Bertrem's Guide to the War of Souls, Volume Two

Rating:
Summary: Could have been better, but not bad for what it is.
Review: Stan Brown et al., Bertrem's Guide to the War of Souls, vol. 2 (Wizards of the Coast, 2002)

I came to read this book before the actual War of Souls trilogy thanks to my library. They had the book listed in the catalog as just Dragonlance, rather than by its actual title, and I was intrigued. So I put it on hold, and this is what ended up on my desk.

Needless to say, a person who has read the War of Souls trilogy is likely to get far more out of this than I did; the characters will likely be more familiar, and the situations in which said characters find themselves will probably have more meaning. So I can't really speak to how good the book is on that level; all I can talk about is the quality of writing.

It really only flags that greatly in one place, but unfortunately, that one place is in the book's longest piece, an almost-seventy-page monster by Stan Brown whose unfortunate placing very early in the book causes it to drag early on. Brown's other monstrous piece in here (weighing in at over forty pages) goes more quickly. Don Perrin and Mary H. Herbert, the other two contributors, are time-tested and goat-approved Dragonlance writers, and you can be generally assured when you pick anything up from either, you're going to get a good story. (One of Herbert's, "Mirage," will bring home the "you'll get more out of it if you've read the War of Souls trilogy" angle better than anything else in the book.)

Not bad, not bad at all, but read the War of Souls books first, and skim Stan Brown's first story. ** ½

Rating:
Summary: Fairly entertaining but still a little bit half baked
Review: This, apparently last book in the Bertrems Guide series was very much in the same tradition as the previous. This also consists of a lot of journals and reports duruing the time of the War of Souls storyline.
Three authors have contributed to this one, Don Perrin, Mary H. Herbert and Stan!. Of the three authors I liked Mary's journals and reports best. I think that her little story about Sara Dunstan's dragon Cobalt was terrific.
Stan!'s report from Schallsea was also fairly entertaining, but I still found myself rereading a lot of stuff. Most of the descriptions of Schallsea, I had already read somewhere else in the Dragonlance saga. There's both Citadel of Light and The Silver Stair that describes this place, but I still liked it.
Don Perrin wrote some very boring articles I think. The best of his stories was that about the Urkhan, which was fairly interesting because you got to know how the Tractor Worms(Uops) breed!! The worst was that one about the origins of aflicted kender which I found quite boring.

Overall, this book was okay. Some of the stories was interesting and entertaining, but I still find myself not liking these kinds of books. They feel a little halfbaked, because it isn't an anthology neither a general book. There's no characters that you could possible come to love in a book like this, so in a way i', glad that it is the last in this series.