Customer Reviews

Fortress of Frost and Fire (The Bard's Tale, Book 2)

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

 

 

An interesting tale of the black elf Naitachal, who is now a free bard, and an apprentice bardling, Gawaine, he acquired sometime before the story begins. They go off on a quest to find a valley of ice that Naitachal has heard an account of, and pick up an odd assortment of traveling companians along the way. The tale involves overcoming a dragon to win their way to freedom. Overall, a fair story to read.

My mom recently bought a lot of books from a library sale/fund-raising project. Remembering that I liked Lackey, she picked this up for me. I set it aside, assuming I wouldn't like it. Last night, however, I needed a book I could take to the bathtub with me (I never take new books to the bath, but a used book I hadn't read yet? Sure.) I was surprised how much I did enjoy the book.

I wasn't really sure what 'universe' this took place in. I assumed "A lot like D&D, but not D&D" and I guess I was correct considering how the different elves and dragon types were introduced.

The story setting seems uneven. The first half or more of the book reads like a slightly funnier, 'safer' version of the Dungeons & Dragons universe (with fewer races). The last part of the book read like a fairy tale. I enjoy both types of settings, but it seemed rather uneven that the more fairy-tale feeling of the end of the book appeared nowhere in the first part of the book. I agree with one of the other reviewers that it was a bit ... abrupt... how they dealt with the party member they lost. (And, for the record, disregard the female character and the building on the front cover. I kept wondering where this chick came into the story, leading me to suspect one of the male characters in the book was a female in disguise.)

For all my chatter so far, you may be wondering why I rated the story a 4 out of 5. Well, despite it feeling very obvious which parts were written by which author, and thus it not feeling like a hybrid of their styles, but closer to one of them misunderstanding how the "universe" this story is in worked (IS it more like a fairy tale? Or was it supposed to be a more serious fantasy?) ---- despite that, I enjoyed it.

The characters were engaging (perhaps some of them too engaging), the elements of the story very visual, and the ending of the story (other than their handling of the lost member of the party) satisfying.

Buy it used and I doubt you'll regret spending the money.

It started off decent enough, but within a few chapters already things were out of place on Naitachal, like a beard for example (uh NO!). The ways new characters were introduced wasn't so bad and some characters were hilarious, but as the book wore on it became evident that they were just throwing in ideas from other stories, like rumpilstiltskin (the gold seperating task), alice and wonder land(the hedge maze and talking beasts), and cinderella (the mice from the disney movie). Kill off a character, with no closure (for lack of a better word) and then every one prances off happily with a dear friend as a corpse (what they left him laying there?). The end with the villagers and who is taking messages where gets a bit confusing and I had to reread it and still felt lost. if not for the hilarious part with the little village with the onions and cousins I would have rated it as a 1 (since the rating doesnt go into the negatives.) A book to read only if THAT bored.