Rating: 
Summary: A truly Grand Crusade
Review: I was simply amazed by this book. While definitely shorter than the two previous books in the series, Grand Crusade has nothing lacking in depth. As others have noted, characters from the Dark Glory War make a great reappearance, particularly Nay. Long-standing characters like Resolute and kerrigan undergo some surprising changes. For those who detest Scrainwood and the ultra-stuffy magisters of Vilwan, don't worry, they get their just desserts. Some of the revelations about the Hawkins and Norrington family trees are very surprising. My only gripe: it was extremely difficult to keep track of the Dragoncrown fragments, I was never sure which pieces belonged where(except the Fortress Draconis pieces) or who had them. Overall, a masterpiece by Stackpole and i look forward to one day meeting the next generation of heroes.
Rating:
Summary: Just...wow
Review: I went through this book in less than 24 hours, which is faster than I went through the trilogy's second book, When Dragons Rage. This book was an excellent read -- I found it very hard to put down. I was connected so deeply with the characters in the whole trilogy, it was very important to me to find out what happens to them in the end, which was extraordinary. I would recommend this series to anyone who likes fantasy at all -- or anyone who has recently seen the Lord of the Rings films. The tale of adventure and love and loss and courage and dedication and loyalty and devotion is just so universal -- it is rare that you find a series that explores all of these things at once, in addition to larger issues. Destiny is at play here, and this book takes a good, hard look at what prophecy really may be, what destiny really might mean. Never have I read a book that deals with the concepts of destiny and prophecy better than this one. Additionally, woven into it all is a love story, and the story of one man who has spent his entire adult life fighting -- and finally finds happiness. The tale is just so rich, I cannot say enough good things about it. It has to be one of the best books -- and the best series -- I've read in my life.Fair warning to everyone, though -- if you thought that the family tree was convoluted to begin with, just wait. It gets even more mixed up. All you can do is sit back and enjoy the ride -- I certainly did.
Rating: 
Summary: A weak ending but not a bad book
Review: I'm a big fan of Stackpole and it pains me to say that this book was a let down. The Dark Glory War was an awesome book and a great way to start the series. The next two books were great as well. However the standards are set so high and what he comes back with is a very anticlimatic ending. The ending is fairly predictable and the descriptions of the battles are probably the worst of any I've ever seen him write. It does hurt the series but the quality of the rest of the books makes the series well worth the read.
Rating: 
Summary: Damn this book moves fast
Review: If you liked the other books in the series, you will love this one. Like a couple of the other reviewers, I finished the book in a little over a day. Stackpole simply screams through 75% or 80% of this book, which is both good and bad. Good because the book hardly ever slows down enough to have you wandering when something important will happen again, as is often the case with other writers (like Jordan, where you sit there thinking if I can just finish this page maybe something will happen on the next). The downside is the very little time spend with character resolution, since I am, along with one of the other reviewers, a horrible glutton for. I do have to admit, I am glad we didn't see Will again, I just couldn't bring myself to really like him. But overall this book is great, I really loved it, and hopefully we can look forward to hearing from these characters again.
Rating:
Summary: The Unrecognized Best
Review: Stackpole has continuously put forward remarkable novels. Despite this, he is not given the credit he deserves. I have read Jordan, McCaffrey, and many other popular fantasy writers, and none of them have published anything that compares with Stackpole's best novels (I won't compare him with Tolkein because, quite frankly, you can't beat a legend...you can only become a legend yourself). Stackpole's stories are filled with original plots, characters, and twists; yet draw enough from traditional fantasy(i.e. elves, magic, etc.) to be easily understood by the common fantasy reader. This mix of originality with familiarity is combined with a superb storytelling ability to create books that grab your attention and don't let go until they have guided you through amazing worlds, cultures, politics, characters, and stories.
The Grand Crusade in particular is among Stackpole's best. Without giving any major spoilers, I will just say that it brings back some much loved characters from The Dark Glory War, introduces some great new characters, includes more unexpected plot twists than the other books in the series, and still manages to end the Dragoncrown War Cycle remarkably well.
Finally, I don't know if he will ever see this, but I would like to thank Michael Stackpole for all of his hard work. He has provided me with years of enjoyable reading. If you are reading this review and have never read Stackpole's work before, then I would recommend you start with either Talion: Revenant or The Dark Glory War.
Rating:
Summary: THE END?
