The Living Dead

Rating:
Summary: More brain-candy fantasy from Lain, with Iconic folk aplenty
Review: The second book in the Dungeons and Dragons series that feature the Iconic characters from the 3rd Edition Player's Handbook, "The Living Dead" pits our heroes against undead villainy running amok.

The heroes from the PHB this time include Devis, Mialee, and Soveliss, along with a secondary cast of characters that round out the group. The story tends to have a lot more humour in it than you'd expect: two people end up running around a city naked in the pouring rain, for example, before the story is very far underway. There's some classic fun in this one, as well as very dark villains and sometimes gore-laden descriptive text. After all, undead are the enemy.

There's no great mental challenge to these books so far, and that's fine - this is not reading intended to change your life, after all. The length is still very short for the price, but the story - even if it is straightforward - is entertaining. This is candy for the mind, easily and quickly enjoyed, and I'll happily admit I'm hooked.

'Nathan

Rating:
Summary: Resurrection
Review: This book is so much better than the previous one it resurrects the just born series. In this piece we have a new cast of characters, more seasoned adventurers than in The Savage Caves and the story is of a 1000 year epic struggle involving higher powers rathern than the cave crawl of the previous book.

The pace is slower and the characters are allowed to give much more exposition, probably too much exposition with many speeches giving the history of everyone. However it does allow the characters to become much more fleshed out than the ones from The Savage Caves.

The actual adventure consists of a bard, mage, cleric and ranger trying to finally end the terror of a very powerful undead. It was actually solidly mediocre and uninspired, just what you'd expect from franchise fiction.

All in all, an improvement over the very poor The Savage Caves yet only a mediocre 3 out of 5.

Rating:
Summary: Fun, but too much predictable
Review: This is a book fun to read, fighting undead with inspired melody, magic spell and enchanted sword. But probably it has too much "fun", i.e. not only one but two main characters both got naked and then subsequencely even running naked across the whole town.

The already shorten story line is also too much predictable, IMHO. I believe I guess 90% of the ending when I just finished about 1/3 of the book. Along with the main characters, there are too many secondary characters, and most of them are very "short lived", and not being described in much more details than just one or two sentences. According to the "tradition" of this series, i.e. no more than 200 pages for each title, this shortcoming might be a given.

Overall, this is not a bad book, it is fun and no brainer, but this title might be the worst in this series so far. 1.5 stars if I could give.

Rating:
Summary: Whahuh?
Review: This isn,t a bad book, but I really expected a tale involving a lot of different undead types, and instead I found the group was facing little more than a Wight. No offense, but there a plenty scarier undead to choose from than wights. The tale isn't bad and some of the characters are fun, but the story is rushed, told in well under 300 pages. Had I known I was paying six bucks for a book under three hundred pages I would have thought twice before making a purchase. As it is, I will say away from TH Lain's Penny Dreadfuls that cost a dollar. Definately a throw away tale, as I read this a month ago and cannot recall a single character's name.

Not a bad read, just not worth the cover. 2 stars for shortness of story and forgettable characters.

Rating:
Summary: Whahuh?
Review: This isn,t a bad book, but I really expected a tale involving a lot of different undead types, and instead I found the group was facing little more than a Wight. No offense, but there a plenty scarier undead to choose from than wights. The tale isn't bad and some of the characters are fun, but the story is rushed, told in well under 300 pages. Had I known I was paying six bucks for a book under three hundred pages I would have thought twice before making a purchase. As it is, I will say away from TH Lain's Penny Dreadfuls that cost a dollar. Definately a throw away tale, as I read this a month ago and cannot recall a single character's name.

Not a bad read, just not worth the cover. 2 stars for shortness of story and forgettable characters.