A good filler book set in the Dungeons and Dragons Forgotten Realms. I probably enjoyed this more than the 2 stars for it's pulpy nature but the writing was rushed and simple, the dialogue basic and the style far too much like a guided tour.
I didn't expect much and I got a neat story that even though it's part one of a trilogy it was a complete story. ( )

The book is difficult because it dwells on the precise interaction between the main character and nature. Tavis, the ranger, is a skilled tracker, but the long narrative digressions into discussions of how to lay a false track doesn't seem to suit the genre. Also, the bad guys--the ogre horde of the shaman Gobaka--aren't that bad. They're an amorphous blob that is continuously hacked and slashed by the good guys. Gobaka, their leader, is an interesting character, but his motivations are never clear. He's never allowed to reach his full potential by shaking the ogre archetype: big, stupid, and psuedo-comical. The novel does contain a very exciting scene where the adventurers are attempting to cross a flowing river that ends in a waterfall, and the main character almost falls to his death. ( )