Rating: Summary: Up there with my other favorite books Review: This is another example of what Niles is capable of. Not only does his book provide very enjoyable reading in itself, it answers some questions from one of his previous novels, The Dragons. The scholarary personality of Baker Whitegranite is very nicely written and is followed all the way through the book. The only thing against this book is that the personality of Tarn is underdeveloped compared to everyone else.
Rating: Summary: Good Tale, but Poorly-Researched Review: This is Douglas Niles's 6th DragonLance novel (7th if you count Flint, The King, which he co-wrote w/Mary Kirchoff), and by far his worst. But, that is not to say the book is not worth reading. It is, if only for the simple reason to want to stay "current" with the DragonLance series. The overall story works well enough, but there is a series continuity error in the very premise: the Hylar army has left Thorbardin to battle abroad. In the DL world, the dwarves of Thorbardin (especially the Hylar) are nothing if not taciturn and unwilling to leave thier mountain fortress to fight a battle against the foes of other races, even if those other races are their allies. Thus, it seems highly strange that they would abandon this millennia-old practice to go and fight the Dark Knights of Takhisis in Solamnia now. If they were the typical dwarves of Thorbardin, they would be bulking up on their own defenses, not worrying about someone else's. Other than that, the o! nly real problems are spelling and grammar errors, along with a couple "minor" ones. These minor ones are as follows:1. The names of the main character dwarves in this book seem highly non-dwarvish: Pounce Quickspring, Baker Whitegranite, etc.; Pounce Quickspring sounds more kenderish than dwarven. 2. The sought-after artifact in this novel, the Platinum Egg, is supposedly connected to the Grotto of the first dragons, although none of this information coincides with Niles's novel on this, The Dragons. 3. The daemon warriors and fire dragons (indeed, all the Chaos creatures) were said to have been created by Chaos, not summoned from another plane of existence, as the main character daemon warrior-fire dragon team are. 4. The adding of a surname to Chert Gneiss, a previously created character whose name is acceptable without the new appellation of Truesilver. 5. The Helm of Tongues- one of the novel's plot devices -seems very contradictory to its nature in ! this book. So, to sum it all up: TLT is a good read and a! n entertaining story that leaves the fate of Thorbardin in the Fifth Age somewhat of a mystery, but some of the points of this story scream "contradiction" like I have never seen before.
Rating: Summary: Chaos comes to Thorbardin!! Review: You don't realize the extent of damage The Chaos War had on Krynn until you read this series. Good Lord! In many ways, the war did destroy Krnn. Nobody suffered as great a loss as the dwarves. It's truly saddening to read what happened to Thorbardin. It';s amazing the race survived at all. The book had the right amount of plot twists, good heros & villians & the last 1/3 of it is absolutely gut-wrenchingly sad. A great read.
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