Customer Reviews

Kendermore (Dragonlance: Preludes Volume Two)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I must confess that after several attempts to read this book, I finally gave up. I could not get past the MAJOR storyline errors. For example in the first chapter, they describe Tika as having short dark hair. Hair color may have been a minor point on everyone else EXCEPT Tika (What color is Flint's hair? or Tanis'?). It is stated again and again how she had RED hair. It is part of her personality and it is not a small throw away detail. Then Tanis and Flint have a conversation where they discuss how worried they are about Caramon and Raistlin and how Raistlin is too young to be going off to take The Test!! Nobody knew they were off to take The Test, and it was clearly stated that it was a secret, but even more, the friends were suprised at Raistlin when they first saw him in Autumn Twilight. Did no one involved in writing this book actually read Chronicles? If not the author, and there is no excuse for her not having read the source, but at least an editor, proofreader...someone. I tried to read past these points, but was blasted with small things like typos, or sentences being spoken by Tas referred to as "said the dwarf." I give up....maybe if I finally finish everything DL ever written, I might come back and try this one again.

After the abyssmal Darkness & Light of the Preludes series, I was very inclined to pass over Kendermore. I only had hope because the author was different, so I gave it a shot. Luckily this book was a hundred times better than the last one.

The main plot is that the kender Tasselhoff is being taken back to Kendermore by the dwarven bounty hunter Gisella and her assistant. Of course being a kender, he ultimately gets distracted along the way. A treasure map gets involved along with a cowardly doctor and Tasselhoff's intended bride to be. Being a kender he naturally manages to get out of every tight situation without fear and normally "borrowing" something along the way.

Kendermore saves itself from the problem of the last novel by not taking itself so seriously. Ridiculous situations are treated as just that and not intended to be great masterpieces. The author lends just enough credibility to the rather comical character to make him an amusing hero.

It's all in all a nice light read that though it won't make you think too much, it won't sour your stomach either.

"Kendermore" has the dubious distinction of being the best novel in the Dragonlance Preludes trilogy.... I say dubious because that's more of a slam to the other two novels than a complement to this one. It's still not all that great a book, but is marginally saved by the overall quality of the character Tasslehoff Burrfoot. As has already been pointed out, the author clearly contradicts facts and character qualities already established in Chronicles, but nitpicking aside the plot just isn't all that hot.

It starts off decently enough, with Tas being nabbed by a bounty hunter and dragged back home to Kendermore, but it degenerates from there into a gnome ridden goofy mess. It's an immature and almost insultingly childish story that doesn't really give new insight or development to everybody's favorite kender. Tasslehoff is one of the most recognizable and consistently entertaining characters in the Dragonlance world, and to have this be "his" tale prior to the War of the Lance is doing him a great disservice.

First thing that hit me with this book was the downright stupidity required to say that Solinari is golden AND to also call it "Neutral." I don't think there is any excuse for this. That much was clearly laid out in all three of the original books, not to mention every single other piece of dragonlance literature I have ever seen. They even manage to get Tika's hair color wrong. I mean, they talk about her red hair several times in the other books. There really is no excuse.

Though I don't have the campaign setting, I am pretty sure that there aren't supposed to be any orcs on Krynn. Pretty much the only real villain in this book is supposed to be a half orc. There are also some orc based insults and the villain is identified by another character as being an orc.

The last thing about this book that irritates me is the fact that at the end you only find out what happens to a few of the characters. You don't ever find out what happens to the half orc villain, the gnomes, or the talking mammoth. Speaking of the mammoth and the gnomes, I found that part very childish and stupid. The gnomes acted like idiots far too many times, and the ease of everyones escape made me wonder how they managed to catch some of the more intelligent/dangerous creatures it says they have.

All in all, this book disappointed me.

I was so excited when I received this book. That excitement crashed and burned after reading a few chapters of this book. How this author was able to make the lovely Tas into such a boring character(Tas & boring in the same sentence,unfathomable), I'll never know. This is the only DL book that I never finished and that's saying alot because I love, love, love DL. Please Ms Kirchoff,don't do this anymore to well loved characters.

