Customer Reviews

Shadow Moon (Chronicles of the Shadow War, Book 1)

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(14)
1 star:		(24)

 

 

Maybe I was "spoiled" by seeing the action and fun of the movie, but I had much higher hopes for a work by Lucas and Claremont. Despite the emphasis on the enormity of the Cataclysm and the creeping evil that has swept the land, I found myself getting frustrated by the fact that NOTHING HAPPENS. Page after page of skippable descriptive text drones along, replete with tedious details about stuff that just doesn't matter, and before you realize it, another hundred pages have been flipped with no discernable plot movement.

The writers don't seem to realize the powerful impact a few carefully chosen words, or clipped sentences, can have in promoting tension and excitement for a scene, as opposed to endless paragraphs detailing the exact color of the approaching horror, and how its smell reminds Thorn of someone he once met who had overslept in his bedroll on a long-march military campaign in which the stew was always cold...and on and on and ON! The perpetual flashbacks (a good storytelling tool when used in moderation) are heavily overused; in some sections, you have page after page set entirely in italics. Most of the key information to understanding what's going on is gradually doled out in these flashback scenes. This makes the sudden transition back to the "present" even more jarring.

The plot events are also distributed unevenly. For one entire chapter, nothing happens; then, when something DOES happen, it's interrupted by something else entirely, with no real explanation or even acknowledgement that the shift has occurred. In mid-chase through a garden, Thorn suddenly finds himself back in a dungeon he'd escaped from. No one seems to know why (which is fine), but even Thorn himself doesn't seem surprised at this turn of events! Thorn is in mid-battle with Death Dogs, when suddenly he's attacked by someone he (apparently) used to know. He faces the heart-wrenching struggle against his former friend--who we've never seen before, and no explanation of why this is heart-wrenching is given--, and meanwhile the fight against the Death Dogs is...what, exactly? Assumed to continue without him? On hold till he gets back? No one seems to know, and no one comments on it.

Part of the problem, I think, is that there is no character interaction. The only personality we get to know is Thorn's, and he spends most of his time on internal ponderings, never talking to anyone if he can help it. (The brownies are such an obvious Voice of Internal Conflict that they don't count; you can practically picture them perched on each shoulder, bearing halo and wings or pitchfork and horns.) When someone else is portrayed sympathetically, their interaction consists of a literally magical intuitive connection; suddenly, he likes and respects Person X, even though they haven't actually exchanged more than six words aloud. Someone, somewhere must've told Lucas or Claremont that dialogue is the hallmark of bad characters, and they do their best to avoid it, or at least leave it up to nameless goons and caricatured villains.

I clearly had my hopes set too high when I picked out this book. I can only hope they'll pick up the pace, tighten their prose, and relax enough to allow some character interaction in their next work.

...hated this book.

I'll admit that I didn't even make it through the whole book. I was so disgusted, I quit halfway through. About 30% of my loathing for this title comes from the fact that major characters are killed before the story even begins. This is a heavy handed plot device that never fails to piss me off. And I'll admit, Madmartigan and Sorsha were two of my favorite characters, so this one is even worse. Another 30% of my disgust comes from the fact that the characters that remain are so drastically changed that they are virtually unrecognizable. While I didn't mind Elora being a selfish brat, I found myself saying over and over "I don't think Willow/the brownies would really do this..." And the next 30% is for the fact that the book is so, well, dead boring. If you want practice staying awake to read the Wheel of Time series, this book is a good place to start. The text is dull, the descriptions of places and people that don't matter are extensive, and there's just not much going on most of the time. And the stuff that you are interested in because it links back to the movie's story is skipped over with a few paragraphs. The final 10% is my disappointment at the wasted potential. I'd always hoped the movie would have a sequal, was thrilled when I stumbled across this book. Until I started reading it.

What this comes off as is Chris Claremont warping the universe and characters that the movie set up to write his own fantasy theme with his own characters. He even renamed the movie's main title character, for crying out loud. While the book might have stood reasonably well if it weren't tied to the movie that came before it, as it is I give it 1 star (I'd give it none if I could) for ruining everything the movie built up.

