Rating: 
Summary: If you simply must know more.
Review: If you have not read "Legend" stop now and read it first. After you read Legend you will want to know more about Druss (believe me you will). Then you read this book.As a follow up to Legend it is a good book, but it annoyed me a bit that he carved out the Deathwalker legend into another novel. That's why he lost a star.
Rating: 
Summary: Barely passable
Review: In my review of the previous book in the Drenai Tales, "In the Realm of the Wolf", I mentioned that the action scenes were written well but that the plotting was poorer than in previous novels. In "First Chronicles...", Gemmell continues this unfortunate trend except that the story is developed even more poorly IMO. Overall, it was barely passable to me but it may perhaps be decent to someone who hasn't read Gemmell's other works and therefore doesn't know how much better he can be (e.g. Book 3, Quest for Lost Heroes). Or to someone who just hasn't read some of the other great fantasy that's out there. Certainly this novel fails to hit the mark of Legend. It's very average.
In First Chronicles, we learn how Druss earned his reputation for courage and skill in combat that he already had going in to the novel Legend. He is 17 years old when his home village is attacked by raiders and his wife Rowena abducted, along with the other young women of the village. Druss inherits the deadly double-headed axe Snaga from his dying father and pursues the raiders to retrieve his wife, with a couple companions along to help.
Unfortunately this simple quest turns into an ordeal that lasts several years. In order to keep the length of the book reasonable, Gemmell is forced to insert a couple huge gaps of time. These seriously detract from the flow of the novel. Gemmell didn't have much choice in the matter, because he had already referred to this long quest several times in Legend. IMO Gemmell would have been better off just not getting into the quest for Rowena and instead writing stories about Druss's military campaigns and such. I believe that the book "The Legend of Deathwalker", which I'm about to read, does just that.
Rowena is a disappointing character in several respects. She doesn't have a compelling personality, being passive and weak. She's gifted with the ability to see the future, a really big mistake on Gemmell's part IMO. Why not leave that kind of sorcery stuff to the magicians where it belongs, not to the wife of the main character! As a result, her parts of the story were painful to get through because she always knows what's going to happen but makes no attempt to do anything about it. Even upon her abduction by the raiders in the beginning, she knows exactly what Druss will become and how long it will take to find her.
In addition, Rowena becomes afflicted with a serious heart condition that makes her even more pathetic as a major character. We knew from Legend that she died early of natural causes, and Gemmell had to explain it somehow, so again he had no choice. Again, another reason that Gemmell should not have chosen to write about Druss's quest for Rowena.
The retrieval of Rowena takes up the bulk of the book, but the story doesn't end when he rescues her. Instead, Gemmell goes on to describe the events at Skeln Pass twenty years later, where Druss really earned the reputation that figures prominently in Legend. This part of the book is short and focuses on the action, where Gemmell is always solid. I have no complaints here.
Overall, a solid three stars! No real reason to read it, stick with Legend and some of the others in the series. All of these novels are standalone so you don't miss anything by skipping around.
Rating:
Summary: not one of gemmels best
Review: My biggest complaint with this book is that there is no central story frame. Rather is is a series of interesting adventures strung toghether to make a central frame story. Druss vs the corsairs, Druss the streetfighter, Druss and the Ventrians, after awhile I began to wish their was only one overiding concern for Druss to deal with as each of his escapades ended rather quickly in the book. Also his wife Rowena was too weak a character figuratively and literaly. She has these arcane powers but all she does is wait and pine for Druss to rescue her. Still there was enough of Gemmels patented heroic swashbuckling action with the obligatory samarai companions thrown in for good measure to make this at least a passable read.
Rating:
Summary: Yep, he's a Conan-style, dead-set legend
Review: Pretty solid work. I'm not as impressed this time because it's the second `Drenai Tale' I've read - but that being said, I'm not disappointed. The action and mood are as enjoyable as ever, as are the surprisingly frequent almost self-referential asides discussing, "Just what is a hero? Just what makes Druss able to do what he does?" Gemmell likes to have the supporting characters kick this one around. Of course part of it is just the given - he's basically unkillable: you can drop him in the thick of any battle and he'll cut a swathe through whatever factor he's outnumbered by. But there's also the confidence, and the integrity. Druss has his code - basically a knightly `protect the weak' sort of a thing (although he hates riding horses - he's a brawler with an axe who likes a good street fight - not a debonair ponce with a rapier) - and in this book of beginnings we meet his mentor and find out some family history.
