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Summary: I enjoyed the book even if it did copy Tolkien.
Review: After reading the reviews it is obvious that anyone who has read the Lord of the Rings can see Mckiernan has copied much of the plots and themes from Tolkien's work. So what. If the Tolkiens don't mind and it's a good read, then the book should be enjoyed. I've read most of McKiernan's other books since reading the Iron Tower Trilogy and have found his later works about Mithgar to be original and very entertaining.
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Summary: The Dark Tide
Review: All the reasons why you should read the book, "The Dark Tide" and the books to follow after it. If you are the type of person who likes the story plot behind "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of The Rings" you should defiantly read this book. The thing is they are quite similar in a sense of the whole good vs. evil adventure story. All in all the reason I liked this book was because I enjoy stories of this kind and I hope you will to.
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Summary: Synopsis-
Review: BOOK ONE OF THE IRON TOWER TRILOGY - THE DARK TIDE- Signet- 1985 8th printing in great shape. From back of book: When legends wake and shadowlight cloaks the land, will the master of evil return to rule? Long ages has the Dark Lord slumbered. But now he is stirring again, his Power building to new heights, dimming the very sun, waking legends to walk the land. It is the long-feared time of reckoning! Galen, High-King of Mithgar , sounds a desperate call to the Warriors of Light. And Tuck and his fellow Warrows- small but doughty fighters with the gift of Sight- join with the ever-growing army of Dwarves, Elves and human warriors to stem this deadly tide of destruction. The final conflict has begun....
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Summary: One of my favority trilogy novels ever..
Review: I have to say that I love this trilogy and have read the series about 5 times since I first read it back in 1988. In fact, I just started reading it again. I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves a great fantasy novel. I can not fathom how someone can say this book did not keep their attention. I found this book to be non-stop for me, but to each their own and my opinion says this book is worth reading and saving...
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Summary: Best book I ever read.
Review: I keep hearing this stuff, that this is just like JRR tolkiens lord of the rings series, but really, who cares? sure the plots are similar but the story is totally different, I never read the LOTR, but I saw the movie, and I've heard about it, and personally, I don't find it similar in many ways, for example, in the fellowship of the ring, there were no major battles, just minor skirmishes, sure they were surronded by lots of goblins a few times, but no real battles, in the dark tide, there was no wizard, the battles were much more epic, and I think the characters were much more vivid, the battles were trully depicted, excellent detail. For example, it gave an excellent description, when the forces of Modru at the Chamberlain Keep battle would talk the bodies of the slain, decapitate them, and catapult them at the humans. There were many action scenes, and I could not put this book down, unlike the lord of the rings, in the first book I read a few chapters, and it was pretty boring, and based ont he movie, it didn't look to be much more exciting. The Dark Tide, keeps you attatched, and will not let you go. A must have for any fantasy readers. EASY 5 STARS!
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Summary: Page turner for sure...
Review: I was barely a month out of The Return of the King when I started this one. At first, I was a bit defensive about the similarities between this book and The Lord of the Rings. However, it didn't take me many chapters to discover that, though the BROAD story runs much the same path, this was a completely different story. I read this book in a week. Being a full time college student, that is pretty good for me. If you want a good book, pick this one up. Or should I say pick up all three of the trilogy when they are released in a single volume in December '00.
Rating: 
Summary: It's about time...
Review: I'm so glad to see that someone(Mr. McKiernan) has finally taken the time to write Cliffs Notes for the Lord of the Rings. This series is a real blessing for those that don't have the time, patience, or mental capacity for the original... Seriously, I suppose this shows that Tolkien has reached that ultimate pinnacle of literary achievement, where the story he has told is so compelling that others feel the need to retell it their own words. This puts the Lord of the Rings in the company of such timeless tales as King Arthur, Robin Hood, and Sleeping Beauty. In case you haven't guessed by now, I recommend that you read Tolkien's works, not the pale imitations by Mr. McKiernan.
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Summary: McKiernan is the man
Review: It would be easy to compare this book to works of Tolkien. Easy, but untrue. Dennis has his own voice. Yes, there may be a few similarities, but I find Tolkien to be a good read, but a little dry. McKiernan's books move a lot more effortlessly. In short, while I find Tolkien sometimes hard to get through, McKiernan's works are enjoyable to get through. And it started with the Dark Tide. I would easily rate all of his books five stars.
Rating:
Summary: Like a poke in the eye with a sharp stick
Review: McKiernan in his foreword tells us that he is paying homage to Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Homage? Hmm. According to the American Heritage® Dictionary "homage" is defined as: "Special honor or respect shown or expressed publicly." I fail to see the "honor" to Tolkien in McKiernan's "The Iron Tower" trilogy. While it is true it is said that imitation is the highest form of flattery, McKiernan's books are less like flattery and more like regurgitation. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind if a writer is heavily inspired by the work of another. Even Tolkien himself drew much of his thematic elements and ideas from other ancient and mythic sources (Beowulf for example), but he reconstituted those ideas in such a way that they seemed fresh; not copied or reprinted. He was reinventing not simply rewriting.
Unfortunately, such is not the case with McKiernan's work. His ideas are directly lifted from the pages of "The Lord of the Rings" without any attempt at originality.
In McKiernan's story, a Warrow (Hobbit) named Tuck Underbank (Frodo) embarks on a quest to defeat an ultimate evil, Mordu (Sauron) who dwells in the evil land of Gron (Mordor). Along the way he encounters a dwarf called Brega (Gimli), an elf named Gildor(Legolas), a human warrior (Aragorn), etc, etc, etc...The Tolkien plagiarism's go on and on.
