Night of Blood (Dragonlance: The Minotaur Wars, Book 1) [Mass Market Paperback]

Richard A. Knaak (Author)

Book Description

Series: The Minotaur Wars | Publication Date: February 3, 2004

This direct follow-up to the best-selling War of Souls trilogy deals with the minotaurs, a race with which New York Times best-selling author Knaak is particularly known for. This series moves the minotaur species to the forefront of the Dragonlance world.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Richard A. Knaak is the author of 22 fantasy novels, including the Dragonlance novel titles Kaz the Minotaur and the New York Times best-selling The Legend of Huma. He is currently working on Tides of Blood, the second title in the The Minotaur Wars trilogy. Other recent works include Day of the Dragon and Legacy of Blood, based on the popular computer games Warcraft and Diablo.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 372 pages
• Publisher: Wizards of the Coast (February 3, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786931965
• ISBN-13: 978-0786931965
• Product Dimensions: 4.2 x 1 x 6.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #220,484 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Richard A. Knaak is the New York Times bestselling author of some three dozen novels, including the The Sin War trilogy for Diablo and the Legend of Huma for Dragonlance. He has penned the War of the Ancients trilogy, Day of the Dragon and its upcoming followup, Night of the Dragon. His other works include his own Dragonrealm series, the Minotaur Wars for Dragonlance, the Aquilonia trilogy of the Age of Conan, and the Sunwell Trilogy -- the first Warcraft manga. In addition, his novels and short stories have been published worldwide in such diverse places as China, Iceland, the Czech Republic, and Brazil.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars An interesting and disappointing read, July 28, 2004

By 

Ron Cole - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Night of Blood (Dragonlance: The Minotaur Wars, Vol. 1) (Hardcover)

Dragonlance is the long-lived (and some would say long-suffering) fantasy line originally based on a series of game supplements for the Dungeons and Dragons RPG. There are dozens and dozens of novels in this series, but none of them need to be read prior to this one to understand what is going on. Still, knowledge of Richard Knaak's other novels (The Legend of Huma, Kaz the Minotaur, Land of the Minotaur) may help the reader grasp some references in this book, though such occurrences are rare and have little impact on the main plotline.

NoB is one of Knaak's most polished Dragonlance novels. While The Legend of Huma (a wonderful read) had many rough sentences and didn't always flow well, NoB has no such problems. It is, in fact, a testament to how much Knaak has improved as a writer - my hat is off to him for this.

Where Knaak fails is in his portrayal of minotaurs - the focus of the novel. The characters we get are humans in bulls' clothing - they have horns and fur, but they don't ACT differently than humans (a far cry from how every other novel in the series has portrayed them). They tend to be greedy, dishonorable, cowardly, and just plain duplicitous - the character Ardnor will tend to conjure mental images of Emperor Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix in Gladiator) rather than a powerful creature of fantasy and legend. Most of the time, the physical differences aren't even taken into account - clothing choices often wouldn't fit over a minotaur's irregular-shaped head, horns are never used in combat, etc... There is even a minotaur DANCE - which is described exactly as a human dance would be. More effort should have been put into making this once interesting race unique.

Short version: This book might be interesting to fans of the Dragonlance series, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone else.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Machiavellian satire in the world of Krynn, June 26, 2005

By 

Jennifer K. Weir (Piscataway, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Night of Blood (Dragonlance: The Minotaur Wars, Book 1) (Mass Market Paperback)

Apparently this one got mixed reviews. It's easy to see why. This is a well written book with a solid plot, and yet it just doesn't have that DL feeling. It's extremely slow in getting into the story, and of course it lacks diverse characters (as well it should on the islands of minotaurs)- no wizards, no elves, certainly no kender. But I thought it was very solid nonetheless.

For anyone who's ever read Machiavelli, this is a carbon copy of The Prince, only as application rather than theory. That in itself was enough to keep me reading (well, I am a political science major). It's all about the most effective way to seize and maintain power, how to deal with dissention, and how to gain and hold the support of the masses (and of course, keep them dependent on you). In that respect (as theory actually put into practice in this novel) it's even more chilling than Machiavelli. I loved and hated Hotak and his children. And although it took me longer to finish this one than any other DL novel (even the 600+ WoS ones) due to the slow-to-get going build-up, in the end I was not disappointed.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not Post-War of Souls, but it's heading there., June 14, 2003

By 

Bret Sheeley "carteeg" (Shirley, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Night of Blood (Dragonlance: The Minotaur Wars, Vol. 1) (Hardcover)

This book was my first experience into looking at Richard Knaak's minotaur nation on the continent of Ansalon. So far, let me state that I'm impressed.

On the cover it states this is Volume One of a series, so don't go into this one expecting it to be a stand alone. But then again, considering all of the DragonLance (DL) novels that have comes before it, this isn't really the true starting point either. But Knaak gives a history of the minotaur race prior to the actual story which fills gives DL newbies most of the required information needed before stepping into this series. Not being a newbie however, I can only guess he did a decent job in describing what needs to be known to those who haven't read anything in DL before.

I've read several but not a large number of secondary authors for DragonLance (Hickman and Weis being the first tier). Up until now Mary H. Herbert was the only one I had a large amount of respect for, even though Jean Rabe has partially redeemed herself with the recent Dhammon Saga. To my pleasure, Richard A. Knaak has just been put up on that list as well.

The overall story flow is consistant with only a few minimal lulls in the action, and his characters are well defined and shown to be individuals different from each other even though 'cultural commonalities' can be seen in all of those in the minotaur nation. Most importantly, even though 'The Minotaur Wars' are about fighting and manuvering for power, much of the plot is character driven by strong characters that one could believe will be read about by students of history in the future of Krynn. There are times where one has to catch oneself reading this or else find themselves rooting for the wrong side (especially at the end of this first volume).

Now, I've seen this book advertised as the first post-War of Souls book. In reference to my review title, I want to state that although I get the feeling this series will lead into the times after the War of Souls, from what I can gather this one volume takes place primarilly slightly before and during Mina's War. The book covers something like five or six months worth of time (estimate), so I have no doubt the series will go into and past the event alluded to the DL readers at the end of WoS.

Yes, I'm doing what I can to avoid talking about the plot. You've already got the summaries up above for that. But I will state that this first volume of the series not only has me interested in the rest to be released, but I'm going back and finding Knaak's other novels in DragonLance to see what I've missed (specifically 'Reavers of the blood Sea' and 'The Legend of Huma').

This hardcover book is a good buy. Sit back and enjoy.