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3.41 AVERAGE
3.41 AVERAGE
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
This one was one of dans favs when he was a kid.
Have you ever wanted to read lord of the rings and thought, “I am not going to make it through this story because I truly don’t care about walking or how the tree looks for 30 pages”
Then this book is for you. This book has everything. Two small men trying to recover a talisman that can destroy mankind, a super tall wizard dude, a prince denied, a creepy Rasputin controlling another prince to rule a kingdom, elves and dwarves, the recovery party getting split up after a fire demon drags the wizard dude into a chasm.
Actually, a super fun story, especially if you already like lotr and decided you want to read it again but different.
Have you ever wanted to read lord of the rings and thought, “I am not going to make it through this story because I truly don’t care about walking or how the tree looks for 30 pages”
Then this book is for you. This book has everything. Two small men trying to recover a talisman that can destroy mankind, a super tall wizard dude, a prince denied, a creepy Rasputin controlling another prince to rule a kingdom, elves and dwarves, the recovery party getting split up after a fire demon drags the wizard dude into a chasm.
Actually, a super fun story, especially if you already like lotr and decided you want to read it again but different.
adventurous
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Eines der zahllosen Fantasywerke, die im Fahrwasser von "Herr der Ringe" geschrieben wurde, und so liest es sich auch, die Handlung ist größtenteils ähnlich mit nur wenig Abweichungen. Das Figurenensemble ist sehr homogen und hat wenig Tiefe. Der Schreibstil plätschert so vor sich hin und erzeugt kaum Spannung. Ich mag langsame Romananfänge, aber das war auch mein einziges Highlight in diesem Buch.
adventurous
challenging
dark
inspiring
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
While the premise and world building is great, I found it so strange that there are very few women who show up in this entire book. Even in the dinning room in the beginning doesn't seem to have any woman patrons. It pulled me out of the immersion sometimes trying to justify the near entire lack of female characters.
Yes, it's super derivative and unoriginal, but I liked it a lot when I read it as a young person. Still have some fondness for the first couple books in this series.
3.5 out of 5
3.5 out of 5
Easily one of the worst novels I've read since graduating college. It's difficult for me to fathom how this novel could have inspired so many sequels, except that I think a healthy fraction of Brooks' readership is under 18 and doesn't know any better. Hyperbolic descriptive language presents a blatantly cloned Middle Earth quest full of elves, halflings, and humans swinging swords and wielding magic to try and save the world. When the book was first published (1977, if I recall) fantasy choices may have been spare enough for junkies to be stuck reading this. This is not true today.
I was pretty bored by this book. I hear the others in the series are better, but now I'm reluctant to read them.
It’s… Lord of the Rings. I haven’t even read Lord of the Rings and I was like… wait a minute.
There are some beautiful scenic descriptions, and the characters felt real in that they get injured and cry and pass out, which I feel (with my lack of knowledge in the old-high-fantasy-novels sphere) is pretty progressive for 1977.
But whoever edited this book needs to lose their job. It could have been at least 300 pages shorter. The sheer amount of repetition made me want to cry. I figured out at about page 500 that if you skip all of the long paragraphs that dominate entire pages—you literally lose nothing and can keep reading on without confusion. I feel this should be indicative of something.
The characters were meh, there were about 10 too many of them (and every secondary character’s name starts with B? What’s up with that), and most of them kept going missing for no reason and popped back up when plot convenient.
Overall, it was a book I liked but did not even slightly love. If the needless pages had been cut, and there was more originality to the characters, and the timeline was not sprawling across months and months, this review would likely have more stars. But hey, maybe I’m just too “woke” of a modern reader for this sub-genre.
There are some beautiful scenic descriptions, and the characters felt real in that they get injured and cry and pass out, which I feel (with my lack of knowledge in the old-high-fantasy-novels sphere) is pretty progressive for 1977.
But whoever edited this book needs to lose their job. It could have been at least 300 pages shorter. The sheer amount of repetition made me want to cry. I figured out at about page 500 that if you skip all of the long paragraphs that dominate entire pages—you literally lose nothing and can keep reading on without confusion. I feel this should be indicative of something.
The characters were meh, there were about 10 too many of them (and every secondary character’s name starts with B? What’s up with that), and most of them kept going missing for no reason and popped back up when plot convenient.
Overall, it was a book I liked but did not even slightly love. If the needless pages had been cut, and there was more originality to the characters, and the timeline was not sprawling across months and months, this review would likely have more stars. But hey, maybe I’m just too “woke” of a modern reader for this sub-genre.
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
It’s a good book. Pretty slow at times. Almost put it down a couple times. The author seemed to get caught up in over explaining things sometimes.
The vast majority of the reviews for this book that I read prior to beginning it had compared it, largely unfavorably, to Fellowship of the Ring. Most, in fact, went so far as to call it a blatant, point-for-point rip-off of Tolkien's work. While many parallels can be drawn, I have to say that this novel is still not nearly as similar to Lord of the Rings as many would have you believe. Especially as it carries on past its setup, it comes into its own as a fresh adventure. It is high fantasy, the vast majority of which is heavily influenced by Tolkien, to be sure, but is in its own right an engrossing, immensely enjoyable work of fantasy. Brooks' world is his own. It draws inspirstion from Arthurian legend, classical mythology and folklore, just as Tolkien himself did. The story may be a bit familiar, but it is well-told, and quite engaging. If you enjoy epic fantasy, this is a briskly paced tale of heroes and villains that I personally enjoyed very much.