Rating: 
Summary: I wanted to like this book.
Review: I wanted to like this book. Someone had recommended the DragonCrown War Cycle as a fantasy series similar to George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, which I thoroughly enjoyed. So I thought I would check out the prequel.It started out well enough: A coming-of-age story involving four young men in a village. The details were intimate, different, descriptive. It intrigued me. That's about where my enjoyment of it ended. The author is a game designer, and it shows. The book is written as if the protagonists were the characters in a fantasy role-playing game. That is, everything is black-and-white; magic and healing are simply taken for granted as tools that exist for use; there are various races that exist for no specific reason; there are endless battles without much plotting or characterization to go along with it; and there's a single distant enemy who is the core of all evil. Being a former player of Dungeons and Dragons, I could almost see the author thinking, "Okay, after THIS battle these guys will get more experience points and gain a level." The problem is: I hate novels that work this way. The stories that work best for me are the ones that truly explore the meaning of the experience, that explore characters and motivations, ethical twists and interpersonal conflicts. I'm not talking about dry philosophy or moralizing; I'm just talking about a little introspection and interplay. The characters are very flat, the plotting is juvenile, the worldbuilding is derivative. Early in the book, for instance, the main characters survive an attack by various sinister creatures and are lauded for doing so despite their innocence and inexperience. After that there is absolutely zero exploration of their feelings, their reactions, how this has changed them. Instead they are herded from one event to another, so quickly and without any deeper meaning that it is very difficult to see this as anything other than the narration of someone's role-playing game. Within a few chapters they have come military heroes. The existence of the different races and the treatment of magic are similarly superficial. So you've got these different races, and ok they look different, and either there's some racism among the "good guy" races, or there are a bunch of "bad guy" races that exist only to attack the good guys. Riiiight. That's pretty juvenile. It's like the stereotypical role-playing scenario of stumbling into a dungeon room, filled with treasure, sealed for thousands of years, and there's a dragon there defending it ... Why would any living being exist only for the purpose of attacking the good guys? And magic: I don't mind the use of magic. But I feel that any description of it should be handled with sophistication -- perhaps a hint of a mythic tone or mysterious quality, to emphasize the fact that forces exist in the world beyond one's ken, or a sense of background or underlying meaning to it all. But here, as in so many derivative fantasies, it is reduced to plot points. I will say that I enjoyed the character development and tension and twists scattered here and there, but it occurred mostly at the beginning and the end. For the rest of it, there was surprisingly little real tension. Even sex scenes lacked any flavor of reality. One last complaint: The language. Highly inconsistent: At times he uses high, formalistic language, sounding like he's trying to do a proper medieval fantasy; at other times he'll say, for instance, that the summer was a "scorcher," which is a very modern slang term. It makes for a rather jolting read at times. My verdict: The beginning is nice, the ending is very interesting. Most of it goes nowhere. There's no *meaning*. It's just a big dumb hero-boy fantasy.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Read
Review: This is the first Stackpole novel I have had the pleasure of reading, from opening the first page to touching keys on this review was about 3 hours. I couldnt stop reading. The vivid detail Stackpole has packed into such a short novel is nothing short of amazing... Upon reading some of the other reviews I noticed a tread in some that hint at similarities with LOTR. I saw it but not so much similarities but "style" I guess it would be called. With this in mind, please think about Tolkien, he was the GOD of fantasy, everything fantasy revolves around LOTR in some way, everything from Jordan's "Wheel of Time" to Goodkind's "Sword of Truth" they all find their roots in Tolkien's Masterpiece. I think Stackpole has made his own work with this one, The way its written makes you believe Hawkins is there writting his tales down as you look over his shoulder, you can almost see the smile on his face at times or see the quiver of pain at others. I would have loved for the book to be a little longer but what was there was a truly great read...
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