Customer Reviews

THE NIGHT PARADE (Forgotten Realms Fantasy Adventure)

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

 

 

This is a most unusual Realms book. It's a kind of cross between fantasy and horror, but not the gothic horror of the Ravenloft books. Rather, it's like what would result if Lovecraft, King, or Barker wrote a Realms story. No orcs here! The monsters of the Night Parade are disgusting, twisted blobs of flesh with tentacles and sharp teeth, and insect-like humanoids, who feed on human beings and dwell in the shadows. The characters are well-constructed, though Ciencin seems to take a bit too much delight in killing several of them off horribly! My advice is not to get too attached to them, because a few don't last very long! Some scenes are quite gory and repulsively descriptive, but that helps set the goulish mood that is supposed to be there. And the ending is genuinely touching, like waking up from a bad dream. Overall, not my favorite Harper's book, but definitely worth a read.

If Amazon had a "-5/Gouge Your Eyes out before reading" rating, I would have used it. Unfortunately, I'm compelled by the system to give it a "1" -- which is a far higher rating than this book deserves.

I keep this book for two reasons. It's nice to have a benchmark for "most horrible book". Other than a college statistics textbook, it's the only written material in my bathroom thus ensuring that people flee as soon as possible. If I had to use one word besides "horrible" to describe this book, I would use "wooden". The plot could have been interesting, however the characterization, dialog, plot transitions, writing, and literary devices are so pathetic that any potential the storyline had is crushed.

I'm very familiar with the Forgotten Realms series. I'm not expecting top-notch writing. I'm expecting an easy, entertaining read, though. I don't expect to end up with a book that I'm embarrassed to own.

"Lord Sixx" -- the evil genius in the book -- has a supposedly horrific appearance primarily focused on the number of human eyes embedded in his body. (Something that Laurell Hamilton managed to pull off -- if not well -- at least better in Obsidian Butterfly). Mr. Ciencin makes a reference to the supposed-to-be-horrifying "Eyes of Domination" in Lord Sixx's chest. You can tell that the author has some horrifying soundtrack from a Stephen King movie playing in his mind. He manages to convey nothing but sheer cheese.

I have been tempted to quote from the book to provide graphic illustrations of everything I've pointed out as a flaw in this book. Randomly flipping pages, I've started typing only to realize that I can't find a place to stop. The book is so terrible that if I started to provide an example of things done wrong, I would have to continue typing until the entire book was included in my review -- the horror of reading Night Parade increases continually -- the sheer awefullness of the writing builds page after page until you will beg forgiveness for ever having bought, borrowed or read this book.

This book, as should be obvious, is another of the standalone novels of The Harpers series.

As a longtime fan of the Forgotten Realms novels, this book is quite possibly my least favorite Forgotten Realms novel. Some of the books are cliched, some are poorly written, and some are just bad. This is heavy on the last issue.

As several reviews have pointed out, it was apparently too much effort for the author to use a Harper as the main character. So, with a weak tie-in they bring some supporting characters on board.

The book also fails me in that it doesn't feel like a Forgotten Realms book. At all.

Overall, this is easily my least favorite of The Harpers series, and arguably the worst Forgotten Realms book I've read. Skip it. There's plenty of other options out there.

I found this book to be lacking in numerous areas. Primarily, it seemed hard to follow and somewhat irrelevant to the Harper series. The main character, although she had a lot of depth, didn't stike me as very interesting and most of the supporting characters met untimely ends too frequently thoughout the story, making it more like a bad horror movie. The writing style was okay. I wouldn't recommend this book.

Scott Ciencin is a GREAT author (Shadowdale was AMAZING), but unfortunately The Night Parade was a bit of a disappointment! It is much closer to HORROR than it is to FANTASY. Therefore, it is not your conventional Forgotten Realms fantasy novel. For those fans who enjoy Horror this is a book that combines the two, but for the rest of us, I recommend other books from the Series such as Red Magic or Parched Sea to mention a few, all the while keeping in mind the "heavy artillery" Forgotten Realms novels that have been written by RA Salvatore, Elaine Cunningham, Ed Greenwood etc My advice, read The Night Parade only after you're done reading all the other Forgotten Realms books and you are still in need of more Toril related material.

Scott Ciencin has created a very dynamic plot here. By the time you reach the end of this story you discover how many of the character's backgrounds and stories are intertwined with each other's. Very few characters stand alone in this novel, they all have a strong dynamic relation to another person or persons in the story. What's more, Ciencin is not afraid to have a few of them die in the story. Rather than disappointing the reader though, this gets the reader to believe in the characters' mortality. These are not all powerful heroes who can just hack and blast their way through challenges. These are real people who could die on the next page. With the exception of one character in particular, but I won't ruin it by telling you. I agree with a previous reviewer, that character had unbelievable luck - being saved by a group of wandering adventurers with healing potions. Scott also uses a new brand of evil monsters - the Night Parade - who are both horrifying (in a Lovecraft kind of fashion) and devious. I am going to search for the rest of Scott Ciencin novels, even though I usually only read Forgotten Realms when I read from the fantasy genre. This was a great contribution to the Harper series.

One word of caution. I read this book when it first came out and haven't since so my impressions may be clouded with time. But I remember thinking this was a welcome change from some of the other Forgotten Realms books. Scott Ciencin is primarily a horror writer and, in an interesting take, he crafts a horror story in a high fantasy setting. The hero is a retired adventurer who now rules a kingdom but is forced to come out of retirement in order to deal with the threat of The Night Parade, a collection of creepy monsters. I remember it as a good book and a refreshing change of pace from the usual high fantasy Forgotten Realms fare.

First of all, if a book is going to be part of a series involving a society, shouldn't the story be about one of the members? The only true Harpers throughout the novel were slaughtered in pointless melodrama. The phrasing and paragraph structure was redundant and slow and the only really moving scenes had nothing at all to do with the plot, if you consider being told that people were making noble gestures, as opposed to having the gesture described, moving. There was poinless slaughter, unfounded, unrealistic romanticized acts of self-sacrifice and so so many encounters that did nothing for the plot that half of the text could have been struck out for being irrelevant (except to explain why there were no Harpers in the novel). And since there was so much material that had nothing to do with the plot, the story dragged on beyond the bareable limits. This novel was an exercise in pain tolerance. All in all, The Night Parade has to be the worst novel that I can recall ever having read. A true and regretable waste of time.

If you've never read a Realms book before, then don't read this as a starter! This book is written so differently from other Realms books that it comes as a shock to fans - they either hate it or love it for its uniquness. It is extremely gory and descriptive, but what else should we expect from a book based on nightmares? There is adventure and plenty of mystery - not as fine-tuned as "Azure Bonds" but keeps readers on their toes. The plot and enemies are all-new showing us a very different side to the realms, staying out of the safe, well-run tracks of many FR novels. The Night Parade instead breaches boundaries into a side of the Realms you never dreamed you'd see. If you don't like change or "different", then perhaps you better work your way up to this book but if you embrace books that are often the odd one out, then this is a must-read.

I am reading this book right now and find it hard to put it down.
I really enjoy it and will read more of this author.