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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Nothing special yet for the land of Eberron..., August 22, 2005
This review is from: The Binding Stone (The Dragon Below, Book 1) (Mass Market Paperback)
This is the fourth Eberron book I have read and in all honesty I am really trying to give the world a chance to captivate me. Yet every novel I have read to this point seems pretty bland to me, and doesn't really offer up anything brand new that one would expect for a new world, with new creatures and magic.
When trying to decide what to rate this book I was torn between 2 and 3 stars. If I rated it bases solely on the characters it would have been a 2 for sure. The characters did nothing for me in terms of wanting me to keep reading. They are 2-D cut[out characters of what you can expect to find in countless other novels. Their dialog is sub-par for a Bassingthwaite book. In the Forgotten Realms book titled Yellow Silk, Bassingthwaite usued dialog very effectively. Yet, in this book it seemed strained and forced at times. Also, there is a 'new' language that he uses and it detracts from the book. They are kind enough to include a 'dictionary' of sorts in the back, but it's too much of a hassle to keep looking back there to understand what they are saying. It's a decent concept of adding a new language, but it's been done better and more effectively in other novels.
However, if I rated it based on the story line and plot I would have rated it higher. The actual story is a good one. There is a great deal of promise behind it. But, what truly drives a story is the characters and how they interact with the environment and quite honestly the characters killed this story.
The ending, as can be expected in the first book of a trilogy, left many things unsolved while closing off a few sub-plots.
I will probably continue to read this trilogy if nothing else to see how the story progresses and what will happen to a certain character. This is one of the few books that I have ever read that I could care less about all the characters in the book.
As far as recommendations go, I would really like to recommend this book as I think the world of eberron is very interesting and detailed, yet it may not lend itself very well to novels. If you are a fan of the first few Eberron books that have been released go ahead and get this one as you know what to expect, if you have not read any Eberron books I suggest you start with the Crimson Talisman by Adrian Cole or the City of Towers by Keith Baker before you jump into this one.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A surprisingly good read, April 15, 2006
This review is from: The Binding Stone (The Dragon Below, Book 1) (Mass Market Paperback)
I am very reluctant to buy books based on RPG worlds, movies and the like since the books themselves have a sort of mass produced cookie cutter feel, with bland characters who are nothing more than representations of their character class and/or if you know the rules of the game, you spend the whole book trying to figure out what spell is being used, what class skill let's them do that? Not so with this book.
I picked up on a lark as I'd been out of D & D for years, right when Forgetten Realms started, due to lack of interest. Eberron's setting was interesting to me so I gave this book a shot. First, the author's writing style is praiseworthy. The descriptives are good, his vocabulary excellent and sentence style varied. I mention this to show the writer isn't some mass production hack. Second, the book involves three characters whose backgrounds are all Eberron specific, so you get a flavor for how these races and classes work in this universe. Third, the book does an excellent job giving a sense of tension as the heroes are chased relentlessly and are forced to escape rather than win every battle. Fourth, the heroes screw up and don't perform every task with perfection. Fifth, the villain(s) are well written, complex and you actually dislike them rather than being ambivalent about the outcome.
My only quibble is that two of the characters in the party hate each other from an event that happened years before during a war that shaped the current Eberron setting. I think they become allies a tad too easily, in spite of the circumstances, to really seem proper. If you've had a 7 year desire to exact revenge, I think it would be hard to put it aside so easily. I'd have liked a little more conflict between the characters from that standpoint.
Other than that, I think this book is well worth the read.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Best Eberron novel to date!, August 31, 2005
This review is from: The Binding Stone (The Dragon Below, Book 1) (Mass Market Paperback)
Well I would not listen to the first review here, as this has been the best Eberron novel to be released so far.
When I say that, I am not knocking the previous novels, as I loved Matt Forbeck's 'Marked for Death', and I thought that Keith Bakers novel 'City of Towers' was an okay novel (especially for a first time novelist).
But here we have been given something different, something a little edgier, something a little darker.
It may not be noir (on which the Eberron setting was sold to us by Wizards of the Coast upon its launch) but it is definitely good solid fantasy, and that is what Don Bassingthwaite excels at.
Don has crafted a book that is very character driven. When I say that I mean that he doesn't just give you a bunch of adventurers and run with a story. He builds each one up carefully, so that you learn to care about each ones fate. Don does not reveal the full details of each character, but also trickles the information out over the course of the story, and even by the end we are left wanting to know more.
Don also knows how to pack a punch with his action scenes, and he will make you keep turning those pages. He is also a master at pacing out his novels, and by the time you get to the end of the novel you will find you are flipping those pages like crazy.
Unlike the other reviewer, I will tell you to avoid The Crimson Talisman, as that is the worst novel in the series. Do read the others however have they have been fun to read, but for a fine tale in the Eberron setting, you will not find anything better (yet) than this!
I would also recommend that you check out some of the other Don Bassingthwaite novels, in particular the ones set in Forgotten Realms (The Yellow Silk (Fantastic), Mistress of the Night(Excellent)).
Can't wait for the next one in the series.
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