The Gryphon King

Rating:
Summary: great book!
Review: I am an avid fan of Tom Dietz, and love every one of his books. This book is easy to identify with. It takes the commonest of settings (college in Georgia) and turns them into a mythical adventure. I highly recomend it.

Rating:
Summary: Athens
Review: I live in Athens, GA. I think it is a great place. I like the way he combines ordinary places I see everyday and things that don't exist. I didn't give it 5 stars just because I save them for my absolute favorites.

Rating:
Summary: Another great Tom Deitz novel!
Review: This book stands as a solo entry into the tales of the sidhe in Georgia, but is just as evocative as the David Sullivan novels Tom Deitz has written over the years. The characters are powerfully written and easy to identify with, especially to me, as I am both a graduate student and a fan of Irish/Celtic myth and folklore. This book is worth much more than the money you'll pay for it. A worthy addition to any collection.

Rating:
Summary: characters and friendships that make you wish you had them
Review: Tom Deitz creates characters that you care about in The Gryphon King, and makes you wish that you had friends like these. In The Gryphon King, a group of ordinary students in Athens, GA find themselves caught up in an ancient blood feud between two faerie kings, a feud that is parallelled by the antagonism between the lead character, Jay, and his bitter, cocky brother Robert. Jay' s friends help him uncover the secret of Edward of Ripon and try to determine why Jay's girlfriend seems to have switched teams mid-game. This is a must read for anyone who had friends who were loyal to a fault, or who always wanted them.

Rating:
Summary: Great Gryphon!
Review: Tom Deitz is one of my favorite authors and the Gryphon king is a great stand alone book. This was the first book I read by Tom Deitz and have gone on to read many of his others. His character always seem real even when faced with not of this world situations. The characters in this book later participate in the last few books of the David Sullivan series. So if you are a fan of the Windmaster's Bane series of books this is a must read if you can find it used.

Rating:
Summary: A minor disappointment.
Review: Tom Deitz' books always have a little bit of the feel of justification for the SCA set. I read the first few books that he wrote with considerable interest and enjoyment, but most of what's followed it has seemed stuck in the same old groove. Even though this book isn't in the David Sullivan series, it honestly felt as though it might have been. When characters are truly in love in Deitz' books, you never feel as though there were anything at stake. For instance, even though the Gryphon King attempts to raise the question of whether Jay and Dal really love each other or whether their involvement is centered around Jay's brother Rob, there's never any serious entertainment of the possibility that they don't love each other. This is a graduate school where true lovers find true love and hold it, and that's perhaps the most fantastic part about the book. Character flaws aside, Deitz does his usual credible job of anchoring the book in mythology and folklore (although the roots aren't as deep as they are in the early Sullivan books). I enjoyed the work that he did with the miracle plays, although even that wasn't nearly as well developed as I would have liked. He's a talented author, and it makes me sad to have such a feeling of pastiche from reading this book.