The Darkest Day

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.

And so it ends (again). I'm glad I waited 20+ years to read this series again, because I had completely forgotten just about everything. This fantasy siege was different than Donaldson's or Tolkien's because it was the good guys laying siege to the bad guys. I don't remember reading the Helmsdeep siege (just seeing it in the movie), but I thought the Donaldson "Siege of Revelstone" was definitely better than the siege of the Iron Tower, but it was still fun and not bad at all.

I loved the last part of the book where he talks about the character's lives after the war. As usual there was a bit too much geography for me and I could do without ever hearing "they did not know" again, but overall I enjoyed listening to this again and it show more wasn't just the nostalgia. Since the next two are on audio I'll be checking those out sometime soon. show less

This trilogy bears about the same resemblance to the Lord of the Rings that a wad of gum on the underside of a seat does to a fresh stick of Wrigley's Doublemint. A lot of the material is similar to that of the source, but the freshness and flavour is not there. The cover art, on the other hand, is outstanding and worth keeping the book for.

Many people are extremely hateful towards this series as it is clearly a 'rip-off' of Tolkien. However, I found this series very enjoyable. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings was certainly a magnificent series, but it did have many many long drawn out battle scenes. McKiernan's novels, on the other hand, are significantly less focused on battles. There's still plenty of action and battle, but I found the series to be much faster paced and attention keeping. I love McKiernan's take on Tolkien's hobbits. The Warrows are not just simple, helpless characters. They are skilled with the bow and hunting techniques. Overall, I found this series to be extremely enjoyable. I for one am a huge fan of the Iron Tower Trilogy, and the Silver Call Duology.

This concludes the Iron Tower trilogy, which parallels the LOTR trilogy quite closely. The plot of the final book is similar in overall plot to Return of the King, though different in details. The whole idea of this series was a return to Tolkien style fantasy, which it does quite well. This is worth reading if you enjoy that type of fantasy writing.

A good ending to an average series that's very similar to Lord of the Rings. The appendices in the back of the book are a nice touch.

wrapup to the IronTower trilogy. Tuck ends up shooting the Myrkenstone, which destroys Modru and sends Gyphon back beyond the spheres. He is blinded. Ends up him marrying Merrile Holt and living out the rest of their lives as historians.