The book is celebrating a genre - it doesn't hope to `escape' its confines - which is a strength and weakness. There's no great comedy, or really sharp dialogue, or penetrating social commentary. The characters are deliberately larger than life: this is heroic fantasy, pure and simple, and Gemmell has the sense not to try to add some other possible dimensions outside his scope. But the book integrates everything within its own world strongly, even in most cases the magic. This is often a let down for fantasy writers: in wanting to give their wizards amazing powers it often becomes absurd to think that anything can actually threaten them. And that's what I like about Gemmell - without necessarily soaring, he doesn't generally get anything wrong. So the magical characters generally have limited ability, and the occasional sojourn Druss has into the netherworld don't contradict the rest of the suspense.
However here he makes an unusually ugly clanger, casually granting his Source (was that `the Force', no, sorry, `the Source') priest the power to astrally travel anywhere on the globe - and then remotely, for example, cure the microscopic cancer cells he can examine in anyone while outside his body. Uh, OK, that's nice ... but then we're supposed to swallow that this same priest needs Druss to go and kill the guy driven mad by the demon he's encountered by taking possession of Druss' old axe. Even if the reader grants Gemmell the benefit of the doubt, perhaps reasoning for him that the priest couldn't metaphysically get past the demon, it makes no sense that this same priest left his emissary starved and languishing in a dungeon. Moreover he's supposed to be pretty compassionate, yet we get no suggestion that he methodically (even passionately) uses his godlike powers to aid the poor and suffering and overcome evil. And it's not that he's taken a vow of non-violence: he has no qualms about commissioning - even forcing - an assassination, and is chastised by his Abbott for not keeping up his sword skills. For such a character who hates the work of murderers, pirates, rapists and the like it's absurd that he then stands by and seems to do nothing in the world to defeat perpetrators he could enfeeble or kill with ease.
Still he's a relatively minor character (and flaw) in an otherwise satisfying collection of four episodes in Druss' heroic life.
Rating:
Summary: Not his best, but wonderful none the less
Review: The early life and making of Druss is a must read for anyone that has read Legend. However, it is not in the same class as Legend. It does though provide more spectacular action and is gripping from the first page to the last. Definitely worth reading and if you're a Gemmell fan you'll love it, but he has written better.
Rating: 
Summary: I love this book, and Druss
Review: The First Chronicle of Druss the Legend is the second Gemmell novel I read. I love this book very much. Besides Gemmell's famous well-written battle scenes, I really love the deeper side of the story. You can see how subtly the character of Druss had changed gradually from the beginning to the end of the story. The story is composed of love, friendship and heroic deeds. Really a well-written novel.
Rating:
Summary: A great book, but...
Review: There is only one complaint that i have after reading this book. After reading Legend, and several of Gemmell's other books that hyped up Druss's heroic stand at Skeln Pass, it was kind of an anti-climax to have the tale reduced to being tagged on to the ending of his tale to save Rowena. Even without this ending this book would have been an epic, and the story of Skeln Pass could have made another, but by putting them together Gemmell is making less of the whole than he could make with the component bits. I would have liked to read a more in depth tale about Skeln Pass. However, these complaints are only after all the hype in the other books, and as a book on its own it is still fantastic, and i hope to read many more to come.
Rating:
Summary: Magic
Review: This book was the first of Gemmels novels I came across, and I have read most of them since. Gemmel's storylines are very standard as far as fantasy is concerned, yet he writes with a certain flair which makes his books extremely enjoyable nonetheless. I loved this book from the start and I would highly recommend this book as an entry into Gemmel's Drenai world.
Rating:
Summary: Good, solid entertainment, but not his best
Review: This is a fun and furious read, but it's predessesor - lEGEND -is better. As is the 1st Rigante novel. That, to me, was his best thus far that I have read.
Druss is not a complicated enough character, though I did like him. And the problem I had with his true love, Rowena, was that she made absolutely no attempts at getting away from her captors. All the while, poor Druss is doing everything he can to get her back.
With her not only not trying, what does she do? She falls in love with another man! Thanks alot lady! I did not like that.
Rating:
Summary: Incredible
Review: This is an incredible book. I could not put it down.
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