Rating: 
Summary: A worth while read
Review: I enjoyed this book because it was typical Gemmel, but with something a little diffrent. Like in so many of his other books, such a Legend and King Beyond the Gate, Gemmel spends most of the book preparing and explaining a great war or siege. This is very much the same in Dark Moon. But the diffrence in this one is that the bad guys are not human. NO! He has created his own race of mighty creatures that are interesting and bring real colour to the action scenes. Another great factor of the book is one of the main characters, Tarantio. He will intrigue you, I promise! A good read, but one I'm afraid that can wait until you've read some of his better books such as Winter Warriors.
Rating: 
Summary: An excellent heroic fantasy
Review: I found Dark Moon to be well written, compelling and interesting. If you are a serious fantasy reader you may find that it is not the most original work you have ever read. Still, it is well worth your time and money.
Rating:
Summary: Gemmell is a master!
Review: I thought I had read all the Gemmell books until I recently vacationed in Victoria, British Columbia. I live in the SF Bay Area. I was perusing Munro's Bookstore when I stumbled on five books I had never seen before on US bookshelves, Dark Moon, The First Chronicles of Druss the Legend, The Legend of Deathwalker, Ironhand's Daughter and The Hawk Eternal. Needless to say, I snatched them up immediately. Dark Moon was the first book I read back in the states, and I loved it!!!! Again we are rewarded with memorable characters and a great storyline. Gemmell is the greatest writer alive today!
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointed
Review: I was disappointed in the book. Typical fantasy. Good guys win. Bad guys lose. Women are strong. Men are emotional. I thought this was going to be a better book. It is not.
Rating:
Summary: Gemmel Burn Out?
Review: I've read all of David Gemmell's books that are in paperback in the US, and I usually devour them about as quickly as they are printed. Dark Moon has been sitting on my bedside table for months. Mainly because I'm 2/3 through and just not interested in what comes next.
The main characters are a typical, Gemmell mix. The warrior, Tarantio, has a voice in his head, a personality known as Dace who takes over his body in tense situations and makes him the greatest fighter in the world. Hardly a novel concept (See Ran in Wheel of Time). The Bard, Duvodas, is the proverbial peace-loving magic-user character that appears in all his books. Karis is a rather unique turn on the tough, general who will lead the defense of the city against impossible odds. The twist here is she's a woman. The enemy is the evil, unstoppable Duroth, a race of beings from another dimension that live to destroy, feed, and move on in such a thoughtless manner, even the characters question if you can even call them `evil.' Sarino starts off as the "bad guy" evil wizard type, morphs into a pitiable wretch who removes himself from the story before the climax in an act that should have been redemptive but somehow isn't. Along the way we learn about a lost race of Eldarin, powerful and peaceloving, when faced by the conquering Duroth, they simply left. We know they will come back, somehow help our heroes and defeat the enemy. At least that's where the story is leading me, so far.
Gemmell is the master of setting up the "Weaker Heroes against Impossible Odds" scenario. This is what I love about him and his books. This one seems so impossible, you just know the way it works out will be so improbable as to border on the ridiculous.
If you haven't read any Gemmell before, I suggest you try the Druss the Legend, Waylander, or Rigante series. These for me were the most satisfying. Perhaps because they dealt more with the Man vs. Man than the powerful alien/demons from another dimension stuff. If that's your bag, then you'll enjoy this book.
His last series dealing with the Avatar was, for me, the beginning of a slide by Gemmell which seems to continue with this book. In an attempt to great more complex, different heroes and villains, he's strayed from what I loved about his books, the simple men and women, fighting impossible odds and winning through grace, love and sheer guts. What he's approaching is the same, boring pulp fantasy that fills the shelves these days.
I can't tell if it is Gemmell that is burning out, or just me.
Rating:
Summary: Gemmel Burn Out?
Review: I've read all of David Gemmell's books that are in paperback in the US, and I usually devour them about as quickly as they are printed. Dark Moon has been sitting on my bedside table for months. Mainly because I'm 2/3 through and just not interested in what comes next.
The main characters are a typical, Gemmell mix. The warrior, Tarantio, has a voice in his head, a personality known as Dace who takes over his body in tense situations and makes him the greatest fighter in the world. Hardly a novel concept (See Ran in Wheel of Time). The Bard, Duvodas, is the proverbial peace-loving magic-user character that appears in all his books. Karis is a rather unique turn on the tough, general who will lead the defense of the city against impossible odds. The twist here is she's a woman. The enemy is the evil, unstoppable Duroth, a race of beings from another dimension that live to destroy, feed, and move on in such a thoughtless manner, even the characters question if you can even call them 'evil.' Sarino starts off as the "bad guy" evil wizard type, morphs into a pitiable wretch who removes himself from the story before the climax in an act that should have been redemptive but somehow isn't. Along the way we learn about a lost race of Eldarin, powerful and peaceloving, when faced by the conquering Duroth, they simply left. We know they will come back, somehow help our heroes and defeat the enemy. At least that's where the story is leading me, so far.
