Customer Reviews

Queen of Demons (Lord of the Isles 2)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Queen of Demons is a big pot full of ups and downs, very high points and points with no point.

In this second book in the epic saga of The Lord of the Isles, David Drake maintains the high quality of writing displayed in the first book. The characters and action sequences are all well thought out, and I was as impressed in this book as in the previous one at the author's grasp of whatever he happens to be writing about.

The characters, too, are all unique and interesting, most especially the siblings Cashel and Ilna. They are all well fleshed out and well rounded. Unfortunately, the author usually picks one point about a character and just sticks with it through the whole book. We don't need to be reminded every 5 pages that Ilna wants to redeem herself and that she doesn't lie, or that Cashel takes things at his own pace and believes in doing things right.

There was more variation in enemies and monsters in this book than the last one, although there was a lesser quantity of them. The scope of the magic and the consequences of the characters' actions are much larger here though. In this book, the author is definitely aiming more for the "epic" feel which he skimped on in the first volume.

In terms of structure, this book is almost too much like the first. The four main characters set out, get separated immediately, have their own adventure and meet their own friends, and then coincidentally (or not) all arrive at the same place and time to overcome the great evil of the story. This presents some of the best and worst points of the series.

It is good in that each volume is complete, has a definite story and closure so that you don't feel that you need to drudge through each of the previous volumes each time the next one comes out. Unfortunately, this is also a bit of a downside as this doesn't feel as much like an epic saga as a bunch of small, seldom related adventures.

In terms of plot, well, that is where this book skimped the most. Until halfway through the book, it didn't have one. Finally you learn what every character is trying to accomplish, but for the first half of the book it's very unclear. Sharina and Garric set out with specific goals in mind, and Ilna's story follows a pretty logical course, but Cashel's adventure, until 2/3 of the way through the book, are irrelevant, illogical, and unexplained. And he really needs Mellie back.

One of Drake's greatest strengths in this book is the secondary characters. All are strong, likeable, and unique. Unfortunately, he seems to be one of those authors who feels it necessary to get rid of them all at the end of every book, just leaving the core group of characters to get on with their adventures in the next one.

One last comment before I conclude -- I noticed in this book a lot of similarities, in creatures and plot devices, to work done by Robert E. Howard in his Conan and Kull stories. Also, one scene near the end sounded a lot like a certain moment in the movie Willow.

Overall, this book was an enjoyable, fast paced set of adventures for each character. Not quite picaresque, but close. The characters were a joy to read, the writing was strong and clear. Unfortunately, the plot was lacking and much of the action was irrelevant. If you enjoyed Lord of the Isles, you'll enjoy this, but it's not great. I liked it enough that I'll probably pick up #3 in paperback.

I must confess, I began my journey reading David Drake books while waiting for the next Terry Goodkind book to come out. I had read a few good reviews, and saw that Terry himself had complimented Drake for "The Lord of the Isles". As with the first of this series I found this book to be enjoyable, if not very good at times. Were I to try to put my finger the single most glaring problem with the book, it would have to be: The pace. Drake streches his readers interest out for an exhaustive amount of time between areas of plot which have put him on the shelf. After finishing the book, I found myself wanting to bookmark the great chapters from, well "the rest" of the chapters. As I could then in good conscience recommend my edited version to my friends. Drake seems to lead his readers with character and plot development, and abandon them midstream with reckless abandon. However, after saying all of this, it must be said that when this book is good, it is really good. Enough so that I am going to check out "Servant of the Dragon". If I had one last comment to the author I would tell him. "Don't be afraid of a little romance!" Even the toughest of the tough SF male reader likes to see a little love.

"Queen of Demons" is a very good sequel to the original. The plot has many twists and the characters are interesting and colorful. This book does bear a slight resemblence to the original in that the heros are trying to take down a powerful wizard, but there are very few similarities beyond that. Garric develops to become much more than an inkeepers sun and begins to restruchture the government. Cashel is sent on a series of adventures in different dimensions (Drake seems to like to send Cashel to different dimensions, as he does in the next two books). A whole host of different characters are intoduced, each very well developed. An all around great book.

For some reason this book seemd familiar too me even though it was my first time reading it. I soon dicovered that this book is identical to the first book of the series. Basically this book is the same string of events with differnt names attached. Then as i continued the series i found that each book was very similar. It seemed that by 50 pages in the book each character was seperated from the group in a different and dangerous world. I'll admit that drake seemed to improve as an author but his plot is really suffering. Although this book lacks originality it is still somewhat entertaining.

