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A review by eleven_hummingbird
The Siege of Naggarond by Sarah Cawkwell
3.0
A messy little short story.
There is absolutely zero depth here. This is a surface-level narrative of a battle and nothing more, though it does at least accomplish this decently. Told from the dark elves’ point of view, but the narrative seems to favor both sides. My boy Locephax is back and lovely as always. I do like Cawkwell’s dark elves as well, I just wish for a bit of complexity. There is a nice, clear divide between the behaviors of the dark elves and the forces of Chaos, the dark elves themselves being as cold, merciless, and selfish as we love them to be.
Cawkwell’s prose certainly improved since Valkia, but unfortunately this short story is riddled with editing mistakes. Simple typos, skipped words, etc. I would of course blame the publisher for this rather than the author. The story is inconsistent with other novels, but again, blame the publisher.
This would be fine within an omnibus or accompanying a novel, but so far as I know it is only available as a stand-alone ebook. With a list price of $4, I personally would not recommend this 29 page short story; it just does not do anything interesting. Though it is very cool when the Witch King arrives and fights Valkia.
If you want good siege stories involving dark elves, read Lord of Ruin (Malus Darkblade, Book 5) by Lee & Abnett, Malekith by Thorpe, or, hell, Tolkien’s Silmarillion.
There is absolutely zero depth here. This is a surface-level narrative of a battle and nothing more, though it does at least accomplish this decently. Told from the dark elves’ point of view, but the narrative seems to favor both sides. My boy Locephax is back and lovely as always. I do like Cawkwell’s dark elves as well, I just wish for a bit of complexity. There is a nice, clear divide between the behaviors of the dark elves and the forces of Chaos, the dark elves themselves being as cold, merciless, and selfish as we love them to be.
Cawkwell’s prose certainly improved since Valkia, but unfortunately this short story is riddled with editing mistakes. Simple typos, skipped words, etc. I would of course blame the publisher for this rather than the author. The story is inconsistent with other novels, but again, blame the publisher.
This would be fine within an omnibus or accompanying a novel, but so far as I know it is only available as a stand-alone ebook. With a list price of $4, I personally would not recommend this 29 page short story; it just does not do anything interesting. Though it is very cool when the Witch King arrives and fights Valkia.
If you want good siege stories involving dark elves, read Lord of Ruin (Malus Darkblade, Book 5) by Lee & Abnett, Malekith by Thorpe, or, hell, Tolkien’s Silmarillion.