Customer Reviews

Marked for Death (The Lost Mark, Book 1)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Marked for Death is an entertaining and action-packed story--which is exactly what one should expect when reading a novel based in a D&D gameworld. The main characters are well portrayed and the author does an excellent job writing dialogue for the villains--the antagonists have reasonable motivations (and explanations) for their actions which is something you rarely see in a genre novel such as this.

The only flaws in the book are its length and a rough shift in tone from the novel's start to its end. In terms of length, much of the action repeats itself, as other reviewers have noted. In terms of tone, the first (and much stronger) half of the novel feels like the classic western, "The Searchers." This portion is a grim, grounded story that really grabs the reader. In the second half of the story, however, the action goes rather widescreen echoing one of the big action scenes of Attack of the Clones.

The two halves just don't fit well together and I wish that Mr. Forbeck had remained true to the Western feel that he so carefully crafted in the early parts of the story. That said, the good parts of the story outweigh the bad and I see real promise in this series.

This was a pretty good book. Matt Forbeck does a good job of describing the battle scenes, and he does a good job with the character Kandler. However, the saving and losing and recapturing and re-kidnapping of Espre gets a bit tedious. Other than that, it is a good book. I really liked the part with the deathless wizard.

While the action scenes are fairly well written the plot leaves something to be desired. This romp though the Mournlands seems to be stuck in a loop as Kandler and his shifter sidekick repeatedly track his adopted daughter and rescue her, only to have her kidnapped again.
While it might be useful as introduction to some of the elements of the Eberron world, the characters and plot are not developed enough to make a great novel.

Okay. First of all I want to say that a lot of the reviews that have been given so far have been quite unfair.

This is by no means a bad novel, in fact it is quite the opposite.

I had no previous knowledge as to what this book was going to be about, and as I am not an expert on Eberron I was not even sure what Dragonmarks really represented. So going into this I was open minded, and ready to be educated.

Before Marked for Death, there had only been one other Eberron novel which was Keith Bakers 'City of Towers' which many people raved about. But I found it to be inferior compared to Matt Forbecks novel. Now Keith Baker was a first time novelist, so I am ready to give him another chance it the future.

Matt is a great visual storyteller. All the way through the book I was right there in the moment, in every scene.

From the moment I started reading about the frontier town on Mardakine, to the final sequences on the moving Warforged City I was gripped.

I really enjoyed the characters of this novel, especially Kandler. He is a character with quite a bit of history, but I still think that he will evolve farther over the course of the series.

One of the things people have complained the most about is Espre, and it is something that I mentioned a couple of times too. Espre gets captured and released, and captured again frequently through the novel.

If anyone has ever watched the TV show '24' then it is quite like watching Kim Bauer getting herself into bad sitautions.

But I still love watching '24' and I will certainly keep reading more of Matts novels.

I had never read anything from Matt Forbeck before I read this book and it was surely a pleasant surprise to see this guy can write.

His narrative and story-telling is excellent. He describes and gives depth to both characters and settings; however, I'm going to have to concur with other reviewers in so far as the weak and repetitive plot. It was painful to read at times. What made it painful was the fact that the author is very talented and his descriptive battle scenes are bar-none, yet the plot does nothing but to go in circles. Another annoyance (though very minor, I must admit) is the use of language that is inconsistent with the D&D multiverse. A painful example is when one of the vampires looks at the female paladin and tells her, "I'm going to kill you, bitch." I thought, "Wait, when did D&D turned into GTA: San Andreas?"

Overall I liked the book; however, it could have been SO much better if the author could've used his narrative talent with the aid/collaboration of an editor or plot master.

I just finished the trilogy, so I am gonna review the books as a whole for this.
The series is good. The first book has a pace and characters that you could grow to love and hate. It is a little angering because the whole time its a game of catch-up. That comes to an end in book 2 (thankfully). The 3rd book is also worth reading and only gets better. It worked like good fiction ought to.
I would have to rate this series as a 4 star. The characters are decent and the plot, although cliche' is still intriguing to read. You will find that it has some cinematic qualities to it which makes a great read to get lost in.

