The Iron Tower Omnibus (Mithgar) [Paperback]

Dennis L. McKiernan (Author)

Book Description

Series: Mithgar | Publication Date: December 12, 2000

Dennis L. McKiernan's Mithgar books are among the most beloved in all of fantasy fiction. The Iron Tower includes the first three novels set in the world of Mithgar-collected in a single volume for the first time-with an all-new introduction by the author.

Product Details

• Paperback: 672 pages
• Publisher: Roc (December 12, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0451458109
• ISBN-13: 978-0451458100
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.2 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (72 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #760,516 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars If this is not the worst fantasy ever published, I don't want to know what is., August 28, 2009

By 

Muzzlehatch (the walls of Gormenghast) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Iron Tower Omnibus (Mithgar) (Paperback)

First I must say that most of the other 1-star reviews have detailed this trilogy's manifest faults awfully well - there's not a lot for me to add. I have to say that I'm in agreement with all of the negatives, to wit:

Tolkien plagiarism - well, duh. This makes the "Sword of Shannara" look like a masterpiece of originality in comparison. The very beginning, with the "young buccan Warrows" (McKiernan's strength sure isn't in his naming) practicing their archery, is just about the only scene that doesn't seem like a LOTR swipe. OK, the warrows are a little more warlike than the hobbits. So what? They also have a piece in the appendix called "On Warrows" - they're quite short - they tend to stoutness - they live in a peaceful country all their own and like to avoid the big folks - there's a town on the verge of their country called Stonehill (Bree) populated by men and Warrows, with an inkeeper named Bockleman (Barliman Butterbur) - four of them take part in most of the action of the book, with one Tuck (Frodo) being eventually responsible for the downfall of the bad guy Modru (Sauron) and his boss Gryphon (Morgoth). You get the idea.

But I guess one can plagiarise pretty baldly and get away with it. I don't think McKiernan got sued - if he did, he must have settled quietly - his books are still out there. So let's let go of that. If he's writing a copy, well, how does he write it? Not well at all I'm afraid. His heroes and villains are all paper-thin - Modru comes off as a James Bond villain at best, cackling about his plans to his helpless female prisoner and hissing a lot, and he's evil because....uh...he's evil. The heroes have no personalities either, and most of them cry a lot. There's no sense of landscape, of culture, of history, it all just feels tacked together, all makeshift and cheap, all no more detailed or interesting than the average AD&D game I was playing in college around the time this was first published. Others have mentioned how McKiernan flips back and forth between "quarrels" and "arrows" (it should be the latter in most cases) indiscriminately, but his writing is remarkably lazy and poor throughout. He uses the passive voice an awful lot and throws in archaisms and umlauts and accents recklessly, I guess to make it feel "old" and "epic", but he only succeeds in making himself look illiterate and pretentious. He also has one very curious trait that I've never seen anywhere before - he likes to abbreviate words that are not normally ever abbreviated, e.g. "landscape" becomes " 'scape". This choice and several other equally mysterious ones like using an apostrophe before non-abbreviated words ('Day) help contribute to the general sense that the guy never wrote so much as a letter between college and the writing of this book - and his editors didn't do him any favors.

And he's awfully, awfully obvious. When Tuck finds the Red Quarrel early on, we're never in the slightest doubt that he'll be using it to complete the Big Task and destroy the Big Nasty; when the heroes go underground in Dimmen-whatever (Moria) we know they'll have to face the Balrog-thing; when the eclipse is first mentioned there's never a shred of doubt that they'll have to reach the Big Bad Iron Tower before it. And so on. This is a book almost wholly without subtext, except maybe a very cynical one: how badly can a book be written, and how obvious can it's debt to LOTR be, and yet still be published - and even cherished by fantasy fans with little taste or experience. The answer saddens me.

27 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A Tolkien Zealot's View on "The Iron Tower", November 29, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Iron Tower Omnibus (Mithgar) (Paperback)

The only question that really plagues me after reading "The Iron Tower" is simple - why was it written? Mr. McKiernan is obviously a fan of Tolkien and, to be more precise, "The Lord of the Rings," which he even admits in the preface. No shame in that. I too adore Tolkien's work, and, in my mind, "The Lord of the Rings" is the greatest fantasy story ever told. But in spite of McKiernan's admiration for said genre pioneer, he was content to take "The Lord of the Rings" and recycle it, albeit with a handful of different character names. And while he was busy attempting to pass this story off as his own, he forgot everything that made Tolkien so wonderful in the process - and anything that makes good fantasy in general.

"The Iron Tower" isn't only a shameless copy of a beloved tale, but it's also quite poorly written. One has to wonder if McKiernan was out of elementary school when he began jotting it down. Dialogue between characters is particularly absurd, and again it is because McKiernan attempts (and severely fails) to copy the more classical style of Tolkien. One example of thousands is this: "Hai! You have named it well; for Jet it was: no horse is blacker!" And aside from the poor quality of this tidbit, any Tolkien fan, even unfamiliar with McKiernan, will think to themselves, "Hmmm... Shadowfax, anyone?"

