Rating: 
Summary: Discontinuity, Needless Wordy Metaphors, Waste of Time
Review: Although hard to believe a book in the series could be worse then Malkavian, this takes the trophy. I've never seen an author try to use so many words to discribe the irrelevant. The chantry seems to be run like a one room school house, complete with crying children and story hour. Trying to pull some meaning from the events is further confused from the chapters needlessly jumping back and forth in the story line. This is the single worst book I've read and is greatly over-rated at one star.
Rating:
Summary: Discontinuity, Needless Wordy Metaphors, Waste of Time
Review: Although hard to believe a book in the series could be worse then Malkavian, this takes the trophy. I've never seen an author try to use so many words to discribe the irrelevant. The chantry seems to be run like a one room school house, complete with crying children and story hour. Trying to pull some meaning from the events is further confused from the chapters needlessly jumping back and forth in the story line. This is the single worst book I've read and is greatly over-rated at one star.
Rating:
Summary: Nonexistent plot
Review: Clan Novel: Tremere had no plot; it was simply a collection of scenes from previous stories as observed from the Tremere perspective, with several vignettes of Tremere chantry life added for flavor. At the end, the author contrives to explain the murky plot in a dialogue between the main characters, but the proffered explanation is weak.After losing interest in the book, I only continued to see if any new elements would be added to the story, having read the previous 11 novels. I finished the book with the feeling that my time had been completely wasted.
Rating: 
Summary: Blood Black Magic
Review: For some inexplicable reason, the Tremere, who should be one of the most interesting of clans, seem to always wind up embroiled in tedium. Part of this is the nature of the tribe itself - tightly organized, perfectionist, and ritual bound. To many of the mainstream clan members are more focused on didactic interests and true action. Such is Johnston Foley, Regent Secundus or the Five Boroughs Chantry. He is irritating, vindictive, and foolish enough to assay things without consultation. A burden to his Primus, Aisling Sturbridge.
Foley's future is neither mysterious not unwelcome, and it falls to Aisling to seek the truth of it. Unfortunately author Eric Griffen allows the story to become distracted by its own details. Instead of a fully satisfying conclusion with are greeted by several counterplots that can only increase the number of question. This close to the end of the series one has to wonder if there ever really will be a conclusion.
The Tremere of much of their power as thaumaturges to the practice if diablerie - drinking the blood of more ancient undead. This makes others wary of them, and has convinced the Assamites to hunt them out as abominations. As a result a Tremere is always in danger when outside the chantry. In this case though the danger is from within, and Aisling is distracted by the challenges of her own past.
If only Griffen had allowed himself to craft a focused plot instead of indulged himself in an orgy of details that do not further the story. There are Clan books for that sort of thing, and a fair number of peripheral novels that delve into the Tremere (see the Victorian Vampire series, among others. This book comes excruciatingly close to being a good novel only to render itself into a useful textbook. Sometimes I think that the Eye of Hazimel gets to have all the fun.
Rating:
Summary: Nonexistent plot
Review: Honestly, I would equivilance this book to the Clan Novel Toreodor. The bad side of it includes that the story is too vague to be truly enjoyed. Everything is in a dream state description. And most of all, I did not find any section of it pulling me to read it like some of the other Clan Novels. An example I would give is the beginning of it where Sturbridge is involved in a big ritual. How she got up there, the powers she used, the little component details were all lacking. The whole thing had little background and a lot of dream description. On the good side of the story, it did explain the Giovanni death. The author was really good about showing damn disciplined is the Tremere clan. Not the best of the clan novels, that's for sure.
Rating:
Summary: Not as impressive.
Review: Honestly, I would equivilance this book to the Clan Novel Toreodor. The bad side of it includes that the story is too vague to be truly enjoyed. Everything is in a dream state description. And most of all, I did not find any section of it pulling me to read it like some of the other Clan Novels. An example I would give is the beginning of it where Sturbridge is involved in a big ritual. How she got up there, the powers she used, the little component details were all lacking. The whole thing had little background and a lot of dream description. On the good side of the story, it did explain the Giovanni death. The author was really good about showing damn disciplined is the Tremere clan. Not the best of the clan novels, that's for sure.
Rating:
Summary: Maybe he wanted to write about Mage instead?
Review: I am still having troubling finishing this book, but I am getting close and skimmed ahead. From what I can tell I would be better served to skip this novel altogether. I enjoyed all of the previous Clan Novels to a varying extent. I enjoy the intrigue, character development and action that is found in varying amounts in other World of Darkness books. However, this book is just tedious and completely unenlightening. There seems to be no plot and we do not seem to learn anything useful regarding the series. The characters do not catch our interest and there are several disjointed scenes that are not only boring, but do not seem to serve a real purpose. As someone who reads 2-6 books a month I am amazed that I cannot think of any book that was less worthy of my time and money.
Rating:
Summary: Is 1 Star too good?
Review: I am still having troubling finishing this book, but I am getting close and skimmed ahead. From what I can tell I would be better served to skip this novel altogether. I enjoyed all of the previous Clan Novels to a varying extent. I enjoy the intrigue, character development and action that is found in varying amounts in other World of Darkness books. However, this book is just tedious and completely unenlightening. There seems to be no plot and we do not seem to learn anything useful regarding the series. The characters do not catch our interest and there are several disjointed scenes that are not only boring, but do not seem to serve a real purpose. As someone who reads 2-6 books a month I am amazed that I cannot think of any book that was less worthy of my time and money.
Rating:
Summary: No plot, little substance
Review: I hate to say, but this was the worst of all the Clan Novels so far. When I bought this book, on the heels of the Bujah Clan Novel, I was eager to see the continuation of the Camarilla seige of New York. What I got was a book that was even more confusing than the Malkavian book. Although the Malkavian book had a number of overtones, that seemed to do nothing but confuse the reader at points, the end of the book, all the pieces came together to form a picture that made reading the 190 pages before it. Tremere fell very short of that goal. All this was was a mixture of dialouge, and mysterious annalogies that served to confoud the reader, forcing them to hurry to get to the end to hopefully find a meaning for all of it, which they dissapointingly left out, leaving the reader feeling cheated out of their money. All in all, I'd say that you could skip this book and move right on to Noseferatu, but I'm saving that opinion until I actually read it. I'm just hoping that they don't take the overall plot and drop it, leaving everyone to wonder if and how the Camarilla takes New York out from under the Sabbat.
Rating:
Summary: No plot, little substance
Review: I hate to say, but this was the worst of all the Clan Novels so far. When I bought this book, on the heels of the Bujah Clan Novel, I was eager to see the continuation of the Camarilla seige of New York. What I got was a book that was even more confusing than the Malkavian book. Although the Malkavian book had a number of overtones, that seemed to do nothing but confuse the reader at points, the end of the book, all the pieces came together to form a picture that made reading the 190 pages before it. Tremere fell very short of that goal. All this was was a mixture of dialouge, and mysterious annalogies that served to confoud the reader, forcing them to hurry to get to the end to hopefully find a meaning for all of it, which they dissapointingly left out, leaving the reader feeling cheated out of their money. All in all, I'd say that you could skip this book and move right on to Noseferatu, but I'm saving that opinion until I actually read it. I'm just hoping that they don't take the overall plot and drop it, leaving everyone to wonder if and how the Camarilla takes New York out from under the Sabbat.
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