6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Genius sarcasm or terrible fantasy? Your call., February 13, 2010
Dark Lord (2007) is the first book in Ed Greenwood's Falconfar trilogy. Greenwood is the mind behind the seminal Forgotten Realms campaign world, as well as writing a billion or so (approximate count) books for that setting. Dark Lord, unsurprisingly, is a fairly standard high fantasy novel - good girls, bad wizards, a bit of prophecy and a bit of 'sucked out of the mundane world' thrown in for good measure.
More surprisingly, Dark Lord is an absolutely ingenious pastiche of the modern fantasy genre. That, or terrible. You be the judge.
The book features Rod Everlar, who is a fantasy writer in "real life". Rod created the immensely popular Falconfar setting - describing every aspect of the world in loving detail. The setting was so popular that a computer game company (the inauspiciously-named Holdoncorp) bought it. Poor Rod can now feel his creation slipping away.
That is, until it comes very, very near. Rod's having an erotic...er... meaningful dream in which a winged woman is being meaningfully stabbed to death by a 'Black Helm' and wakes up to a stickiness in his sheets. The angel has been transported through time & space to wind up bleeding to death at Rod's feet. Fortunately, Rod discovers mystical, plot-bending healing powers before someone calls the police.
These are soon accompanied by his mystical, plot-bending powers of teleportation (never once referenced again), and Rod joins his new chum Taeauna ("Tay") in Falconfar. Tay's a handy host - she's good with a sword and seems to know everyone. she also takes her clothing off with surprising regularity. Although she coyly refuses to mystically bend Rod's plot (wink, nudge), about half of her suggestions involve them cuddling erotically in streams, beds and haystacks.
Rod's a little wound up by his de-winged angel and her "shapely" body parts. "Shapely" is used approximately 430 times during the course of Dark Lord to describe Tay. Greenwood is less finicky about her other attributes: on page 13, her "dark" eyes are described two paragraphs later as "emerald". But with such shapeliness on display, I'm surprised Rod ever gets the occasion to look at her face.
Rod learns that his magical kingdom has completely spiralled out of control. The Three Dooms (powerful wizards) are tearing the land apart in their contest for power. Fortunately, there's a prophecy. Rod, the Fourth Doom is there to straighten things out - as soon as he discovers how to use his powers. Actually, he's the Fifth Doom, as there was a previous Doom, but that Doom disappeared for a while. So, really, any one of the Three-to-Five-Dooms could be the object of prophecy, depending on how they stand in line.
Taken at face value, this is a predictable, conventional "airport" fantasy, combining the casual misogyny of Terry Goodkind with the vapid, follow-the-bouncing-prophecy silliness of Robert Jordan. However, with a little imagination and a lot of generosity, this could be read as an incredibly incisive pastiche. I mean - sexy, wingless angels? Buxom apprentices that only wear chains? "Dooms"? It isn't too much of a stretch to think that this is an exercise in sarcasm.
Probably the best case for either a) the stupidity or b) the brilliance of Dark Lord is Rod's ridiculous magical nature. He is, in fact, completely immortal. Enemy spells bounce off him (never explained). He regenerates all wounds (never explained). One entire chapter is dedicated to torture as Rod is casually abused by one of his rival Dooms. Despite having to repeatedly regrow his testicles (not a joke), Rod is... fine. A little shaky on his feet, perhaps, but only until the end of the page. (Sadly, Rod's allies never take full advantage and turn him into the perfect meat-shield.)
Fantasies aside, Greenwood further aids a slightly surreal interpretation of Dark Lord with his constant, snide comments against the "sinister" computer game company. (I'd bet $10 they turn out to be Doom-owned in Book 3). Everything that goes wrong is blamed squarely on those damn computer game people. Because they refuse to realize Rod's artistry, the world of Falconfar is falling apart at the seams: societies are crumbling, chivalry is dying, monsters surge across the land, hope is lost & beautiful angel-winged women have to sex people to stay alive. Goddammit, Hasbr...er...Holdoncorp, why did you piss on Ed/Rod's dreams, and turn his dreamworld into such a godawful place?
