Customer Reviews

The Dragon, The Earl, and the Troll

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Once again Jim Eckert, AKA the Dragon Knight has to face the dark powers. One should think this might become boring by now but Dickson made up a great scenery with lots of fascinating characters. Not only has James to deal with an army of trolls who intend to change history itself, but also with a great number of problems on the Earls christmas-party. Needless to say that the way he solves medevial trouble with 20th century skills is both surprising and unusual. To let a troll, disguised as a black knight, join the tounament to smell out a disguised troll among the guests was surely extraordinary. I also enjoyed to find characters like Angie, his charming but strong-willed wife, play more important roles than in earlier books.
Everyone who liked The Dragon At War will surely love this book, because it gives more insight on already well known characters and adds a lot of new ones who aren't less interesting.

But each one furthers a response or a helpful hint about Jim's magical needs and expectations so as far as I'm concerned if you liked any of them they're all worth reading.

The only way to describe this book is by the trouble that pops up almost every paragraph. To put it short, Baron Sir James Eckert de Malencontri de Riveroak, otherwise known as Jim, or the Dragon Knight, was under a seemingly inescapable siege, and expecting death. This ended quickly as soon as his sea-devil friend showed up and inadvertantly scared the attackers off. But the real trouble started when Carolinus, one of the world's three most powerful magicians, showed up and confronted him, "asking" that he attended the local Earl's Twelve Days of Christmas party. This would mean much drinking, fighting, and official confrontation at the games, which was disagreeable to Jim, who came from the 20th century. Then at the Earl's castle, its resident troll began to execute damaging shakes to the architecture. Jim found that the troll wanted to scare off a troll in guise of a human guest. This, topped off with a nearby army of trolls (which was unusual for a socially inadept species) wanting to challange Mnrogar (the troll), Jim trying to get the troll and the Earl to cooperate, and the Bishop to approve cooperation, the Dark Powers seeming to be at work, and two hundred large dragons who mistaked Christmas for a chronicle rebirth of Jesus Christ, while thinking that the royal Prince was the baby Jesus and wanting to come to the Earl's castle, among dozens of knights all too willing to carve fresh reputations out of dragon flesh, the dragons desiring a blessing and thinking that the trolls were in the way, and a secondary inheriter of a dead knights lands wanting to kill his baby son, among an innumerable amount of intricate details, makes for a great frusteration, confusion, and fun fest. Perfect.

I haven't read any of the others in this series, though after reading this one I intend to hunt them down. This was a really good, unique story in my opinion. A lot of good, unexpected turns in this book.

The only thing I can fault this book for is how long and drawn out everything was. A lot of the time, it would take an entire page or two to describe something that could have been written in a sentence or a paragraph. It took forever for me to get through the book and I really only hung in there because the story was so good that I needed to find out what was going to happen!

If you have patience, I do recommend this book. Otherwise it might be to drawn out for you.

Jim's fight with the dark powers has never been like this before. A new way of battle is set for Jim in this exciting book. Magic, fighting, and surprises all take place at the eals christmas party to make one great book. This is exactly the excellent follow-up book you want to read after the Dragon at War. This time Jim is tangled up with conflict of timing as he struggles to get so many this accomplished at once and to discover what is really going on. Another must read book in the series.

I greatly enjoyed this book. There were so many different things going on, I was never bored. Along with the many different plots going on,I liked the way Dickson added atmosphere and humour to this book. It gave a very authentic medeival feel to the work. A very satisfying read.

The first book I read in this series was the Dragon Knight and I loved it. I found out that there were several in the series. I bought all of them. I am not sure how many senerios Dickson can come up with. This is the thrid that I have read. This one wasn't bad although. Sir Jim and Angie, along with Brian and his true love go to a 12 day Christmas get together. Any one who is anybody is there. The biggest problem, although not the only one is that there is a 1800 year old Troll, who doesn't appear ready for retirement in Miami yet, who is shaking down the castle from his layer in the basement.
Now it wouldn't be worth our noble knight's effort to don his armor or change into his dragon shape for just one troll. Dickson throws in a lot of trolls, a whole bunch of other dragons who want to be part of the Christmas period and several other problems for our hero to solve.
The one thing that I did like about this book was the fact he allows Angie to become an important part of the story instead of the shadowy figure she has been before. Also Sir Jim gets to use some very interesting magic through the story. There is a nice twist towards the final chapters of the book, but the ending is a bit corney. WAIT! - flying dragons, talking wolfs, hob goblins, 1800 year old trolls? Maybe the end fits.
If you like the Dragon Knight series you'll enjoy this book. But I'm not sure how many more things Dickson can put our hero into before it becomes more boring then soaring.

I kept falling asleep reading this and finally gave up about 2/3 of the way through. I did reasonably like the earlier books in the series, but not this one. I think much of the problem was that the character's motivations seemed so unconvincing that I just could not find myself caring. They would take the most mundane of problems, like putting on a Christmas skit, play them up as of earth-shattering importance, and propose ridiculous ways of solving them, which then tended to have lots of complications. I suppose in some sense this was supposed to all be humorous, but instead, it just kept making me forget why I was supposed to care.

The book was in almost new condition and was here in a couple of days after ordering.

This book was in excellent condition, professionally prepared for delivery and arrived sooner than expected. I was very happy with this vendor.