Review: The battles rage, betrayal upon betrayal, intrigue within intrigue, the saga moveson to its mighty conclusion. Sort of. THE GRAND CRUSADE is touted as the conclusion to the Dragoncrown War Cycle but to be honest while it is a fine piece of fiction the ending left me feeling like the story was only partly finished. Instead of the fireworks of a grand finale we get the sputtering fizzle of a wet firecracker. After a three book build up the disposition of many of the main characters is left till the epilog, in a rather offhanded and cavalier manner it seems to me. It almost reads like the author came to a certain point, got bored, and says...'this is what happens, THE END.' When finished you may find yourself, as I did, looking back and many of the subplots and wondering just what in the heck they were doing in the story to begin with. Were they just red herrings placed there to distract form the true ending? Maybe foreshadowing for an additional series? Whatever the case it left me feeling rather unsatisfied. I think what make the ending even more disappointing is that up until the ending it really is a fine piece of fiction, a real joy to read. I'll RECOMMEND it but with the warning to the reader that you may feel a bit unfulfilled at the end.
Rating:
Summary: Not up to par
Review: The first two books in this series, and I'm including the prerquel, were excellent. This book was way to brief. We spent hundreds of pages building up to a final battle that was boring, over way to quickly, and didn't make alot of sense compared to the chain of events seen in the previous novels.
The Will dilemna is solved in a very unsatisfactory way as were pretty much all the resolutions. It seemed as if Stackpole thought hey time to end it and just threw something together thtat tied up all loose ends. I didn't feel like the ending was given much thought.
Rating: 
Summary: There are two reasons why this book stinks...
Review: The Grand Crusade is the final chapter in the The Dragoncrown War Cycle. The previous book suffered from some dreadfully dull passages, and I'm sorry to say the final book has the same problem. Stackpole spends way too much time arranging the pieces for the final conflict, and not enough time making those pieces interesting. The Dragoncrown War Cycle ends up being a series that starts on a high note and then plummets from there. Will Norrington is dead. Will is the man everybody believes was prophesized to be the one who kills Chytrine, the queen of the north and the woman who wants to take over the entire world. Chytrine's armies are raiding the southern lands and the various provinces are fighting each other politically as much as they're fighting her. King Scrainwood of Oriosa, a conniving coward, has made an arrangement with Chytrine in order to protect his kingdom and the seat of his power. General Adrogans has beaten Chytrine in the west, but the rulers of the southern kingdoms fear that he will set up an empire for himself. Paralyzed by politics and fear, it looks like Chytrine has an open invitation to take over everything. Only a few heroes are willing to try and stop her, and they manage to get enough support to raise an army. But all is not what it seems. Is Will really alive, able to fulfill the prophecy? As the southern armies fight for their lives, a new figure may emerge to decide Chytrine's fate. The Grand Crusade does little to live up to its billing, feeling more like a half-hearted skirmish as far as this reader is concerned. I was hoping for a riveting conclusion that would keep me on the edge of my seat, and I kept waiting for it to happen as Stackpole maneuvered everybody into their proper positions. He places the various leaders at the head of their armies, has the expedition to the northlands put together, and makes sure everything's set. Unfortunately, this takes up half the book and I had trouble keeping my eyes open. The main problem is that the prose is very wooden, much more so then I remember the previous books being. Most of the characterization and the dialogue felt forced and unreal. Stackpole, both in his dialogue and in his narrative voice, uses a very annoying technique that just started getting on my nerves, especially when it happened in almost every chapter. He starts to list things. "But he had acquiesced for two reasons." Then, he goes on to talk about those two reasons. Stackpole does it. His characters do it. I see Stackpole ticking off his fingers as he's writing, if that weren't a physical impossibility requiring three hands. It's a symptom of the entire book, where he's constantly setting things up, describing everything without actually doing anything. It gets worse as Stackpole sets up the battles. Action is one of the things that Stackpole excels at. He can be quite bloody in his descriptions (and when he gets to the battles in The Grand Crusade, he is still quite graphic, so be warned), but everything has a pace and intensity that I just marvel at. He puts the reader down in the middle of the action and you almost find yourself looking behind you to make sure somebody's not coming up to you with a sword ready to skewer you. It's quite effective, and the book has a lot of energy when he writes the combat scenes. However, every time it looks like the battles are about to start, Stackpole starts setting them up again. He shows us countless strategy sessions between the generals, and he has those same generals brood on those strategies some more before finally executing them (many times listing the various things that could go wrong). Don't get me wrong. I'm not an action junkie, needing the blood and guts to make a book good. However, the non-combat part of the book has to be interesting, or give me the battles! I found that I barely cared about any of the characters, including characters who I had cared about in the previous books. On the positive side, I didn't find any of the characters annoying, which is a step up for a couple of them (Kerrigan and Isaura). Ultimately, I found that the battles were the only interesting things in the book, and I found myself getting annoyed when each battle would end and more strategizing happened. While the battles themselves were wonderfully done, I found that the results of them too often had convenient resolutions, as somebody comes in and saves the day. One battle has General Adrogans come from very far away and arrive at the perfect time to do what's necessary to turn the tide. While he knows that the war is happening there, he has no idea what the exact situation is. He's just going to help as best he can, and he just happens to get there where he can make the biggest difference. So many of the battles begin with our heroes acknowledging that they are in an almost impossible situation, and that even if they prevail they're going to lose a lot of soldiers. However, most of the time they don't have to deal with that because something else happens. Ultimately, if it wasn't for the battle scenes, this book would be the bottom of the barrel. As it is, it's close. I've seen so much better from Stackpole, and the series started out so wonderfully. I didn't realize that I was already at the top when I started it. If this wasn't the final book of the series, there's no way I would have finished it. Avoid it if at all possible. David Roy
Rating:
Summary: A great read, but short of 5 stars.
