15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Long winded and Lacking..., June 3, 2005
This review is from: The Lance Thrower (The Camulod Chronicles, Book 6) (Hardcover)
I have long been a HUGE fan of Whyte's Camoloud Chronicles, having read the entire series three times, but the latest edition, The Lance Thrower, was like a flat tire. The opening introduction as Clothar returns to Camoulod to bury Merlin and destroy the chests was a rocket of a start, then the book just bogs down in mire and wanders from one place to the other, seemingly without point. The magic just seems to have dissipated. The book did not pick up again until the end, when Clothar lands in England for the first time in order to deliver messages to Merlin and Author.
This book is like an oreo cookie, crispy on the outsides but gooey and without much substance in the middle.
I very much hope that Mr. Whyte is working on a future installment of his chronicles, I would hate for it to end on such a poor note.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An obvious set up, October 22, 2004
This review is from: The Lance Thrower (The Camulod Chronicles, Book 6) (Hardcover)
As has already been mentioned, this is obviously not the last book in the series. It is, what I call, a "bridge book." It's main purpose is to introduce characters (a lot of major ones, by the way: Percival, Bors, Tristan, Gwinnifer, and, of course, Lancelot) and give some sense of their back story. Whyte does his best to mask this backstory as "dialogue" but that is probably the best way to do it without having the series go on for about another 8 books! I think that the real value of this book will be evident when we read future books in this series more than as a "stand-alone" novel. As with all the other books in the series, it really helps to have read all of them and not try to just read the one with the best reviews.
I give this book 4 stars because it wasn't nearly as interesting as some of Jack Whyte's other books but it was more interesting than most author's could have done given the fact that he had to stay reasonably within the bounds of a well known story.
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35 of 44 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Uninspired and longwinded., March 31, 2005
This review is from: The Lance Thrower (The Camulod Chronicles, Book 6) (Hardcover)
How very disappointing!
The orginal books in this series, the Skystone, the Singing Sword etc. were great - well researched, well conceived and well written. But the story was mostly about young Merlyn and the founding of Camulod (Camelot) and it finished with a cliff-hanger, young Arthur riding into his first big battle.
So, predictably, mr Whyte was re-commissioned (I am sure they had to twist his arm) to write an additional three novels and complete his historically correct version of the Arthurian legend.
I am very sorry to say that either (a) Jack Whyte has lost his touch or (b) these new books have to be ghost-written by someone else. Uther was disappointing; this latest one is a disaster.
For starters, this novel almost never intersects or overlaps with the previous books. Lancelot only gets to Brittain at the very end of the book, wastes the entire time traveling around and meets Arthur (badly) on the last page. We learn nothing new, except that Arthur has apparenty soundly defeated the invaders somehow and that seemingly he has already formed a group of close companions - and that only incidentally, in the span of those last two pages or so.
The entire book is background - irrelevant background for the most part, including the book's characters having exhaustingly detailed conversations about trivial matters, like the exact route between point A and point B, as if that would mean anything to the reader, or repeatedly requesting clarifications from each other on some obvious order or other. Evidently, mr Whyte thinks that the Franks were rather slow-witted.
Mind you, all this background could have been interesting had we actually learned something about the Franks, as we learned so much about Roman culture as well as the Celts, in the first few books of the series. But we don't. These Franks appear indistinguishable from our earlier peoples and Lancelot's life is hardly different than, say, Merlyn's - so why waste a book on them??
For example, a good part of the early story is spent with young Lancelot trying to survive being caught directly on the path of a huge army of invading Burgudians, threatening most of the Southern Frankish kingdoms - 'Great historical stuff' you say. No it isn't. A few pages later, the story's focus shifts entirely (to the dynastic fratricides of the Geneva clans) the invasion is forgottent and only chapters later are afforded even a passing mention of some events that took place 'after the invasion' - leaving us to speculate on its outcome.
The most frustrating aspect of the book, however, is the author's increasing infatuation with biblical culture (for lack of a better term). Do not let the title fool you: this is not a book about Arthur, Lancelot, Brittain, the Franks, the Celts, or even the dark times of the end of the Roman Empire. Rather, this is a tedius treatese on the moral superiority of early Christianity over pagan cultures.
The real hero is not Lancelot or Merlyn or Arthur or any other Arthurian character, but rather Bishop Germanus (a secondary character of the earlier series) who gets more stage time than everyone. Even when he is not directly the focus of the story, or pulling Lancelot's or Merlyn's strings, then the other characters are usually wasting our time discussing his saintliness, convincing each other that he just performed another miracle, or relating to someone how they first met him.
We learn nothing of political developments in Brittain - only that the Church is endangered and that Merlyn must convince Arthur to build a big cathedral.
On every possible occasion, the characters are competing in piety and lecturing each other on 'the one True God', the evil Burgundians are predictably pagan (which apparently is what makes them such mad dogs), as are the Saxons (who apparently take perverted pleasure in brutalising priests) and in the most bizare twist of them all, Clothar (Lancelot) is Jewish (!!), presumably so that he becomes the most 'biblical' of all characters, hence inherently superiour - or something like that; who knows what was going through Jack Whyte's head - and who cares?
What any of this could possibly contribute to an (albeit historically correct) alternate version of the Arthurian legend is beyond me.
If you are new to this series, read the first three books (they are trully excellent) and STOP there.
If you are a fan, don't bother - this is not even usefull for continuity's sake.
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