Let me start by saying I enjoyed this book but found it a little disappointing. This may be because the other two Eberron books I have read were so good. But, as I said, I did enjoy this book and there were a number of things I liked about it:

First, the premise on which it was based was both interesting an intriguing. Basically, in Eberron there are twelve Dragonmarked Houses. A select few of the members of these houses are born with (or develope) dragonmarks which are marks on the body that look like tattoos and grant spell-like abilities to those born with them. Each house exclusively has one type of dragonmark. In the distant past there used to be thirteen dragonmarks but only twelve remain, as one family (the House of Vol) was mostly eradicated. The premise of this book is that the lost thirteenth mark, The Mark of Death, has returned. The good guys seek to find and protect the bearer of the mark while the agents of a cult known as the Blood of Vol seek to find and use the bearer for their own purposes.

Second, the book gives a nice overview of Eberron by incorporating a lot of Eberron-specific content into the story. For the most part this is done without overwhelming the reader. It does not read like a bunch of gaming information thrown into the novel. Instead it works within the structure of the story.

Third, the story is quick-paced and action-packed. The actions scenes are for the most part well written and descriptive.

While I often found myself sympathizing with the plight of the main characters and wanting to know more about them I thought this is where the book could have been improved.

For one thing, while the characters were interesting their actions were often inexplicable. For example, in the beginning when a group of strangers are expected of a very gruesome murder, the mayor orders the justicar (sort of a town sheriff) to arrest them and perform a trial by fire. The justicar refuses and the mayor has him arrested and thrown in jail. Does he then have the strangers (who happen to be Knights) arrested and subjected to the trial by fire. No, instead he invites them over to dinner unguarded and with their weapons. This is just one of many examples throughout the book of scenes that left me scratching my head.

Furthermore, at times the characters seemed flat and uninspired showing little development as the story progressed. The dialogue could also have been better.

Finally, the story does get a bit repetitive after a while, although not so much that I found it annoying.

Overall, I feel that the story got better as it went along and having started the second book in the series I can tell you that it is better than the first, especially in terms of character development.

So if you are a fan of Eberron or RPG-related books I would recommend this book. If you are looking for an intro to Eberron, this book is a nace place to start as are Don Bassingthwaite's "The Binding Stone" and Edward Bolme's "The Orb of Xoriat".

Since I wasn't reading much fantasy when TSR first started with their books, I can't tell if a new world needed a few books before it hit its stride. If so, then it seems Eberron will fit in nicely with Forgotten Realms. The book has its "ridiculous" parts (how many times can a girl be lost?), and I quote ridiculous since we are talking about the fantasy genre. The characters were rather likable, and the author's refusal to keep all the main characters alive was refreshing. Much like the first Eberron book, I think this trilogy will get better as it goes along, so I'm looking forward to the next offering.

I am really trying to give the world of Ebberon a fair try. This is the second novel ever released for the world, so it comes with some unusually high expectations.

So far, I have found nothing really to grab my attention in the Ebberon world. This novel is rather bland. Yes there is a plot here, but it seems so forced and contrived that it doesn't seem like a story.

When I read a fantasy novel, I don't like to have things handed to me. I don't like a book that's rushed - and to a point that's what this book turns out to be is a very rushed novel at times. The entire concept of the girl getting kiddnapped was a great start, but the more times the main character 'loses' her the more it feels like the author couldn't think of anything new to add to the story.

While this wasn't the worst book I have ever read - it wasn't the best either. I would like to recommend this for a brief time waster, but I'm not sure I could even recommend this book for that...

To be honest, I didn't like Eberron at all since I heard of its inception. I just didn't like campaign settings that I didn't create. However, I read the "prequel" to this novel in Dragon magazine and I immediately went out to purchase this book. What really did it for me was Burch. He seems to literally breathe on the page. The characters are all done very well. I even liked how the Warforged of the Mournland rose from hiding very undead-like in their first encounter...wonderful.