I'm giving this book 2 stars, but I have to say right away that it is not because it is bad written. I would say that Mary Kirschoff writes almost just as good as Hickmann and Weis. The first half of this book is as much about a human called Phineas, as it is about Tasslehoff. The subplot about Phineas is not very entertaining and is used to describe the life in Kendermore, which is mayhem.
Tasslehoff's journey towards Kendermore is not very exciting; the best part is that he teams up with a group of dwarves. He also meets a lot of gully dwarves and gnomes, and I am not really into gully dwarves and gnomes! I think that's too bad, because the book is about a kender, and it becomes to much a turmoil with both kender, gully dwarves AND gnomes in the same place.
The bad guy Denzil is really cool and has a lot of really good punch-lines. He is described as a very mean character and it gives the story some contrast.
But hey, read it because it is fun to know what the heroes did before the War of the Lance.

This was the first Dragonlance novel I read not authored by series initiators Weis&Hickman. At the time I was in the middle of adolescense, and should as such be smack in the middle of the target audience for this title.

But even if Kendermore featured Tasslehoff Burrfoot, up until then one of my favorite characters from the other books in the Dragonlance line, I balked at the plot of this prequel to Chronicles laying it upon his shoulders to save the world of Krynn from a menace which should be entirely new to him at the beginning of Chronicles, the first published and founding trilogy in the Dragonlance Saga.

Sadly, the book was just as ripe with other inconsistencies. Tika's wrong hair color has been mentioned, but in my eyes the Half-Orc assassin was probably the worst offense. There. Are. No. Orcs. On. Krynn. Double period.

The first Preludes trilogy (it was only later, after the addition of a second Preludes trilogy, aptly named Preludes II, that it was relabeled a "series") marked a time when old TSR, Inc. unfathomably kept a very firm grip on its intellectual properties (to the point of denying Weis&Hickman the use of the Dragonlance trademark without TSR's consent) and at the same time the company did next to nothing in order to keep up the consistency and quality of new products under said properties' brand names. Kendermore is a prime, if not-so-shining example of this period in real-world Dragonlance history.

(bit of a rant there, sorry)

Oddly, author Mary Kirchoff, who was book editor at TSR at the time, did a splendid job of capturing the Dragonlance feel in her short story "Finding the Faith", found in the Dragonlance short story anthology "Kender, Gully Dwarves, and Gnomes". I can only assume that she did so because she had concrete information to build upon, since the main events of that short story were already told at least twice elsewhere.

Expecting a demanding read from books of a series such as Dragonlance would perhaps be more than a little ridiculous, but even so there are few titles of the series which display the expected immaturity and disrespect to the reader's intelligence more blatantly than this one.

Oh, Kendermore does have its moments. But now, almost a decade and a half later, few of them are memorable. The original characters of the book are its consoling elements, Gisella the dwarf inhabiting the dominant position among these. She was and is unforgettable, and Kirchoff does deserve credit for her.

If you want to read more about kender, I would instead of Kendermore strongly recommend the opening novel of the Bridges of Time series, "Spirit of the Wind" by Chris Pierson.

I thought this book was very funny. i liked it a lot. almost every chapter has some comedy in it. whether it is with kender, or gully dwarves, it was funny. But Mary also did a good job in the way she put the book together, it was a good read, and it kept me hooked until i had finished it. I recommend this book to anyone who is a kender fan. It is highly funny, and filled with enough "action" to keep the most diehard dragonlance readers hooked.

This book was really good. Though the plot WAS a little extreme and it seemed like Tas's character was a bit off, it was very entertaining and worht the money. It also (like preludes should) tells about Tas's life before 'everything' else and ties up any questions about Tas's famous woolly mammoth story. it's an excellent book for Tas fans (like me) and though it wasn't written by Margaret and Tracy, Mary did an excellent job! Congrats Mary and keep up the good work!

This was a very good book, and was worth the time and the money, but there are some better DragonLance books out there that you should read before this one. The only negative thing I noticed about this book was the lack of preparation for the ending. The ending was kind of silly, and there were no really enlightening moments when the whole plot comes together, like in other DragonLance books, which is why I suggest saving this one until later. Though again, it was a very good book and worth its cost.