17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Oh god the horror., November 4, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: Legacy of the Darksword (Mass Market Paperback)
I was passing through the bookstore, looking for something to read on a flight home, and I had (at the time) what I took to be a happy accident, and came upon this book.
When I first read the series as a boy, I was entranced by it. I found the characters both compelling and believable, and the world set up by W&H had a marvelous history and a delightful take on things.
With these thoughts in mind, I began reading. "Legacy of the Darksword" is a shambling zombie of a sequel, keeping the facade of the original story, but possessed with none of the life, and burdenedd with a grinning rictus of a plot that frightens every literary bone in my body.
Characters we once loved are brought back, but utterly lack any appeal, perhaps due in no small part to the book's point of view, the ultra-bland scribe-mute Reuven.
Scenes that _ought_ to exude potency and importance are done ham-handedly. We see the meeting of Joram and Saryon after so many years -- and it's just so sloppily done! So little passion, so much drab.
Joram's daughter, the "generic willful fantasy daughter" is moderately interesting at best. She has gone through none of the trials or horrors that marked Joram's character -- her presence is a continual "So what?"
Fleeing from the protagonists, one might think that there is hope to be had in the villain's corner. If only it were so! The main menace in the book is a race of aliens we never see, and a bad guy 'technomancer' who we see only in the book's conclusion, to give _some_ face to the bad guys. (Too bad he's 'generic bad guy')
With all this said about the characters, you might hope for some saving gracing from the plot. Ha! It's a herky jerky sequence, tied together by chance, an indecisive scribe, and (literally!) deux ex machina.
All these horrible things happen at a breakneck pace, so there's zero time to develop character, theme, or even point. I read the soft cover in less than three hours -- the Almin help the people who bought the hardback!
My final rumination on the subject:
Why do W&H keep writing books like this? Earlier in their career, they wrote intriguing series, with rich, detailed characters, often in challenging settings, set against worlds that crackled with life and energy. For some macabre reason, they seem compelled to write sequels to these series, and so far, they seem to be batting a thousand when it comes to taking worlds we all love, then writing a single, rushed book to destroy everything we loved about said worlds. (*Cough* dragons of summer flame *cough*). If it's money, maybe we should take up some sort of fund, so they can spend their time writing something good.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
The Ultimate Sell-Out, January 19, 1999
This review is from: Legacy of the Darksword (Mass Market Paperback)
Any self-respecting fan of the Darksword Trilogy will be doing themselves a grave disservice by reading this. They take the series's ending--which actually *meant* something--and render it all useless! It's really just this side of sacrelige; it's as if Shakespeare wrote a sequel to King Lear in which it turns out that Lear and Cordelia aren't *really* dead after all--it completely destroys any dramatic impact the original might have had. Ever since I've read this book I've been trying to disassociate it from the original series in my mind; it's actually not all that hard, given the noticable drop in quality since the original--it feels like it was written by an entirely different author.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
What happened here?, April 7, 2000
By A Customer
This review is from: Legacy of the Darksword (Mass Market Paperback)
Between this and the new Dragonlance books, I'm beginning tothink Weis and Hickman have no new ideas left. Instead they'veresorted to revisiting (and ruining) their old series in an effort to drag out another story. Case in point: "Legacy of the Darksword." We return to find the earth being attacked by a faceless alien race. Why? Who are they? What do they have against Earth? Nobody knows. We never find out. Some new one-dimensional characters are provided to fill in the gaps. Nothing really works: the emotion seems manufactured and the 'time line' plot is straight out of a bad Star Trek episode. Save your time.
People who have read the original trilogy will likely agree it's one of their best. I picked up the newest novel with a mix of excitement and dread: after all, it's been 8 years and I'm not in middle school anymore. Now I'm simply trying to forget the whole thing. It doesn't even seem like Weis & Hickman's writing style. Go for the original trilogy if you want a fantastic read.. but stop there. All hope abandon, ye who go beyond.
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