Customer Reviews

Death of a Darklord (Ravenloft)

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(14)
1 star:		(30)

 

 

A lesson from this book is to look closely at the original copyright date - as in this one being 1995. This is a very early work by Ms. Hamilton and it shows. It's also an excellent lesson in greed and book publishers. The book was not particularly good and verges on amatuerish. The story line is not strong, in fact motivations of certain characters don't really makes sense.

In the beginning of the story one character, Tereza, agrees to take along another, our heroine Elaine, who is dangerously weakened. Doing so doesn't make sense (especially since Tereza's character is suppose to be chock full of common sense).

A main story line is the antagonist persuades an ill, but noble character to lure another into a trap. From the other action in the book it really isn't clear why our antagonist even needs to do this.

Even in fantasy books, the "rules" must be consistent - whatever they are. Here things happen and you have absolutely no clue as to why. For instance, the main character Elaine heals others, toward the end of the book we find this 'healing' goes wrong. Why? To what end? This is never explained and needs to be because it is an important aspect of the story.

This book was a nice second draft and should never have been reprinted. However, with Ms. Hamiltons current popularity the publisher went with it - too bad for Ms. Hamilton.

Other than the nice cover artwork by Jon Foster and Matt Adelsperger - don't bother buying this book. If you feel compelled to check it out, do so from the library! Save your money.

ended too quickly and with too much left unsaid.

The first 200 pages or so were very interesting with great plot and character development. The characters were really well done, and their interaction with each other was very enjoyable.

Then everything abruptly changed. The author dedicated the book to a pet she lost during the book, and I have to wonder if that happened around page 200. In the last 100 pages, suddenly, the rug gets pulled out from underneath the reader and everything is tied up very fast and messily.

It really feels like this book should have been at least another 100 pages in length, with more in depth exploration of the characters and slower resolution to the conflicts that she'd developed. Instead, everything goes to hell in the course of 4 chapters or so.

There is also no closure to the story of the main character. After things go to hell, before there is any attempt at recovery or damage control by the main character, we pick up with a couple of minor characters and the book then ends.

All in all it started out as a very good read, but ended off leaving me feeling like I needed to read the last 100 pages again in a desperate attempt to try and glean some meaning from the car wreck it turned into.

Laurell K. Hamilton (of Anita Blake fame) does a superb job with this foray into the Ravenloft world. The book is "about" a party of adventurers and their journey to save a village tormented by a plague of walking dead. But Hamilton chooses the right story, the self-discovery and slow spiral into evil of a would-be mage. She does a wonderful job of describing magic, much better than the typical TSR work, and her action sequences are about the best I've seen in this type of novel. The end is a bit weak, the young mage's story needs more closure than it has, but I truly enjoyed this book.

Laurell K. Hamilton, Death of a Darklord (TSR, 1995)

Laurell K. Hamilton's Ravenloft novel, Death of a Darklord, has achieved an almost mythic status in Hamilton fandom (which is legion, of course), mostly because it's next to impossible to find. At least, I assume that's the reason it fetches outrageous prices on ebay and required librarians to dig into storage cabinets in back rooms to come up with a copy for me to borrow (it took them nigh on a year to locate even a single copy out of circulation but still owned by the system-- it's no longer in circulation because so many copes walked away, never to return). It's not because the book stands head and shoulders, stylistically, narratively, or any other way over any of the other Ravenloft novels.

Of all the lines of fiction put out by TSR (now Wizards of the Coast) in the eighties and nineties, only the original run of Dragonlance-- the first ten or twenty novels set in the Dragonlance world-- rivalled the quality of the Ravenloft books. This was, of course, because TSR didn't go to the stock authors for these. They recruited names-- Hamilton, Gene DeWeese, Tanya Huff, Elaine Bergstrom, P. N. Elrod, Chet Williamson, etc. Sure, like everything else TSR, they were formulaic; after all, if you wanted a TSR contract, you played by their rules. But it's possible to do all sorts of things within formula, and good writers adapt. Williamson's novel, Mordenheim, is a standout in this regard. Hamilton's, however, is not.

