Rating: 
Summary: Sames as Legends 1 with less authors
Review: This a copy of three of the stories from Legends 1 except that it only has 3 stories buy legends 1 to read all eleven stories which are wonderful.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Diversion, Enjoyable Reading
Review: I will admit my erronious ways. As a science fiction reader I have always avoided books with dragons or dragonriders on the cover. Any volume with a knight on the front was a historical novel to be avoided. Shame on me. The real hoot about this thing is that I didn't mean to order this book! Several years ago I had an audio tape of one of the PERN books by Anne McCaffrey, and attempted to listen to it on a long car-trip. Unfortunatly, A three year old with numerous complaints kept me from hearing every other word. Scratch one. Now I have had a great experience reading Terry Goodkind's DEBT OF BONES, George R.R. Martin's Wonderful THE HEDGE KNIGHT, and the sadly overdue ( for me ) RUNNER OF PERN, by Anne McCaffrey. Thank you to the editors for including a complete list of related works . I spent a hot South Alabama day under my porch umbrella with this book and my ever present cold beer loving every minute of it.
Rating: 
Summary: In reference to Stephen King's contribution only:
Review: I bought "Legends : Short Novels by the Master of Modern Fantasy" only for the Stephen King "Dark Tower" short-story, "The Little Sisters of Eluria." I do not intend on reviewing the book as a whole, thus making this opinion biased toward King's entry only. However, I feel that it is necessary for the customer who is only interested in this book because of King's story to know that this reviewer found the plot to be only somewhat interesting, and relevance to the "Dark Tower" volumes almost non-existent. Technically part of the the Gunslinger canon, one isn't going to miss out on crucial plot points if one does not read "Sisters." Specifically, the two main problems that I had with King's entries are: (1.) "Sisters," as a story by-itself, is only a two-out-of-five-starred story -- and seems to go from beginning to middle to end like a video game; the plot feels programmed, and not exciting enough to make one wonder, What's going to happen next? (2.) There is nothing, as far as I understood, that ties in the "Dark Tower" series to "Sisters," beside the fact that Roland (the Gunslinger) is the protagonist, and that he, in a couple of scenes, recalls some of his old friends that readers are previously familiar with. For those who crave more background information on the "Dark Tower" series, refer to other King books, such as "The Stand" and "Insomnia." If you must, pick "Legends" up at a library and read "Sisters" for free.
Rating: 
Summary: An impressive mesh of contemporary fantasy authors
Review: I didn't know about this book until I stumbled across the first paperback edition in a local bookstore and thought the concept sounded interesting. The installment I'm referring to has stories by King (Who CAN develop an emotionally deep, multi-dimensional character, despite what some self-righteous "literate minds" would have you believe), Silverberg, Card, and Feist. The first story, "The Little Sisters of Eluria" by King, was, if not as fantastic in concept and scope as the full Tower novels, still a solid look into the pre-Eddie-Detta-Jake-Oy quest. The end showcased some of King's poignant, prose-heavy (by King terms at least) talents as a writer. The story by Silverberg, "The Seventh Shrine" was my introduction to Silverberg and, I believe, quite an impressive yarn. His style of writing reminded me of Walter Miller somewhat and that, if nothing else, shines in his favor. The story reads very much like a detective story that lacks that enlightening "oomph" at the end where all is revealed. This really isn't a bad thing, though, and I am looking forward to reading more of Silverberg's work Orson Scott Card's tale of Alvin Maker was entertaining, but I really found myself annoyed by the characters' southern dialect. By the end, however, I was charmed by the simple folklore-like quality of the story, although if you want to read Card at his best you read "Ender's Game" and "Speaker for the Dead". Feist's story, "The Wood Boy" was good, if somewhat rushed. I've heard good things about the Riftwar Saga, and I think this story was strong enough to persuade me to check the books out. My favorite story, simply for sentiment's sake, is the Roland story, due to the fact that I am a big fan of King (and the Dark Tower series, particularly). I think the best-written story would certainly have the be the Silverberg tale. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in reading a good short fantasy story, or, in my case, wanting a "sampler" to see what other unknown authors you might want to check out.
Rating:
Summary: Definitely a hit!
Review: I would reccomend this book for the sole purpose of reading Terry Goodkind. He is a great author who stands above all the others, with the possible exception of David Eddings. I think if you want to read a good book you should read this one, mainly because of Goodkinds work in writing the story of the origin of the boundary put up by the First Wizard Zeddicus Z'ul Zorander to protect the people of Westland and the Midlands from the threat of the D'Haran Empire, ruled by Darken Rahl the son of Panis Rahl an evil man who dabbles in dark secrets. Another book I would reccomend is any book written by Goodkind.
Rating: 
Summary: Hit and miss...