After a promising start in Lord of the Isles, David Drake has given us a confusing, hackneyed sequel that makes me wish I had never started the series. It is another "quest" story, where an ill-assorted group of characters get together to save their world from the forces of evil. The approach is common, but doesn't have to be as bad as this one has become. The members of the group find themselves in a series of difficulties that fail to either advance the plot or increase our knowledge of the characters. Why must all these authors write their stories in ever-increasing serials? David Eddings did it with humour, which made it worth while slogging through six books, and Robert Jordan is up to number eight, but at least his stories are interesting. Mr. Drake only succeeded in confusing the plot with his forays into other planes and apparent alternate realities. Dead characters reappear without explanation, or are replaced with thinly disguised doubles.

While the plot (orpahn boy is actually the long-lost king) is nothing new and most of the characters I've seen before, Drake's world-building is credible and the story hops along at an energetic pace and managed to keep me reading despite what I feel to be writing under par.

David Drake's style is replete with simile metaphor and analogy that most often is so verbose that the comparison is lost by the time I finish the sentence. The sentences themselves are clumsy and inarticulate and distract me from what is actually trying to be said. I fnd the characters to be mono-dimensional and seriously lacking in human motivation. The plotting flows like a role-playing game jumping from: scene-encounter enemy/situation-fight enemy/situation-learn piece of epic plotting-vanquish enemy/solve situation-be transported to next scene-repeat process with character number 2.

Despite all of it's flaws Queen of Demons was a marginal improvement on the first book in the series and I still read the whole thing so there must have been something about it that I liked enough to keep turning pages (though I am not sure what it is because every page kept reminding me that I was reading a story and never succeeded in "transporting me away from the mundane world" like when you see a movie with a famous actor and you are never sold on his character because you keep thinking "Oh, that's Brad Pitt"). I am not sure that I will bother to reed the next installment in the series, but I could get bored and buy it anyway for lack of anything better to read.

I tend to travel a lot and dread running out of things to read if my trips are extended so I was pleased to be able to download to my Ipad Kindle app several of the Lord of the Isles series. I started reading the "Queen of Demons" last night and was extremely disappointed by the very large number of misspelled words in the book. In three chapters there were over 120 incorrect words. It appears that the publisher had the book scanned from paper and then OCR'd it with a very buggy OCR program. You can see where many words were not picked up correctly due to character separations not being recognized by the program. You can figure out most of them because of the context, but many of the errors are in proper nouns so it is unclear just what the word is supposed to be.

What really drives me crazy is that many of the OCR errors are to the character names so that Garric is often rendered as Gable. Other errors are just as egregious. I paid the full $7.99 cost of the paperback but received a very inferior product. Is there any way to either get my money back or trade the Kindle versions for real books that, presumably, don't have the same errors?

Have other readers noted these types of transcripion errors in books commercially converted to downloads? I don't mind when some fan has lovingly scanned an out-of-copyright book and gotten these kinds of errors while doing a labor of love production of a 95-year old copy of "Tom Swift and his Motorcycle" but I do object when I am paying money and get such poor value.

John

At first this story appears to have all the elements required for a good, satisfying read. As you progress you realize it's like a stew without the spice. Key elements that catalyze the whole are missing - notably a lack of emotional development in the male/female relationships, and a certain unidimensional feel to the main characters' thoughts as they decide on how to act in each successive situation (the third party viewpoint is too obvious?). The more I read, the more underwhelmed I became.

This is still worth reading for fans of the genre, and it has enough detail & depth to be considered "read if you have the opportunity", but certainly it is not a "must read". Borrow it from the library or a friend, or at least wait for the paperback.

Quite a good read. Drake keeps the intest level high with more almost meetings between the struggling characters. Cashel gains a new companion. Garric begins to lead. (I'm not going to give away more than that) The story builds up to a final double confrantation that proves worth it. The hook for the next book is obvious, however I'm not an author so I can't complain.

Drake spins a multi-level/multi-character tale balancing honor&goodness against pure evil. His characters are well thoughout and unfold superbly. The story line intertwines and I found the book difficult to put down. An excellent fantasy with wizard, kings, princess's, demons, undead,... etc. Can't wait until book 3 of the "Lord of the Isles" is released.