Some of the blame for the novel's predictability and lack of pace in its first half don't have at least something to do with a moronic copywriter, who left all the first half's suspense for dead after writing a couple of sentences. Yet, still, when one picks up a book by an author whose name is rapidly approaching the state where you have to put "hallowed" before it, you start expecting something roughly akin to what you'd get from an Elrod, a Williamson, etc., rather than a tale which sticks quite closely to formula.

None of this is to say that the book isn't readable; it's just more reminiscent of the later Dragonlance novels, on the continuum of quality, than the earlier ones. Still, if you're a Hamilton fan, or a Ravenloft collector, you'll probably find the outrageous prices this goes for worth paying. Don't let me stop you. ***

Unless you are versed in the history of the land of the mists Ravenloft, you may not get as much enjoyment from this offering as you would expect.
This is a departure from the standard Laurell Hamilton offering, even though the supernatural theme is prevalent. If you like Harkon Lukas, the Domain Lord of Kartakass, this novel reads well, capturing somewhat the essense of the depths of which such an evil being will go to achieve his goals.
But unless you are grounded in the lore of Ravenloft, you may find some of the narrative in this novel a bit weak. It is not to par with some of her better efforts, such as GUILTY PLEASURES or THE KILLING DANCE. But to an avid gamer there is worth in this book from a resource background. The side story of the group transported to Ravenloft is most engaging, you do end up wondering what happens to them. The description of how wolfweres hunt and kill was eerily done and lingered in the mind long afterward. But as a whole, the story seemed unfocused and unfinished.
I would like to see a further effort by the author that focused more on the Dark Lord Harkon himself and not so much on the side stories.

I generally avoid book series based on consumer goods, but I made an exception for Laurel Hamilton. I was extremely disappointed! I don't think I'm simply spoiled by the rich character development in her Anita Blake books. Hamilton does action & tension well enough, but the plot...where was it going? Why introduce the reader to characters, then sloppily kill them off? It was like a really bad made-for-TV movie on paper. I finished the book only because I though Hamilton would redeem herself. She failed.

I read all of her other books so far but what happened here? I was sorely disappointed. This was not only a truly depressing read but nothing was resolved and it felt incomplete.

Caution - Spoilers!
Having devoured the Anita Blake series, and being a big fan of the DnD fantasy genre, I was very much looking forward to "Death of a Darklord". Maybe my expectations were too high, but the book was a terrible let-down. To begin, the story moves fairly slow with only mediocre character development. Additionally several sub-plots are started towards the end of the book with no continuing development or resolution. At the end we are left in total despair for the hero's, who all face emotional and/or physical destruction, while the villain skates away clean.

The last chapter almost feels like LKH went over the deadline for the story and was forced into an unintended ending. Either that or there was a sequel planned that for whatever reason was never published.

This is not what I read these types of books for, and I found myself wanting back the hours I dedicated to reading it.

This is a great purchase for readers who are fans of Ravenloft. The book explores several interesting topics that are mentioned in the game mechanics, but aren't discussed adequately in the other novels, such as Clerics from other realms who arrive in Ravenloft, healing and resurrection, and the corrupting influence of magic. The story isn't as compelling as some of the others in the series, such as I, Strahd: The Memoirs of a Vampire (Ravenloft), LORD OF NECROPOLIS (Ravenloft Books) or I, Strahd: The War Against Azalin, but it's a fun read anyway.

If you're picking this up because of the author and not the world, you'll probably be in for a big disappointment and should look for something else. If you're looking for something along the lines of Hamilton's most recent Anita Blake novels, I'd recommend internet porn. If you're looking for something from when the Anita books didn't include scenes based on failed submissions to Penthouse, I'd recommend picking up Dead Witch Walking (Rachel Morgan, Book 1) or Magic Bites (Kate Daniels Series, Book 1).

ok..I realize this was a rerelease of an early novel..all I can say is Thank whoever needs to be thanked that LKH has improved her writing. The plot fizzles, the characters are poorly developed, and there is minimal explainations of why things happened. I was excited to read a LKH while waiting on the next Gentry novel..excited then dissappointed.