Gemmell is the master of setting up the "Weaker Heroes against Impossible Odds" scenario. This is what I love about him and his books. This one seems so impossible, you just know the way it works out will be so improbable as to border on the ridiculous.
If you haven't read any Gemmell before, I suggest you try the Druss the Legend, Waylander, or Rigante series. These for me were the most satisfying. Perhaps because they dealt more with the Man vs. Man than the powerful alien/demons from another dimension stuff. If that's your bag, then you'll enjoy this book.
His last series dealing with the Avatar was, for me, the beginning of a slide by Gemmell which seems to continue with this book. In an attempt to great more complex, different heroes and villains, he's strayed from what I loved about his books, the simple men and women, fighting impossible odds and winning through grace, love and sheer guts. What he's approaching is the same, boring pulp fantasy that fills the shelves these days.
I can't tell if it is Gemmell that is burning out, or just me.
Rating: 
Summary: warrior 's salute to Gemmell
Review: If U are a AD&D warrior in search of Blood to satisfy your war-lust. I bade u search no more as what U want is right here. Drink deep of the war and battle rages in the novel.
Rating:
Summary: Fast-paced and imaginative, but...
Review: It is a testament to David Gemmel's imagination and the back-cover-blurb writer that I read past the first page of this book. I had never heard of him before coming across "Dark Moon" in the library, but I am a fan of "heroic fantasy," the genre in which the reviews quoted on the back cover placed this book. What was my hesitation? There were three double-adjective descriptions on the first page (and Gemmell uses contractions inconsistently in his characters' speech). To me, that signals a clumsy writer. Tarantio, the hero introduced in the first chapter, had nothing to do with the "sadistic, seemingly invincible Daroth" race that had "vanished from the face of the earth" in "one awesome night" (quoting the back cover). I could tell he would eventually be crucial to the plot, though, and I wanted to find out about that awesome night, so I kept reading. And I read...through 65 pages of introductory material before we had finally followed our three main characters (Tarantio, Duvodas and Karis) through their incredibly detailed journeys to Corduin, where the fate of the world would be determined. Seriously, you could start on page 65 and lose almost nothing, and then you'd be right in the heart of the plot instead of already bored. But I am spoiled by Orson Scott Card. To Gemmel's credit, however, all of the information we learn is later useful, either for recognizing people that a current viewpoint character hasn't yet or for putting plot pieces together. There's another quibble of mine: I am none too swift when it comes to mysteries and putting hints together. My strategy is just to read faster, trusting the author to put the requisite explanation at the end. Then on my second read, I can fit together the pieces. But I was able to see several plot points coming a mile away (though not the final one), and I felt like Brune being beaten on the head with a hint. As another reviewer mentioned, I appreciate Gemmel's attempt to give every character depth, but I also felt that two paragraphs of sob story weren't enough to win my sympathy -- be it for one character, or the swift history of an entire race. Similarly, I could tell within two sentences of getting into a character's viewpoint whether I was really supposed to like him/her, or whether he was a self-righteous prick who deserved the evil about to befall him. The characters shouldn't have been that obvious. That said, "Dark Moon" was a highly entertaining book (once I got to the main part of the story) that was well worth my time to read. It stuck in my head and demanded to be finished. In fact, now that I've read to the end, it still demands to be finished. I still feel owed some explanation. Most of the plot points were tied up, but I don't leave the story with a sense of having completely experienced the world and its people. And I want to know what the heck was the "gruesome truth" Duvodas learns (which was promised on the back cover). It's unfair to compare any fantasy writer to Tolkien, but I feel like this particular story has all the right elements, without tightly or smoothly fitting them together.
Rating:
Summary: Gemmel is in top form
Review: The great thing about Gemmel is that he can give stock characters complexity and depth in unexpected ways with a few sentences whereas many authors would either require chapters and chapters of non-plot related details, or choose to just let plot and latent Tolkien addiction compel the reader along. Gemmel loves to show the good in bad characters and the bad in good. People you expect to live die, and people you expect to die live. Victories are rarely total or lasting, and no defeat is so overwhelming that it doesn't provoke some reaction or consequence. It gives his essentially fun and enjoyable books a depth and intensity that a lot of fantasy mind candy lacks, and Dark Moon is no exception. Sometimes Gemmel does have Deus Ex Machina endings where magic saves the day very quickly, and sometimes his heroes will have an introductory scene where they kill three or five thugs with unlikely ease, but by and large he is an exceptional Fantasy writer. *Dark Moon* is one of his best (along the lines of *Legend*, *Lion of Macedon*, *Ironhand's Daughter*, Knights of Dark Renknown*, *Echoes of the Great Song*, *Winter Warriors*, etc), and I highly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: Gemmell's Dark Moon
Review: This book is fantastic with the dual personality of our extraordinary hero TARANTIO and DACE. When Gemmell weaves the selection of different characters together to fight the Daroth we see his true skill in writing.I've read all of David Gemmell's books It is agreat one of book. My mother put me onto these books at the age of 12 now a year later I've rad them all and waiting for more .If you want to see the best of Gemmell read one of the Drenai sagas DRUSS and WAYLANDER ARE THE BEST.
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