Review: The Grand Crusade... first off, it's an accurate title. Michael takes his time reintroducing the characters, and while I understand why writers do that, I'm not convinced it needs to be done in a limited series (this is presumably the last book).
As usual, I enjoyed Michael's narrative immensely. The clarity with which he describes not only combat scenes but entire battles is startling, especially since it's easy to read. Possibly the most appreciated element, which Michael uses well, is his inclusion of descriptions of some of the nastier wounds that people take. The kind of thing that makes the reader realize how gory battle really can be. If you're looking for the revival of Will Norrington, don't hold your breath. It's over half-way through the book before the possibility of THE Norrington's return is addressed. While I wasn't addicted to the idea of Will showing up again (Princess Alexia's interpretation of the prophecy matched mine) I had been hoping to see him again. Frankly, I'd grown very fond of the little thief.
What Michael did left me feeling as if he were struggling to find a solution. 85% of the book was collimated like a laser, burning away chunks of this tale, revealing to us the glory, hopes and fears of the characters in every chapter. That was consistent with the rest of the series.
But that 15% seemed to wander, and to my thinking, detracted from the book, and the grand crusade (apologies, pun intended).
Don't take my word for it, though. Read it and rebut. ;) The return of some old friends, and the introduction of some new ones, makes for great moments. Temmer is addressed again, and some background is filled in that explains a lot about Isaura. We get looks at new perspectives, including a few zooms on Chytrine herself, and it does help fill in the whole story. Oddly enough, the epilogue felt a little rushed to me, but I'm a glutton for character resolution. Of course, I wouldn't mind if Michael went on with this world... The Grand Crusade was absolutely that. Even the 15% that I felt wandered a bit wasn't near enough to turn me away or even make me regret the wait. If you liked Timothy Zahn's "Thrawn" trilogy, The Lord of the Rings movies and/or Dave Duncan's "The Gilded Chain" series, you'll enjoy the Dragon Crown War series. And if you enjoyed the first three books, I doubt anything will keep you away from the last one. All in all, a great read.
Rating:
Summary: Not so Grand nor much of a Design
Review: This book should be a lesson to all authors. If you try to do something clever while writing your trilogy, like killing off the most interesting character in the whole book, then you better replace this character with someone or something even MORE interesting. Unfortunately, Michael Stackpole did nothing of the kind in the final installment of his DragonCrown series and the whole epic falls flat in the end.
This was very unfortunate, as I really did enjoy the first two books and the third one appeared to be a promising endeavor. Stackpole, however, just went through the motions with this one. Stackpole took a big chance killing off the lead character in the second book and while at the time I thought this was very clever and exciting, it took the whole heart and soul right out of the ensuing novel. This book had nothing to make it the least bit original, interesting or exciting. The final battle scenes were dull, the final confrontation with the ultimate ice queen, who for some unknown reason wishes to rule the whole world, were entirely predictable. The other characters in the novel lost their edge about one-third of the way through and never got it back. Characters such as Kerrigan never fully developed. The whole romance/relationship between Alexia and Crow was not only unbelievable, but repetitive and boring. (Way too many little, "I love you!!", "No, I love you more!!" scenes which were very annoying and added nothing to the book.)
I was very disappointed in this effort, which seemed to be thrown together in a rush to just get the job done. I know this author can do better. In all fairness to Stackpole, at least he ENDED his fantasy series. Unlike a few authors out there I can mention. That's the reason he gets three stars instead of two. I hope that his future novels fare better.
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