The book opens with very clear parallels to "The Lord of the Rings," but, at first, there are at least a few interesting touches to keep things mildly entertaining. But things get steadily more offensive as the story progresses. Complete with a party of three Warrows (or Hobbits, if you prefer), an Elf, a Dwarf, and a future King with a magical sword, the party of heroes is forced by perilous circumstance to enter an abandoned Dwarven mine (aka, Moria) that was evacuated for fear of the Ghath (aka, Balrog) - a beast who still lingers in the mines. But as McKiernan might say, "Hai! Lo! That be not all!" For as the companions are debating a course of action, they are attacked by a tentacled beast that lurks in the water just outside the magically concealed gateway. Where have I heard this before? Except, of course, it was much more thrilling in its original format, to say the very least.

Yet there's more still. "The Iron Tower" is complete with its own version of Ringwraiths, wargs (called vulgs), orcs, and more. Surprisingly, the only thing that's missing is a Gandalf character. But I can assure you, had McKiernan included one, the company would have temporarily lost him in the Dwarven mines to the dreaded whip of the Ghath. For goodness sakes, the book even comes complete with an appendix at its conclusion! Perhaps McKiernan thinks that his world of Mithgar is as detailed and as rich as Middle-earth just because every creature, character, or place encountered has a different name to each race. ("Kraken!" cried Galen. "Maduk!" shouted Brega.)And just to note, to fuel further audacity, Tuck (aka, Frodo) carries a short sword called Bane that glows at its edges when enemies are about. Stings, doesn't it? Get it? STINGS?

Simply put, "The Iron Tower" is a fraud. It should never have been published. In fact, there should be some sort of law against it. I have in my day read and even enjoyed many Tolkien knock-offs ("The Sword of Shannara," or "The Eye of the World," for example), so I am open-minded about these matters. But "The Iron Tower" goes too far. It is shameful. It is outright theft. Fans of Tolkien should heed this advice well: steer clear unless you're looking for a good laugh. And for those who are not familiar with Tolkien, don't you dare accept McKiernan as a suitable replacement, for your own sake. There are a handful of interesting moments, but not enough to outweigh the wrongs that were done in allowing this series publication. With more work, McKiernan might have paid homage rather than desecrating sacred ground.

16 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Like a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, July 11, 2003

By 

Richard A. Leroux (Attleboro, MA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Iron Tower Omnibus (Mithgar) (Paperback)

McKiernan in his foreword tells us that he is paying homage to Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Homage? Hmm. According to the American Heritage® Dictionary "homage" is defined as: "Special honor or respect shown or expressed publicly." I fail to see the "honor" to Tolkien in McKiernan's "The Iron Tower" trilogy. While it is true it is said that imitation is the highest form of flattery, McKiernan's books are less like flattery and more like regurgitation. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind if a writer is heavily inspired by the work of another. Even Tolkien himself drew much of his thematic elements and ideas from other ancient and mythic sources (Beowulf for example), but he reconstituted those ideas in such a way that they seemed fresh; not copied or reprinted. He was reinventing not simply rewriting.

Unfortunately, such is not the case with McKiernan's work. His ideas are directly lifted from the pages of "The Lord of the Rings" without any attempt at originality.

In McKiernan's story, a Warrow (Hobbit) named Tuck Underbank (Frodo) embarks on a quest to defeat an ultimate evil, Mordu (Sauron) who dwells in the evil land of Gron (Mordor). Along the way he encounters a dwarf called Brega (Gimli), an elf named Gildor(Legolas), a human warrior (Aragorn), etc, etc, etc...The Tolkien plagiarism's go on and on.

He even includes a scene where some of the main characters have to pass through an abandoned Dwarf city called Kraggen-Cor. The city is abandoned because some terrible monster (Ghath) drove all of the dwarfs out long ago. The only way into the subterranean city is through some magical doors that they have some difficulty getting open. While waiting at the doors, a monstrous squid/octopus-like creature attacks them. And yes, there is even a battle with the Ghath in the dwarfin city on a narrow bridge over a bottomless cavern.

I have a one hundred page rule when it comes to books; if the book can't engross me, can't keep my interest by the hundredth page I give it up. In this case, morbid curiosity kept me reading these books; like a horrible car accident, I couldn't tear my eyes away. Page after page I kept telling myself "it can't get any worse" and page after page I was proved wrong.

As bad as the plagiarism is, the writing is even worse.

The epic scope of Tolkien's story is GONE. Tolkien's writing was marked by mystery, grandeur and a poignant sense of loss and realism. All of this is missing from McKiernan's work. The characters in "The Lord of the Rings" (and the "Hobbit" for that matter) were three-dimensional; they seemed almost to have stepped out of the history books and not a novel. Tolkien made us care about his characters and what happened to them. McKiernan is incapable of doing this with the cardboard cutouts that populate his world. For example, Tuck Underbank is written to be a tragic/heroic figure and spends A LOT of time crying and sobbing about this or that. The narrative, time and time again, tries to make us feel sorry for him. After a while, I just started rolling my eyes and hoping someone would put him out of his misery. Throughout the story the dialogue is stilted, completely unnatural and pathetic. This may be one of the only times in history where a story would have been improved if none of the characters spoke.

Rather than "honoring" Tolkien with "The Iron Tower" trilogy, McKiernan dishonors the great writer. For those looking for a well written, enriching story in the style of Tolkien or just a good epic fantasy: Look elsewhere.