Customer Reviews

Guardians of the Flame: The Warriors (The Sleeping Dragon / The Sword and the Chain / The Silver Crown)

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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This is the first three "Guardians of the Flame" books together in a Science Fiction Book Club hardback:

"The Sleeping Dragon"
"The Sword and the Chain"
"The Silver Crown"

I recently re-read my copy, the first time I'd touched it since the mid-Eighties. To my relief, it was every bit as good as I remember it. (This is not always true with some of the books from my younger years!) I remember the first time I read "The Sleeping Dragon." I was skeptical, because I'd heard about "D&D Gamers" travelling to their game world. [Uh, yeah, sure...] But Rosenberg made it work.

Rosenberg wrote what I term Hard Fantasy. Gritty, dark in places, with complex characters. Even the magic follows definite rules. Central characters will die, retire, or travel elsewhere. Sometimes predictable, sometimes not, but always interesting.

The series continues in "Guardians of the Flame: The Heroes" (ISBN 1568650507)

Received this with a couple of other books when I joined a sci-fi book club back in the early 80's. I have to say I couldn't put it down, Rosenberg did a terrific job combining so many elements together and making them work.
The only thing I wish was that more time was spent on the groups travel to the gate, heck I would love to see a book that's pre this adventure, one that revolved around the professor when he was originally on the other side before the Great Battle that created the wastes.
Anyway pick-up this if you want a good read.

Joel Roseberg does a fantastic job of mixing modern day with sci-fi/fantasy in these stories. I typically like to keep my eras where they are supposed to be (ie. no ray guns in a sword fight), but the originality of how these characters come about makes this a wonderful read. I love the entire series.

I really enjoyed this set of books. Usually, as a rule, I don't really care for "hybrid" stories, ones where reality is mixed with fantasy, but this one works for me. I almost put it down shortly after starting it because it was set on Earth...

That quickly changed, however, when the friends get together to play a fantasy roleplaying game and their gamemaster is actually a wizard from another world. Each real-life human is magically transformed into their roleplaying alter-egos and deposited on another planet, where they must fight for their lives from the very beginning. It's interesting to see how each character is torn between what they want to be and what they are -- some take to it better than others. And these are gritty, dark times for the "heroes" as they are tested to the very limits of their sanity, abilities, and morals. No one character particularly stands out as a typical "hero". They are just normal people thrown into alter-personalities, and they are believable as they try to make the most of it.

Joel Rosenberg did a fantastic job making this a truly entertaining experience. I can't believe I almost didn't read it. The next book (Heir Apparent) is not nearly so memorable as this set, but I do want to read it again. Only Terry Brooks has done it as well, with his series about The Wizard At Large, Magic Kingdom for Sale: SOLD!, and The Black Unicorn. I have to NOT include Weis & Hickman's Darksword Trilogy and Stephen R. Donaldson's Thomas Covenant Trilogy -- they didn't cut it, as far as the hybrid part goes.