Customer Reviews

The Eve of the Maelstrom: Dragons of a New Age, Volume Three

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(14)
1 star:		(19)

 

 

I truely wish i could rate this thing any lower, i'm rating the series in total. it deserves just as much attention. My god please help me, this is awful. Blister is about the dumbest Kender to live, if you want to call her a kender, she sounded off to be more like J.R.R Tolkien's Hobbit, only with stupid ideals. Its so amazing how none of the characters has any real depth, that is what happends when you attempt to write about characters which arent' taken from real role playing, they have no personality and are all seemingly the same, and the whole deal of Goldmoon Dying yet not, is really annoying. I am truely crushed that TSR allowed this thing to by pass into publication. Is there anything good about this book. well i'll hand it to Rabe, she knows how to write when coming to the Dragons, and that is about all i could stand in this book. If you start reading the series, you will find that it has no end, and that the final chapter really doesn't lead to anything, and you are once more where you started. In short words, this book isn't worth your money, or time. a true shame to the dragonlance saga.

Yet again, I'm sorry for this. Why would a 500 ft., aspiring to become a god, magically talented dragon be vanquished by a normal guy and a girl with a helmet that functions as a squirt gun? Why would people wait to go after dragons when they're all together? WHY DID ANYONE LET THIS BOOK GET PUBLISHED???? I apologize if I offended anyone.

Dark dragons are supposed to be treacherous! They're not suppposed to want to help each other! I can hardly recognize Krynn. Maybe that's why there are some five-star reviews.. They don't like Ansalon the way Weis and Hickman wrote it. Almost nothing is accomplished. All the book serves to do is get Feril a garden hose, Blister a medallion, and get Rig and Fiona together. Yuck! Slightly superior to the others in this disgusting series...but still a candidate for book-burning. Amen.

Oh dear. Just when I thought things couldn't get worse... The conclusion of the trite artifact-hunt which has been the focus of this trilogy sees the Great Dragons being uncharacteristically co-operative in helping Malystryx acheive her aims. The Shadow Sorcerer's true colours are revealed (what a surprise...), and our inept adventurers--still searching for personalities--find themselves confronted by all five Great Dragons at once. Rabe's storytelling is still boring, Blister's glove-changing still gets on my nerves, and this is an awful way to end a trilogy which started abyssmally enough in the first place.

This would be better if it was finished, I like the charactors I like some of the ideas but theres no style or feeling to these books. I am so glad that weis and hickman are doing the next ones.

My love affair with the world of Krynn began 9 years ago when I was in the fifth grade. I picked up the Chronlicles and nver looked back. I own most of the dragonlance books and have spent countless hours lost in the world of Ansalon. This book, however, dishonors the vision of Weis and Hickman. It is without a doubt the worst of the series. This books lacks all of the depth of the earlier books. The character are transparent stock types. The world has none of the life, the vibrancy, the realness porteayed in the earlier novels. The plot is practically non-existent. In short, this book is a hollow shell which capitalizes on the reputation of its name. It is the best example of the cheap commercialized, lets make another buck , philosophy which has guided many of the later books. For anyone really interested in a good story I recommend the Chronicles, the Legends, The Elven Nations Trilogy, and The legend of Huma. Of all 80 books these are the ones which truly capture the heart and soul of the world.

I must say that this book is a disappointment. The characters do not live up to the series, and neither does the plot. They are empty, and I suspect this book was made for the sole purpose of setting the stage for another book (at least it better be from the quality). That is a terrible reason to write a book, for several reasons that I won't go over here. This book could be improved in quality by giving the characters some more depth and making the plot a little more complicated. They have a tradition to live up to!

Being a long time fan of the Dragonlance series and gamemaster of the Fifth Age game, I felt I had to by Rabe's trilogy (that good old TSR tactic). What a waste of money. The story contains totally uninteresting two-dimensional characters that we care nothing about. It would be bad enough if she had only created her own depth-less characters, but she also drains the very souls of beloved Weis/Hickman characters like Palin and Goldmoon. Palin is reduced to a fireball-hurling NPC. Weis and Hickman must feel raped. Add to these a characters stupid, linear plot (go find magic items around the world before the dragons do), boring descriptive and tonnes of cliches and repeatings and you have the Fifth Age trilogy. DO NOT BY IT! Paradoxically, I recommend Dragonlance fans to stay the farthest from it, because they risk getting a favourite fantasy world ruined like I did.

First of all, few of the actual Dragonlance characters remain in this book (Palin, Usha, Caramon, Tika, Goldmoon, Gilthanas, Kitiara's Dragon Skie (Khellendros), and maybe Kitiara if that dragon of hers actually succeeds in bringing her back (Lord Soth still has Kitiara. I think it said somewhere that Lord Soth and Kitiara went to Ravenloft.)

The characters that do remain are nothing like they were before. Too many new characters were threw in at once to fill in the space left by the missing characters (To everyone saying they are immortal, it's probably a comment like that that got Sturm, Tanis, Flint, an Tas killed in the first place). Among these new characters are two kender that seem nothing like kender (Maybe in the next book, it will be revealed that Blister is really a gully-kender (Gnome+Kender=Gully Kender). And then there is Palin and Usha's son, with one of the stupidest names (Ulin=Usha+Palin).

In the ending of the trilogy, where the group sneaks up under the dragons and starts chopping at them and casting spells, while the dragons did nothing the whole time. The end of the trilogy really didn't conclude anything, which may or may not be corrected by a new trilogy, which I would know not to buy.

Anyway if you want to know some good books to read, if you haven't already, then read on. <UL> <LI> The Soulforge (Margaret Weis,Tracy Hickman)
Raistlin's early life, how the companions met, and the famous boating accident.

<LI>Brothers In Arms (Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman)
Sequel to The Soulforge, Beginning right after Raistlin's test, tells about Raistlin and Caramon early life as Mercenaries.

<LI>The Death Gate Cycle, 1-7 (Weis and Hickman)
Not really Dragonlance, but Fizban makes an appearance as Zifnab. Great, though the ending is kind of bad.

<LI>The Belgariad, 1-5 (David Eddings)
No, this has nothing to do with Dragonlance, though it stillrules (Prince Kheldar may even be funnier than a kender)

<LI>The Mallorean, 1-5 (David Eddings)
This series is the sequel to the Belgariad, and rules just as much.

Jean Rabe did a very poor job on this series. I have been reading D.L. for most of my life. After reading this series I switched over to F.R. I faithfully await weiss and hickmans return.