Rating: 
Summary: A rich and exciting read...
Review: "The Puppet King" but Douglas Niles is a book full of action, politics, exitement, and everything else you could possibly want in a Dragonlance novel. This book is strangely set up, being that it is told like a story, but that doesnt take away from the read. The story itself follows many different points of view. It follows the exiled elf, Porthios. It follows the young and troubled Speaker of the Suns, Gilthas. And even follows the thoughts of a massive green dragon.This book is full of Dragonlance goodness. Not only is the story an exciting read, but the characters are nicely developed. This book is set during the Chaos War, The same time as Margeret Wies'and Tracy Hickman's great book "Dragons of Summer Flame." It is nice to see the inner workings of the elven society, and see heroes rise up from unlikely places. This book is a must for any Dragonlance fan to read and enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: A rich and exciting read...
Review: "The Puppet King" but Douglas Niles is a book full of action, politics, exitement, and everything else you could possibly want in a Dragonlance novel. This book is strangely set up, being that it is told like a story, but that doesnt take away from the read. The story itself follows many different points of view. It follows the exiled elf, Porthios. It follows the young and troubled Speaker of the Suns, Gilthas. And even follows the thoughts of a massive green dragon. This book is full of Dragonlance goodness. Not only is the story an exciting read, but the characters are nicely developed. This book is set during the Chaos War, The same time as Margeret Wies'and Tracy Hickman's great book "Dragons of Summer Flame." It is nice to see the inner workings of the elven society, and see heroes rise up from unlikely places. This book is a must for any Dragonlance fan to read and enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: Wow! Definitely a surprise
Review: Alright to explain the title of my review. This book was a surprise for me because it is one of the few books that have a main political twist to it that I still actually enjoyed reading. The characters in this are great especially some of the ones that are hardly even in it. I don't want to give away to much but the title basically speaks for itself. Gilthas is a young elf being manipulated by Rashas an evil qualinesti senator.
Niles definitely knows how to develop his villains. I mean I actually ended up really hating Rashas and the silvanesti general. Even though this book may deal a lot with the political aspect of the elvish society there is still plenty of action. And not all of the politics are boring either. Niles is definitely one of the better authors in Dragonlance and this book is definitely worth the money/time spent on it.
Rating: 
Summary: Good plot, but what about the characters?
Review: As a Dragonlance book, The Puppet King is one of the better ones. The story fits into the Dragonlance saga after "The Sacrifice" in the Second Generation, alongside Dragons of Summer Flame, and before the Fifth Age trilogy. Douglas Niles' strength seems to lie in planning involved and interesting military plots and tactics, and he continues that tradition here. The Puppet King reads like a chess game, with devious political plots being hatched left and right, and battles with smart manouevers lovingly described. The drawback is that the characters become almost nothing more than chess pieces; two-dimensional figures who are armed only with enough characterization to carry out the plot. Douglas Niles was working with Dragonlance characters that Dragonlance fans have encountered elsewhere before, and it won't take too long to notice that readers get a better picture of what motivates Gilthas in a short story like Weis and Hickman's "The Sacrifice," than from the entire novel of The Puppet King. Also, the Puppet King is the first time Porthios has been given so much limelight in any book, but Niles hardly offers any new and interesting insight on the character. The antagonists like Rashas and Konnal were also two-dimensional, even maddeningly so, because most of the book describes their evil machinations without revealing enough of why they should be that evil and unwise. All in all, the Puppet King does do a good job of describing the events in Qualinesti and Silvanesti before and during Dragons of Summer Flame. Readers who were wondering how these two areas of Krynn weathered the Chaos War will have their questions answered here.
Rating:
Summary: Good plot, but what about the characters?
Review: As a Dragonlance book, The Puppet King is one of the better ones. The story fits into the Dragonlance saga after "The Sacrifice" in the Second Generation, alongside Dragons of Summer Flame, and before the Fifth Age trilogy. Douglas Niles' strength seems to lie in planning involved and interesting military plots and tactics, and he continues that tradition here. The Puppet King reads like a chess game, with devious political plots being hatched left and right, and battles with smart manouevers lovingly described. The drawback is that the characters become almost nothing more than chess pieces; two-dimensional figures who are armed only with enough characterization to carry out the plot. Douglas Niles was working with Dragonlance characters that Dragonlance fans have encountered elsewhere before, and it won't take too long to notice that readers get a better picture of what motivates Gilthas in a short story like Weis and Hickman's "The Sacrifice," than from the entire novel of The Puppet King. Also, the Puppet King is the first time Porthios has been given so much limelight in any book, but Niles hardly offers any new and interesting insight on the character. The antagonists like Rashas and Konnal were also two-dimensional, even maddeningly so, because most of the book describes their evil machinations without revealing enough of why they should be that evil and unwise. All in all, the Puppet King does do a good job of describing the events in Qualinesti and Silvanesti before and during Dragons of Summer Flame. Readers who were wondering how these two areas of Krynn weathered the Chaos War will have their questions answered here.