This is one of those books where:
I read it.
I put it back on my shelf.
Someone asked me "How was that book? What was it about?"
And I, in all my eloquence, said...
"Ummmmm....I don't know."
The descriptions became tedious, though they were very well written, and did little to forward the story.
Some characters from "Willow" were discarded (aka killed) early in the book and Willow himself had his name changed to Thorm Drumheller. (This was done probably to create distance from the movie.)
However, I found it difficult to follow the story between the lengthy pages of description (though well written, they became cumbersome after a few dozen pages of it) and the rapid introduction and exiting of characters.
Should be read by: those who like "flowery style," like that of Tolkien, le Guin, etc, which include massive amounts of detail to create a lifelike world, those who adore the movie Willow and want to know what happens NO MATTER WHAT THE CHARACTERS BECOME/DO.
Should NOT be read by: those who like faster moving books without lots of description (those who prefer Hemingway's style to Fitzgerald's, for example), those who adore EVERY SINGLE character from Willow, just as they were, and those who need a book to move quickly (from early in the book) and to maintain its pace.
This book had its faults and its strongpoints, but it wasn't up my alley. I'm sure there are a lot of people who would find it very enjoyable, but I'm not one of them. More power to those who like it.

This is one of the all-time worst books ever written. I can hardly believe that George Lucas has fallen so far from grace since his younger days and conspired to produce this travesty of literature. I just can't think of a book I hate worse than Shadow Moon. The worst part of it all, is that I tried (really, really hard) to finish reading this book. Mercifully, there is not enough money in the world to ever make me put myself through such torture again.

For the record, I love the movie Willow which this book is supposed to be based upon. I'm only sorry that there were never any film sequels made. Lo and behold a sequel appears for Willow that is released as a book rather than a film. Great idea, right? Wrong! This book is the opposite of what you expect from a Willow sequel. First off, the main characters of the film (Madmartigan, Sorsha, Willows children, etc.) are killed off in the opening pages of the book and with no real purpose except that the author felt like it. Then Willow is renamed Thorn for no apparent reason either. The story is cheerless and overwritten. The plot is convoluted and doesn't really go anywhere. I'm quite certain that there isn't anything going on in this story that could not have been told in forty or fifty pages.

Chris Clairemont writes some decent prose, but it all fails because he spends every other paragragh describing some trivial aspect of the story, rather than advancing the plot. Worse, he goes off on rants (for numerous pages at a time) about such meaningless details as how the soil smells or the shade of someone's eyes, etc.. Why this book is even considered a sequel to Willow when it is only arbitrarily connected to the film is beyond me.

This book is just bursting at the seams with boredom. There is nothing remotely close to interesting happening in the story. Matter of fact, there isn't anything happening in this book except to see how many hours of their lives readers can waste trying to trudge through this sludge of bad writing.

I have read a lot of bad fantasy books like Cormyr and Black Trillium, but even those books had their redeeming values. Shadow Moon, on the other hand, is an exercise in utter futility. People read novels to be entertained. This book, by that merit alone, should not even exist.

In conclusion, I wouldn't recommend this book to an insomniac for fear that they'd probably want to sue me for an act of unconscionable cruelty.

In conclusion, stick with the movie, and leave this one where it belongs: on a shelf in a long forgotten corner in some dingy book store just waiting to be sent to the shredder.

I have read many fantasy series over the years and this is one of the worst. The general story the series is based on is good, but the author does a poor job of developing it. I read the first two books in this series and never felt the author developed a whole world. I almost put the first book down, but stuck with it and the ending was promising enough to get me to buy the second book. The second book, Shadow Moon, was worse in many ways and I almost quit reading it as well. Unfortunately, I finished it. I was both confused and very disapointed with the ending. Lucas has a great imagination, but it's wasted here. Just don't waste your time.

While not the best fantasy movie of all time, Willow had its charm, not in the least of which were its senses of hope, wonder and humor.

Well don't come into here looking for any of that because it's gone; stripped away to make room for dark, brooding, and hugely convoluted.

Since it occurs in the prologue, it's no great spoiler to tell you that just about every character you knew and loved from the film is killed off in the first twenty pages or so, leaving you with a core cast of Willow and the inexplicably French Brownies, and even they are rendered nigh unrecognizable. The void is 'filled'-and I use that term as loosely as possible- with a dense soldier, a tomboy Princess, a zombie warrioress and, well, another dense soldier. Are we entertained yet?

