17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Very disappointing..., February 11, 2006
I remember being very excited, 30 years ago or so, when I learned that there was a novel based on the "really, really cool" game my friends and I were playing every weekend. Even at the tender age of 11, I had been reading Andre Norton for a couple of years and liked her work. Quag Keep was a good example of Norton creating a suitably exotic locale and likable characters who were not entirely cut from the same cloth. (Though I still haven't a clue as to how one pronounces "Ingrge".) And, yes, the ending was frustrating since she never wrote the obviously necessary sequel.
Until now...the quondam Ms. Norton's habit of co-authoring novels in her later years was always a hit-or-miss proposition, and this time it missed. First off, if Jean Rabe is going to write a sequel to Ms. Norton's book she should make sure she's done some research and gets the characters' names right -- the pseudo-dragon's name is "Afreeta" not "Alfreeta" (which sounds like some faux Italian pasta dish). Even a cursory reading of the first novel makes that clear.
There's also no context and, with the exception of the 7 original characters and Quag Keep, almost no reference to the first book. The story begins in a nameless city where the group is hard up for cash, meanders through nameless (and geographically confusing) countryside (whatever happened to the Sea of Dust which surrounds QK?, for example), suffers some rather arbitrary plot devices to get the characters back together after they have been separated, and then ends up with a lackluster ending. And I was disturbed by the callous death and dismemberment of several of the characters. I'll refrain (though just) from spoiling things entirely but one character gets "offed" in the first few chapters; and another has his arm sliced off. Now, don't get me wrong, I've read (and enjoyed) novels where fairly important characters die, sometimes even arbitrarily, but the original QK was a young-adult novel and its "atmosphere" was not a serious theme but an adventure story -- the heroes aren't supposed to die or, if they do, it's for a fine, suitably epic cause (Boromir's death in LOTR comes to mind). Perhaps I'm getting old, but if this is what passes for young-adult fantasy nowadays, let me return to the old stuff like Norton's own original Witch World novels or her Solar Queen stuff.
Finally, the villains in this piece just don't measure up. I was hoping to find out who was behind the mysterious and sinister QK Productions. Were they Earth men who had discovered how to pass between worlds? Were they natives of the game characters' world? Were they from both? What was their purpose? And whatever happened to the master dice and the gamemaster's notes that Milo and the others captured at the end of the first novel? Instead, we have a stereotypically black-cloaked villain named Fisk and his master, the distilled quintessence of the evil Ids of the sorcerors who built QK (shades of Forbidden Planet), Pobe.
Pobe?...Pobe? How is this pronounced? Like "Job" from the Bible, or are both syllables pronounced so it's like "Po-bay"? Either way, it doesn't inspire much in the way of fear. Where's the menace inherent in names like Sauron or Morgoth or Lord Foul the Despiser? "Pobe" is the facial cream my girlfriend uses.
Read the original Quag Keep and, if you like it, read Norton's older fantasy like the Witch World (before she began farming it out to other authors). And if you want more adult-oriented fantasy, try authors like Robert Jordan, George Martin, Glen Cook, or Steven Erikson. I am not looking forward to anymore QK sequels from Ms. Rabe's pen, I'm sad to say.
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not the same, April 27, 2006
I realize, as a sequel, that this should be different than the first in many ways. BUT, I would hope the characters would have retained some of their charm. The original was a good read and felt, well, original, sadly this sequel feels like the same ole same ole. It might still be in the same universe but seems to have forgotten to follow the rules of said universe.
A hero dying in the first few chapters? And going out as if he had no idea how to use his powers like he did in the first book. He same can be said for the fighters. One went from an interesting, Amazon type female warrior to one that seemed to have been poured into her armor and showing her curves, etc... In other fantasy this is ok I guess, but it just doesn't `feel' right in this setting.
If you're young and haven't read fantasy for 30 plus years, I guess it might be new and exciting but to older readers, it's very much like a typical fantasy. Not that that is bad, there are only so many plots and stories to be told after all, but this does not even feel remotely close to the original. A shame as I was looking forward to it.
Maybe it would have been better if not a sequel and a story of its own in a universe of its own? I guess we'll never know.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Terrible Sequel, May 8, 2008
Like others, I was excited to see a sequel to the book that opened the fantasy book world to me. What a total dissappointment.
This book seems to have been written by a highschool creative writing student. Storylines that go nowhere, characters appear and dissappear and many bring nothing to the story. Plot lines that just end seemingly at random.
I reached the last sentence of the book and turned the page, thinking there was more to go. I have never done that with a book.
The biggest dissappointment is that the storyline and characters have almost nothing in common with the original book other than in name. Personalities are totally different. Situations left off in the original book are not even addressed. The setting itself is also different. The Keep was next to a forest? What happend to the Sea of dust and the Swamp (QUAG) that it was named for? Also, for some inexplicable reason, the author divides the group of characters at the very beginning of the book, with two of them having virtually no part in the story at all. She then rapidly kills off a third.
The villians are mediocre at best and the demise of one is almostl an afterthought.
I could go on and on but I leave it at this. As a stand alone book, I believe it is poorly written but passable. As a sequel to a book that opened up a whole genre, it is a major failure.
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