Customer Reviews

Everquest: The Rogue's Hour

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The book is supposedly based on a role playing fantasy game. I am not interested in gaming but love the fantasy and sci-fi genres. Rogue's Hour has interesting characters, creatures, and a whole world of possibilities.
Personally I would like to see more written about the Rouge or his world.

Rogue's hour is one of those books that keep pushing you to throw them against the wall.

It's been like this from page one for me. It wasn't the writing (which was average), it wasn't the theme (which had a lot of untapped potential), and it wasn't the setting.

What nagged on me the most was what is normally the best part of any fantasy book - the storyline. Normally, I wouldn't judge a thing like this, but in Rogue's Hour it's done in such a terrible way, that it impels me to write my sentiments down.

=SPOILERS AHEAD=

In Rogue's Hour, the storyline is one hundred percent based around cramming in as much action, "dangerous/scary moments" and outlandish plot developments as possible. There is a plethora of scenes and even whole characters that absolutely make no sense within the story, like an important moment when Bronwynn and Rileigh are almost killed by an unidentified Gryphon rider, who remains unidentified until the end of the story. There's an Iksar (lizardman) priestess who helps the main character (twice) for no reason what-so-ever, there is an ogre bounty hunter whose only purpose is to add a useless chapter to the book, there is a boy-shaman who could've been scrapped out of the script and nobody would notice etc.

The plot of the book revolves around two parts; the main character's search for his identity, and the epic quest to prevent the resurrection of an ancient, world-decimating dragon. The amnesia part could've been good, the dragon-part could've been passable but ended in a fiasco.

Okay, so this dragon is powerful, extremely powerful, mind-boggling powerful. Each of his bones is a mighty weapon in its own right. In fact, if the dragon is ever resurrected, he will destroy the world, and we'd be helpless to stop it. He's even known as the Dragon of World's End. The bad guys want to revive him so that they could mind-control him, and use him for whatever evil plans they have. The heroes are on a quest to stop them.

In the end, the heroes could've defeated the bad guys, and once again scattered the bones to prevented the dragon's reincarnation, allowing for a dignified ending. But no. The dragon gets resurrected, and is about to destroy the world. And guess what? The main character (who is a ninja dressed in a few magical items, but just a human being nevertheless) climbs the dragon's back and kills it by severing its spine. Dragon of World's End brought down by a single ninja, and a bit of flak from the ground? Imagine my disappointment. It's the "put in as many action moments as possible" philosophy at its finest. This is just one example. Such things occur throughout the novel, and after a while you're yawning with almost every page.

The amnesia-storyline is a landscape of wasted potential. The main character is virtuous after his memory loss. So virtuous that he spares lives when his own existence is endangered, even when the lives he wants to spare belong to the ones who are trying to kill him. This goes so far that his goal throughout the book is to avenge the death of some random civilian whom the villain murdered. As the story progresses, he finds out more about his past, and it appears he was a very very VERY evil man in his "previous life". This in itself gives the writer an opportunity to create a great symbolism about a despicable man being given a second chance, and using it to right what wrong he did and, more important, being able to start anew in a better, purer way.

No such luck. After the dragon dies, we're treated with a scene where the main character finds out that all the wicked stuff he did before his amnesia was, in fact, a ruse. He was always good, nurturing, law-abiding and merciful, he just did underhanded stuff so he could achieve the greater good. By this time in the book, I wanted to puke.

The part that especially annoyed this reviewer was the breezy manner in which combat was depicted. Bad guys and heroes alike crack jokes, and even chitchat during lethal situations. This happens throughout the book, making me think that the characters (especially the main character) are aware of their contractual immortality, and abusing it to the extreme.

Conclusion? It wasn't quite bad enough to make give it to a hated neighbor, but take my words on this; it's a bad story set in an utterly unoriginal setting. To be avoided.