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The Sword of Bedwyr

The Sword of Bedwyr

List Price: $6.99
Your Price: $6.29
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: If you want action
Review: If you want good adventure story with a lot of battles, heroes, villains and magic creatures, well, this is your book. The story of Luthien is hardly original, but it is extremely interesting. You can not put the book down, so... I reccomend it.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Young hero strikes back against oppression
Review: In Bob's newest series, the young Luthien Bedwyr is shocked into the harsh reality of his dictatorship. Meeting up with the most colorful character, Oliver deBurrows, the two rogues infiltrate the hometown of the Avon Island's corrupted leaders; Greensparrow and his associates. Working slowly, but shurely in a somewhat large city, the fighter/rogue attempts to redefine social class as the world knows it

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Racist, Counter-Culture Revolutionary Tract
Review: Make no mistake. Although Sword of Bedwyr masquerades as Fantasy Froth, it festers forth right out of 60s counter-culture belief and the ugliest racist moments of those days. The protagonist, a well-born kid, an archetypal pampered upper-middle class type, shifts from lawful to lawless conduct in the blink of an eye, his behavior justified by the rational that ALL merchants are fat, rich, and greedy. (One wonders if the author has any contact with business owners.) With this kind of thinking, it's not only okay but admirable to pillage and plunder the Korean shop down the street, or swipe a color tv during a 'people's insurrection'. The 60s are long over. It is amazing that such silliness not only sees print, but acquires a following.

Racist? That wasn't part of the counter-culture thing, but sexism certainly was. In this work, there is an ENTIRE RACE of vile, nasty, mean, horrible physically distinct people who fortunately are easy to kill. It's GOOD to kill them. It's FUN to kill them by the half-dozen or so. These guys are so bad that they do not even have names! This is racism. Presented in a fantasy book, it's easy to gloss over what is implied, but it's an easy step from demonizing a race of fantasy humanoids to demonizing Koreans or Jews or whoever. That's ugly thinking that I would not expect to find in 90s writing.

The writing is sometimes clumsy as well.

Read an unintended humor, or as an intriguing commentary on dumbed-down America, ingesting cultural poison.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: good, not as good as dark elf, but still good
Review: Now, i know it seems unfair to hold bob to the stardard of his drizzt books, but this one just didn't have the appeal of the dark elf series. other that not holding up to that presedent, it was great. if anyone else wrote it i would have given it a 10. one thing though, this book seem to have alot in commom with the classic "robin hood", luthien with his bow, and the whole taking from the rich and giving to the poor thing. but read it anyway. it's good.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Simply put: R.A. Salvatore Is A Genious
Review: Salvatore proved to me once again that he is not capable of writing a bad novel. Even though this series will never touch the Dark Elf or Icewind Dale Trilogies, it still seems to capture you with his exciting battle scenes and character wit. TIP TO PARENTS: If you want your children to start reading, hand them the Crimson Shadow Trilogy.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Lack of adventure.
Review: Salvatore's best writing comes in his depiction of action. I am a fan of his attempts at psycho/sociological commentary in the guise of a fantasy, even though he beats you over the head with them more than he really delves. I like a good balance of intelligence and excitement.

The Sword of Bedwyr did not make me want to run out and read the sequel. It makes me hope the sequel is better, but I'm in no hurry to find out. I just kept thinking it was slow and relatively uneventful. I tried to make excuses for it, thinking "Maybe he wants to tell the story of a hero who isn't born superior to all around him (say Drizzt?), and wants to show how that character develops into someone more interesting."

Well, an origin story doesn't have to be action-packed to be intriguing, but if the intrigue doesn't pay out, then you're stuck with a dissapointed reader. My advice to R.A. on this one: A little more, little earlier.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Nice idea, poor execution
Review: Salvatore's blatant lifting of names and characters from various sources, most notably Tolkien, makes it difficult indeed for me to take this novel seriously. Perhaps it's not intended to be completely serious, but Salvatore's calling his main male character Luthien (a very important *female* character in Tolkien's mythology) and his native land Eriador (the western part of Tolkien's Middle-earth), not to mention Oliver deBurrows, a "halfling" thief whose dialogue is almost lifted from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" really did me in, even though the story itself is not inherently flawed.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Major Disapointment
Review: That was one of the first books by R.A. Salvatore I read. It was a major disapointment for me. This trilogy does not come even close to the books written by Brooks, R.Jordan, Eddings and other fantasy authors. The plot is so-so and the book as the whole is just very poorly written. Yes, there is planty of adventures, dragons, wizards, etc but all of that is very predictable and author just brushes thorugh them without much explanaition and character development. The only good thing about this book is that it is probably the best out of the whole trilogy: the second one was just dreadfull, and the last one was about the same level as the "Sword of Bedwyr". As the whole I would not recommend it. I just hope that other Slavatore's work are of the higher level.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Oliver is a brilliant characterisation
Review: The main character fails but Oliver, the halfling character, is brilliant. It appears the fully fleshed Oliver was dropped into a lame story written around him. However, R.A. Salvatore remains by favourite author by combining spell casting & artifacts into all his books.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great work!!! A must read for any fantasy fan!!!
Review: This book introduces us to the land of Eriador. The main character is a guy by the name of Luthien Bedwyr. Luthien begins a quest which will change his life forever. Swords and sorcery have hardly yet been this good.


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