He even includes a scene where some of the main characters have to pass through an abandoned Dwarf city called Kraggen-Cor. The city is abandoned because some terrible monster (Ghath) drove all of the dwarfs out long ago. The only way into the subterranean city is through some magical doors that they have some difficulty getting open. While waiting at the doors, a monstrous squid/octopus-like creature attacks them. And yes, there is even a battle with the Ghath in the dwarfin city on a narrow bridge over a bottomless cavern.
I have a one hundred page rule when it comes to books; if the book can't engross me, can't keep my interest by the hundredth page I give it up. In this case, morbid curiosity kept me reading these books; like a horrible car accident, I couldn't tear my eyes away. Page after page I kept telling myself "it can't get any worse" and page after page I was proved wrong.
As bad as the plagiarism is, the writing is even worse.
The epic scope of Tolkien's story is GONE. Tolkien's writing was marked by mystery, grandeur and a poignant sense of loss and realism. All of this is missing from McKiernan's work. The characters in "The Lord of the Rings" (and the "Hobbit" for that matter) were three-dimensional; they seemed almost to have stepped out of the history books and not a novel. Tolkien made us care about his characters and what happened to them. McKiernan is incapable of doing this with the cardboard cutouts that populate his world. For example, Tuck Underbank is written to be a tragic/heroic figure and spends A LOT of time crying and sobbing about this or that. The narrative, time and time again, tries to make us feel sorry for him. After a while, I just started rolling my eyes and hoping someone would put him out of his misery. Throughout the story the dialogue is stilted, completely unnatural and pathetic. This may be one of the only times in history where a story would have been improved if none of the characters spoke.
Rather than "honoring" Tolkien with "The Iron Tower" trilogy, McKiernan dishonors the great writer. For those looking for a well written, enriching story in the style of Tolkien or just a good epic fantasy: Look elsewhere.
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Summary: "Lord" lite
Review: The existance of the fantasy genre owes itself to J.R.R. Tolkien, and the portrayal of things like goblins, elves and generic medieval civilizations always hinge on how the Master did it. But Dennis McKiernan's books have a staggering, mind-blowing amount of "similarity," so much so that the derivative elements far outweigh the original stuff. Tuck Underbank is a Warrow (think a hobbit with shoes and "large jewel-like eyes") living in the peaceful Boskydells (think the Shire with a rather pitiful armed force). When an unnaturally cold winter strikes the world, he and a number of his fellow Thornwalkers go to the High King's aid. But a vast expanse of lightless blizzard (called the Dimmendark -- with a name like that, it couldn't be bad, could it?) is spreading over the land, and Tuck soon finds that the "dark tide" is going to swamp them all. The general feeling when reading "Dark Tide" or the other books of this trilogy is that McKiernan wanted to rewrite "Lord of the Rings" in his own way, including some nauseating romance and the idea of Warrows. There is literally nothing in here that Tolkien didn't do first and better; even some of the names, such as Gildor and Laurelin, are lifted directly, while others (Underbank, Proudhand) are barely altered. The Warrows themselves are like hobbits on some sort of armed testosterone trip (imagine Frodo Baggins in the Marines -- silly image, isn't it?). The Boskydells are carbon-copied from the Shire, complete with McKiernan's own version of the Hedge. Aurion and Galen have close resemblances to Theoden and Aragorn; Gildor is a dull shade of Legolas. Rukhs, Hloks, and Ogrus are essentially similar to Tolkien's creations, as the Ghuls are like the Nazgul. He even throws in copies of less prominent Tolkien elements like Galadriel, Sting, the Rohirrim, and the supernatural elements (with Adon and Gyphon instead of Eru and Morgoth). McKiernan writes in his own painful ye olde fantasye style, full of semicolons, mangled old-English phrases and dubious words like "naytheless." He assigns four or five names to every species, land, seasonal holiday, and so forth -- then insists on trotting those names out whenever he can. Even worse, he can't keep the dialects of the Warrows and Elves up. One minute the Warrows sound like English countryfolk, then pirates, then Cockneys, then some sort of crazed redneck dialect. Sometimes these switches will happen on the same page, which makes them even weirder. He also tries to duplicate Tolkien's style, spelling "wagon" as "waggons" and having crowd murmurs in italics, as well as having Tuck and Company switch from using contractions and ordinary words, to formal prose. Every now and then he throws in the word "lo." And sometimes his use of words is bewildering: on the very first page, we hear about Tuck kicking up "clots" of snow. The heroes are all buddies and pals -- if they have any problems, those difficulties are ironed out mere paragraphs later. And it gets kind of tiring to have all these seasoned, battle-hardened warriors and knights constantly talking about how great the Warrows are. Not to mention everybody crazily cheering Tuck killing only two of the enemy -- one by accident. They're very easily impressed, aren't they? Tuck Underbank is a pitiful excuse for a hero; he cries literally every few pages, and needs to be led everywhere without ever taking the initiative. Danner and Patrel aren't much better. Gildor is a bland generic Elf who exists just to speak about things thousands of years in the past; Aurion and Galen are noble, kind, just, perfect, and dull as ditchwater. The female characters are nothing short of an insult: Merrilee is the token girlfriend for Tuck, apparently because McKiernan would have liked to see Frodo Baggins hit puberty in front of a hobbit girl. Laurelin is a sweet, innocent, beautiful, pure-as-the-driven-snow princess who manages to get herself kidnapped by the evil forces. (Another damsel in distress?) There is a fine line between homage and outright theft. "Dark Tide" tears over that line and overshoots it by a mile. Even worse, this derivative and truly cringeworthy book is first of a trilogy, and the beginning of a series. Recommended for those who are looking for some good comic fantasy.
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