Review: I was thrilled to see Silverberg put this book together. Several wonderful authors, contributing glimpses into their own creations.. brilliant! (No Dennis McKiernan or Neil Gaiman, but you can't please everyone.) Then, after waiting a year, I see the publishers expand it to three separate (and separately-priced) paperbacks. What? Maybe they couldn't fit it into one, I'm not sure of how that's arranged, but there's no reason they couldn't do it in two books. Except the obviou$ one of cour$e.. find the collection in a library or borrow it from someone, but don't encourage the book company by paying for all three books! Please! Ok, that rant out of the way.. this collection is fantastic overall, but somewhat hit and miss. Williams, Pratchett and Silverberg provide some wonderful short tales, definitely worthy of their series. Robert Jordan's, though very well done, will likely be incomprehensible and pointless to anyone not familiar with the series. (And even if you've read the series, it adds nothing. Too bad.) Feist's is only average.. probably could have come from anyone. But there's plenty of other Riftwar material out there. Martin and McCaffrey's contributions I found interesting, but nothing made me want to read more of their works. King's contribution was pointless and went nowhere.. much like the Dark Tower series so far. Hopefully he'll wrap it up in a nice way, but this small diversion is worthless. Goodkind was simplistic and had a too-impossibly-happy ending (just like the rest of his books). Decent, but he's better at longer stories. OS Card's awful piece of drivel is the worst clunker here, but Le Guin's bunch of aimless ramblings comes in a close second. Maybe it's because I haven't read any Earthsea books, but nothing was explained and nothing happened in the story. Still, why argue? Fantasy fan or not, this collection has something for everyone. Just decide how much you're willing to pay for it..
Rating:
Summary: If you're confused by these book reviews...
Review: ...That's because it's confusing. The *hardcover* edition contains the writings of eleven well-known fantasy authors. Each author tells a short story. There are *three paperback editions*, each containing just a few of the stories. The reviews on this page are a mixture of reviews for the eleven-story volume (the hardcover), and the five-story volume (the third paperback). THIS review covers only the five-story paperback edition. Having said that, I'll tell you this book is excellent. Robert Silverberg, Tad Williams, Robert Jordan, Ursula Le Guin, and Terry Pratchett are the authors in this volume. Someone in another review on this page foolishly said that the writers were "selling out"; that they wrote these novellas only to make some money, and promote their older writings. How wrong! While it certainly couldn't hurt any of their careers to write these short stories, every true author has stories inside him that would not make a full-length novel. Does that mean that the stories should never be written? That the stories should never see the light of day because of some fool who can't see beyond the end of his nose, claiming "sell out!"? No, these stories were written because the authors felt the *need* to write them. The stories are the perfect opportunity for these very famous authors to spin more tales; tales that otherwise would go unwritten and unpublished, were it not for the mythopoeic idea to collect the smaller stories of these folks into one (er... three...) volumes. The standout novella in this collection is Tad Williams' "The Burning Man", the story of a young girl with a mad stepfather, living in a haunted castle... the SAME castle that young Seoman lives in, years later, in Williams' beloved "Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn" epic. This story is not to be missed! The soulful writing, punctuated by Williams' creative storytelling, make this story the very best in the collection, and well worth the read. Robert Jordan's tale, "New Spring", is the story of Moiraine Sedai and Lan the Warder, years before Jordan's "Wheel of Time" series begins. While of interest only to those who have read Jordan's continuing series, the story is nonetheless well-written. Robert Silverberg writes "The Seventh Shrine", a tale of Majipoor, as well as the introduction. Terry Pratchett writes a new "Discworld" novella, and Ursula Le Guin's tale, Dragonfly, is another story from her "Earthsea" series. Altogether, this is a collection worth reading, and saving; let's hope the authors will consider compiling a new collection in the future, ignoring those who disparagingly call them 'sell-outs'...
Rating:
Summary: Inconsistent Quality
Review: This appears to be a vehicle for TOR to get more books sold. I think these authors are just selling out and pushing short stories from thier already successful series to attract more readers. While all the authors are true to their styles and series, not all the authors are of the same caliber.
Rating:
Summary: Goodkind Rocks
Review: This book deserves a lot more credit than it was given. The Terry Goodkind story is worth buying even if you don't like the other stories. I highly reccomend this book to any fantasy fan and to anyone who can appreciate a great story.
Rating:
Summary: You don't see value and excellence like this very often.
Review: The genre of the short story isn't dead, it just needs major talent to revive it! It helps that all these authors use worlds established in larger series in order to do it. Stand-outs include the burning man and the hedge knight, too awesome stories. The hedge knight has perhaps the most graphically disturbing and moving death I've ever read. It influences the course of the kingdoms in a way that readers of the series will find fascinating. What a great read. I'm not done with all the stories yet, but there is one clunker. Steven King comes up with good premises once in a while, but his writing is repetitive and his story of roland goes nowhere. In my mind the only really good roland novel was the first one. As a fantasy author Stephen King couldn't carry George Martin or Robert Jordan's jock-strap with a crane.
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