The obvious Mary Sue comparison aside, there's some fairly deft sarcasm at times. Rod makes cheeky remarks about the ecology of re-spawning monsters and the occasional irrational treasure-crawl. Of course, he does so whilst blowing up zombie-knights with unnamed blasting sceptres that he carries around by the half-dozen.
Despite my best efforts, I can't really defend the Dark Lord as some sort of post-modern success. It is, sadly, a book determined to be taken at face value. I suppose the final defense of Dark Lord is that it was oddly more-ish. I'm not sure I'll actively seek out the second book, but I suspect that, if I did, it too would prove a perfectly servicable companion for a long plane fligh
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Bad bad book, July 11, 2011
I'm terribly disappointed in this book and the author, and I think I even hate the trees that died so this book could come into being. I am mad that the books are even now occupying space that can hold better, more useful things, like air. Or a moldy, half-eaten sammich.
How to begin... The main protagonist in this book isn't. He's irrelevant. For most of the series (goodness, I actually finished the series, because I'm dumb like that), he's basically a narrator given flesh. He adds nothing to the story. NOTHING! What he's called by others, he isn't. He fumbles and stumbles and occasionally leers at the female protagonist, because stalky sexual harassment is funny and literary. You can actually take him out of the story and replace him with a bandolier of blue healing potions and you pretty much won't miss him. Or affect the story in any way. The bad guys get nervous when they first hear his name and then they all realize what an useless non-entity he is and pretty much ignore him. To them, he's like someone's younger brother who tagged along and isn't exactly being a nuisance but still, no one cares about. He's good to kick around every now and then, but if you substitute a random prisoner, it would make no difference. An get this... In a what was probably intended to be a dramatic, climactic showdown near the end of book 3, as he is about to vanquish his foe, he... Oh man... Trips himself, falls down and checks himself out of the sequence of events. What? Are you trying to write stupid, Ed?
He finally does do something significant at the end of the series but in a puzzling, incomprehensible way for an equally puzzling, incomprehensible reason. The story wouldn't have changed even if he didn't do it, because by then everything was all wrapped up. And by god if that part toward the end was a setup to a sequel series, I will ... Well, I guess I can't do anything but I will be very cross. Think of the trees, Ed!
Not to say there aren't some bright spots. The flying warrior women hint at something deeper. It's hinted that they are more than they appear but it's never really developed.
The ex-pirate and his thief girlfriend is actually a delightful pair. They are the heroes in the series, in my opinion. But how they end up... Clumsy and improbable.
All the bad guys appear to have been freshly unpacked from the ACME Bad Dudz(r) line, from tired, cliched wizards to carbon copy muscles that come a hundred in a tin can like green army soldiers. I can almost see stamped on the boxes, "Refurbished. Rejected by Wile E Coyote."
Avoid it. Please. Especially if you have certain brain chemical imbalance that compels you to finish the entire series of every book you pick up.
BTW, I believe this is my first one star review EVAR! (cue dramatic music)
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3.0 out of 5 stars
An authors personal tale, November 24, 2008
Ed Greenwood tries something a little different with Dark Lord. The main character is an author of both Fantasy and other Fiction who is magically tied to the world Falconfar and who has the power to shape this magical land with his ideas and words. It's not a bad premise, but it would take some really great writing to avoid being too much of a personal fantasy.
Dark Lord is not a long book and it's packed with lots of action. I felt like I was reading some of the Forgotten Realms books...oh, that's right Greenwood wrote some of them. In the FR series I normally felt like I was reading the depiction of a Dungeons and Dragons game with some nice padding to flesh things out. That's mostly what I felt like with Dark Lord.
Greenwood's writing style is solid and he creates an interesting world to tell the story in. I just found his characters to be a little flat. Some of them were better than others, but there was nothing ground-breaking or overly compelling with them. So, this is a good book, but nothing that will have you anxiously waiting for the next one.
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