Rating:
Summary: Great
Review: Definitely one of the best books since the originals...seems quite out of place with its counterparts.
Rating: 
Summary: average
Review: Doug Niles is defintely one of the better non-wies/hickman dragonlance writers, but only becuase he has been doing this for such a long time. Sometimes his discriptions are truly annoying, like he has this gnomish steam driven fantasy metaphor machine that shoots out cliche discriptions to fill in the gaps where he can't think of anything else to say. The use of flashback, with the dragon telling part of the story was also rather annoying. I couldn't really see the point of it. His actions scenes were ok, but the dragons were wimps. It seemed like they were killing dragons left and right. The story didn't really get interesting until the end, and then the end just kind of went that's all folks. I mean, the whole thing with porthios and his ultimate fate (I won't ruin it for you) and how everybody else treats it was really lame. One more thing bothered me. In the original series, Alhana seemed like a strong character. All she really does in this book is carry around a baby and give Porthios something to think about between action scenes. She should have been more involved in the story, even if she had a kid strapped to her back. Oh! And Tanis just popping by and rescuing Porthios from the Silvanesti was really lame. It's like Niles got Porthios into a place he couldn't get him out of, so he has Tanis fly by on a gryphon. It was all a dream.
Rating:
Summary: average
Review: Doug Niles is defintely one of the better non-wies/hickman dragonlance writers, but only becuase he has been doing this for such a long time. Sometimes his discriptions are truly annoying, like he has this gnomish steam driven fantasy metaphor machine that shoots out cliche discriptions to fill in the gaps where he can't think of anything else to say. The use of flashback, with the dragon telling part of the story was also rather annoying. I couldn't really see the point of it. His actions scenes were ok, but the dragons were wimps. It seemed like they were killing dragons left and right. The story didn't really get interesting until the end, and then the end just kind of went that's all folks. I mean, the whole thing with porthios and his ultimate fate (I won't ruin it for you) and how everybody else treats it was really lame. One more thing bothered me. In the original series, Alhana seemed like a strong character. All she really does in this book is carry around a baby and give Porthios something to think about between action scenes. She should have been more involved in the story, even if she had a kid strapped to her back. Oh! And Tanis just popping by and rescuing Porthios from the Silvanesti was really lame. It's like Niles got Porthios into a place he couldn't get him out of, so he has Tanis fly by on a gryphon. It was all a dream.
Rating:
Summary: Puppet King is one of the best!
Review: Douglas Niles has always been a favorite Dragonlance writer of mine and his latest book continues a line of great novels. The Puppet King is a sequel to "The Sacrifice" from The Second Generation. You should have read this short story first, otherwise this book may not be as appealing to you. The Puppet King is full of action and excitement making it a real page turner. But I have to say that the characters aren't as developed as they should have been. It fit in well with Dragons of Summer Flame except for one thing. I thought that I read that the elven nations were at war with each other before Chaos arrived. In fact wasn't it said that the Knights of Takhisis stopped the war. Well, there was no war in the Puppet King. A mistake? Another fault was that after reading the synopsis on the back of the book I thought that the plot was going to include "threats from green dragons." This is totally false. Their is a story of a green dragon but that is more of a small subplot which has almost nothing to do with the elves. I just wanted to point that out. But I still give this book 5 stars because I just enjoyed reading so much. Pick it up, you won't be bored or disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: EXCELLENT !
Review: Gosh ... this novel is great. NILES DID A JOB THAT COULD MATCH WEIS&HICKMAN There isn't a bit of cold scene that turn your heat off. At the later part of the novel, battle scenes shift from group to group ... purely exciting ! The political intrigue is greatly delivered as well. Samar became my favorite character. His composed manner and hot-blooded passion towards the Queen, and his carrying the trade-mark dragonlance into battle ... shoot ! Just enchanted me. Those of you who love the Chaos War (DoSF) should definitely read this book !
| 
