Customer Reviews

Dragonmage of Mystara (Mystara Setting the Dragonlord Chronicles , No 3)

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

 

 

Right then, what did I think about this series? Well, I have to say that personally, I found it to be far and away the best published dragon series I have found to date. Gunnarsson accomplishes, in this piece, somthing that is all too rare among dragon literature, that is, he shows them as individules of a wise and noble people, but more importantly, as individules. It does for dragons what the "Black Gryphon" series does for gryphons.

This is the best book I have read in a long time, and I have read a LOT of books. Gunnarsson writes extremely moving and descriptive details, right down to the size of shoes, and the person's deepest inner feelings. He also has a subtle sense of humor that percolates throughout the book

this book is the third book in a great series. this book only wraps upa wonderful world of secrets and surprises. it kept me on the edge of my seat the whole time. thank you

A wonderful title and author, and wonderful service from the vendor and distributor. I reveived my order earlier than expected, which is alway a wonderful thing, and I would definitely consider such services in the future! Thank you SO much!

I first read this series as a youngish man in High School, so the series holds some nostalgic value some 13 years later, and I will review it as a series overall because the writing and characterization stays pretty much the same throughout.

Beneficial points:
It's simple, easy to follow without runaway plot elements that don't really get answered. I enjoyed the books without putting much thought into the quality of the characters, plot or writing. I did enjoy the books when I was younger and much of the enjoyment of such a simple story still stays with me even now that I enjoy such complicated and convoluted series as A Song of Fire and ice by George R.R. Martin or Memory, Sorry and Thorn by Tad Williams. I also enjoy the characterization of dragons as individuals rather than near mindless beasts of legendary power and more as individuals with defined limitations and distinct, if conflicted and clichéd personalities.

Detrimental points:
The writing is simplistic almost to the point of third or fourth grade prose with little attention to setting detail, personal nuance or action. Much of the plot is driven by clichéd conversation or internal 3rd person monologue. Characters in the books almost seem to be made from a D&D campaign rather than actually thought out and characterized through research or tinkering. Throughout the series as I re-read it now, I keep on thinking about how much the dialogue and action seemed to follow what I remembered from my earliest D&D sessions when I was still inexperienced about characterization. One of the other reviewers of this series mentioned that it read like a D&D campaign and that's very much the overall feeling I get about the series. The dragons, described earlier in the series as almost at an Immortal level of power, seem to decline in power somewhere in the middle of the second book without adequate explanation although, to be fair, the power of the dragons was never really demonstrated in any real sense until the second book anyway and only talked about in the first.

Final Comments
The writing is wooden overall and lacks any real emotion that the reader themselves do not imagine into place. This is part of the reason that I enjoy the series. The writing may be lacklustre, perhaps due to Gunnarsson's English being a second language rather than his primary, but it leaves places for the reader to fill in their own details, which I tend to do automatically without even really thinking about it or working too hard at it. While this series definitely wouldn't be something that I would recommend to someone who enjoys books with more depth of characterization and more advanced prose, it is rather enjoyable just as something to pass the time if you're one who can put aside their inner critic for a little while. It's also not something that I would recommend to fans of the Mystara fantasy setting. It's more of a series for younger readers, much like Harry Potter and Twilight are now, people in their teens most of all, but also enjoyable new reads for the occasional adult who likes something simpler once in a while.

While I am not familiar with the universe this is based on, I enjoyed the first one thoroughly. This book is marginally worse than the second one. While the second one started okay and went downhill, this one starts at the bottom and digs. The charachters are hollow, the plot uninteresting and poorly executed, and it nearly abandons everything done in the first book.

I recieved this book as a gift. It sat on my shelf for months before i read it. I didn't put it down until I finished. Gunnarsson Is a wonderful author.

I am going to review this trilogy as a whole because no one book stands out in my mind as being any better or worse than another. They were all equally terrible.

The three books, Dragonlord of Mystara, Dragonking of Mystara and Dragonlord of Mystara make up the 'Dragonlord Chronicles'. I should have been suspicious from the start given the obvious play upon the immensely popular and infinitely better concieved 'Dragonlance Chronicles' from the same publisher.

These books are set within the Dungeons and Dragons world of Mystara and chart the course of the cliched farm boy orphan of unknown parentage on his meteroic rise to his righteous destiny among the stars.

It could be reviewed in one of two ways, as a fantasy novel in its own right, or as a piece of the Mystara universe. Neither would be flattering. For a fan of the Mystara universe this book is an abomination, totally disregarding the world's established fan base and re-writing the history past, present and future of a much loved world. It adds nothing, nor appears to be derived from much resembling the world the fans know and love.

As a fantasy novel it relies greatly on cliche, we have the stoic Dwarf Fighter, the independant Amazon, the Wise Old Mentor and the Impressionable Do-No-Wrong Orphan Hero-Boy. That is about as far as the characterization goes. After ploughing through the entire trilogy I could tell you little else about the main characters. I could mention that they all 'talk' for the author, the unsurprising advancements of plot are simply revealed all too often in unbelieavable dialogue rather than revealed by events and actions. Likewise the character's thoughts and motivations are never revealed through action but always in a very clumsy monologue fashion. They also often talk in obvious D&D game terms, even going so far as to describe each other by class and level.

The dragons of the books are just awful. I cannot stress this enough. At once described as wise, powerful, majestic beings we then learn that regardless of colour or species they are such a territorial race that if two or more are around each other for very long they degenerate into wild beasts and savagely rip each other apart. This is stressed time and again in the first book, but yet the second two books have literally thousands of dragons on each page and unfortunately this never happens. The dragons are also laughably weak. Our uber-powerful hero, in one memorable moment kills six with a single blow from his sword.

The bad moments are too many list but I will try. The hero is simply impervious to all damage by anything, and can kill anything effortlessly - this does not help to add any dramatic tension whatsoever to the story.

His mysterious origins are really very predictable and boring and I found I could really care less.

An army of several thousand dragons surrounds a city, trying to get to our hero - but they fear him too much to attack! Come on, these are dragons! In the meantime, a couple of allied armies 'sneak' into the besieged city under cover of darkness without the supremely wise and knowledgable dragons noticing.

I could go on, but I will spare you. I am, and ever will be a fan of fantasy novels and the Dungeons and Dragons genre lines. I have read the good, the bad and the indifferent. This trilogy falls way below the bad. It is the dire, the terrible, the abysmal and reallyshould not have been written much less read.

Thanks but no thanks, Thorarinn.