Customer Reviews

The Living Dead (Dungeons & Dragons Novel)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The second book in the Dungeons and Dragons series that feature the Iconic characters from the 3rd Edition Player's Handbook, "The Living Dead" pits our heroes against undead villainy running amok.

The heroes from the PHB this time include Devis, Mialee, and Soveliss, along with a secondary cast of characters that round out the group. The story tends to have a lot more humour in it than you'd expect: two people end up running around a city naked in the pouring rain, for example, before the story is very far underway. There's some classic fun in this one, as well as very dark villains and sometimes gore-laden descriptive text. After all, undead are the enemy.

There's no great mental challenge to these books so far, and that's fine - this is not reading intended to change your life, after all. The length is still very short for the price, but the story - even if it is straightforward - is entertaining. This is candy for the mind, easily and quickly enjoyed, and I'll happily admit I'm hooked.

'Nathan

This book is so much better than the previous one it resurrects the just born series. In this piece we have a new cast of characters, more seasoned adventurers than in The Savage Caves and the story is of a 1000 year epic struggle involving higher powers rathern than the cave crawl of the previous book.

The pace is slower and the characters are allowed to give much more exposition, probably too much exposition with many speeches giving the history of everyone. However it does allow the characters to become much more fleshed out than the ones from The Savage Caves.

The actual adventure consists of a bard, mage, cleric and ranger trying to finally end the terror of a very powerful undead. It was actually solidly mediocre and uninspired, just what you'd expect from franchise fiction.

All in all, an improvement over the very poor The Savage Caves yet only a mediocre 3 out of 5.

T.H. Lain is a great writer... considering he's a pen name of many different novelists. None the less, this version of T.H. Lain got an entire story, including character introduction, character development, introduction of bad thing, introduction of a prophecy & resolution into less then 200 pages. I've seen other D&D writers do less with more.

I wont go into great depth about plot, other then to say that undead are involved: Ok, maybe a bit more... but i dont want to spoil it. Bad things are happening in a generic D&D town & suddenly the town stops being quite so generic as its revealed that this town has an almost lovecraftian past.

Ok, so this book isn't great. However, it is well written. If the author had been given the room, this book could have been brilliant: As it is it still gets four stars from me, because it did what it set out to do with style; something that isn't easy with only 192 pages to work with. One of the best in the series

-M

This is not the best book in this series but is serviceable. The story is very linear and there are no surprises or plot twists. It was the first published by this author of this series, and they do get better. The point of view changes between the characters unnecessarily, which makes reading a bit awkward. Don't quit on this series, there are several good ones, and none I have read as bad as this one.

This isn,t a bad book, but I really expected a tale involving a lot of different undead types, and instead I found the group was facing little more than a Wight. No offense, but there a plenty scarier undead to choose from than wights. The tale isn't bad and some of the characters are fun, but the story is rushed, told in well under 300 pages. Had I known I was paying six bucks for a book under three hundred pages I would have thought twice before making a purchase. As it is, I will say away from TH Lain's Penny Dreadfuls that cost a dollar. Definately a throw away tale, as I read this a month ago and cannot recall a single character's name.

Not a bad read, just not worth the cover. 2 stars for shortness of story and forgettable characters.

This is a book fun to read, fighting undead with inspired melody, magic spell and enchanted sword. But probably it has too much "fun", i.e. not only one but two main characters both got naked and then subsequencely even running naked across the whole town.

The already shorten story line is also too much predictable, IMHO. I believe I guess 90% of the ending when I just finished about 1/3 of the book. Along with the main characters, there are too many secondary characters, and most of them are very "short lived", and not being described in much more details than just one or two sentences. According to the "tradition" of this series, i.e. no more than 200 pages for each title, this shortcoming might be a given.

Overall, this is not a bad book, it is fun and no brainer, but this title might be the worst in this series so far. 1.5 stars if I could give.

This book is horrible.Fans of D&D will every disapointed (The main enemy is a CR 3 Wight?)Thia is also extremly inapropriate for children under 12. anyone older than this should not be reading this junk anyway. Awful just awful. First the main characters get drunk! GASP! Then comes a naughty part which i feel I cannot tell you about online. Look at reviews under mine to find out.This boook is also rediculos. So the little young gnome cleric turns out to be a anicent elf cleric? The wizzard gets a potion and now she can only say things like Banna Wheelbarow Potato? Dont waist ur money. This book would be over priced at 1.99!!! Go read something better. Like The wheel of time.