do the book an injustice by comparing it with Narnia. Maybe the metaphor is not intended to be so comparable - but in that case I felt it was too obvious.

All that criticism in mind, it was not a terrible book. Some people will enjoy it. Some people could really love it. I am just not one of them. show less

The path of the story in [b:The Warlords of Nin|202038|The Warlords of Nin (The Dragon King, Book 2)|Stephen R. Lawhead|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172639871s/202038.jpg|598249] is quite predictable, but there are some interesting stops along the way. I especially like the character of Inchkeith and continue to be fascinated by Toli and the bits we are learning about him as the story develops. Myrmior was also an intriguing addition to the story.

I know that Lawhead needed Nin and his warlords to be the ultimate evil, the destroying force, but I would have liked to know more about how the four warlords came to serve Nin. We also are told that Nin's warlords, navy and armies have literally destroyed most of the rest of the world, show more but that seems to have very little impact or importance to the characters in this story.

The new map in this book is a great improvement over the one in the first book, but more of the world should have been depicted so we could better understand the apparent invincibility of Nin and his warlords.

I will be reading the final book in this trilogy, if only to see if Quentin is able to combine kingship of Mensandor with furthering his study and understanding of the Ariga in Dekra. show less