Adding insult to injury, the story itself is a confusing, muddled mess so what should be a tense battle scene or a poignant moment is rendered unreadable. Claremont has a handful of favorite description nouns, which becomes readily apparent the fifth or so time someones says or does something with asperity, until you're rolling your eyes so often concerend parties will ask whether or not you're having a stroke. The worst of it is, the few times we do get any insight into what happened to other people between the prologue and the present things are presented so vaguely you're still none the wiser. Did Willow's son somehow get turned into a hellhound? Does Willow kill him? Is it the same hellhound that appears at the start of the book? I have no idea and I read the friggin' thing!

The dragon is the only piece of entertainment you'll find because he's the only one with any heart or humor to him, but even that was short lived as the author very kindly takes him away from us after a few, all-to-brief scenes. The solitary other plus the book has going for it is that it's so unlike the film in every way that it's unlikely to taint your feelings for it. A few of the characters have some coincedental names, that's all.

Save your money and re-watch the movie.

This book bored me to tears. Having read the novel Willow (much better than the film I might add), I expected to see further development of the characters I had grown to really enjoy reading about. Instead, virtually the entire cast is eliminated practically before the book starts. We are left with a bleak, ugly world with characters whose personalities have completely changed since the first book (that being the two brownies and Willow, who no longer goes by that name). It's as if Lucas and Claremont wanted an established world but didn't want to use anything the original author had written.

We are treated to long, drawn out sequences that seem to have no purpose and never end. Elora Danan is not a character I liked, and Willow and the brownies are whiny jerks. Claremont's writing style, which helped popularize the X-Men comics, is sadly out of place in this novel. He's very melodramatic and I think that takes a lot away from the story. To top it off, the book just ends for no particular reason. No big climax, nothing to make you want to read ahead to the next book. That might work in comics where a new issue comes out every month, but it sure doesn't work in novel format.

Overall, I simply hated this book. I hated the authors, their treatment (and killing) of established characters, the writing style, and lack of a real, cohesive story. I don't know what book the other reviewers read, but it wasn't this one. If you want a good novel, read Willow. As for this waste of paper, DON'T BUY IT!

I seriously enjoyed the movie "Willow"; this book and the other two in the series "Shadow Dawn" and "Shadow Star" supposedly continue Willow's story. I've wanted to read these books for a while, because the movie *sorta* left me with a question or two. All this series did was CONFUSE me. I'm an avid fantasy reader, so it's not like these are out of my genre, but the way the books are written, the "explanation" of how the "magic" works, even the events in the book, are so boring and confusing that after I forced my way through this book I had no desire to read the second. It took me a year and major desperation for something to read before I picked up #2. Two and a half years after I forced my way through 2, I finally read 3. Wasted time. I enjoyed the side panel of my cereal box more than this series. There was serious potential after the awesome movie, but they missed the mark by a mile with this series.

A dark, twisted, and convoluted path for "Willow" to undertake, "Shadow Moon" gets points for creativity, but loses points because it so blatantly goes in another direction than that which was established by the wonderful film "prelude." Killing some of the major players and then renaming Willow himself is a sin. Of course, everyone likes to point the finger at Chris Claremont, completely forgetting that George Lucas is as much to blame. Lucas may have come up with the story for the film (easy enough, just take elements of "The Hobbit," "The Lord of the Rings," and "The Chronicles of Prydain" and bam! instant storyline), but he did not write the screenplay, so many of those brilliant bits from the film aren't to be credited his way in the first place. However, he AND Claremont are responsible for what happens in the novels, and what happens isn't good - both from a situational standpoint and from the perspective of "Willow" fans. This book may very well taint your view of the motion picture. You are forewarned - and for goodness sake, blame George Lucas as well.

I liked the movie Willow and when I saw the sequel I decided to buy it. MISTAKE! Lucas/Claremont killed off the only two characters worth reading about in the first chapter. Willow is not even Willow anymore but a demon combo called Thorn Drumheller, and is even more of a sentimental loser than he was in the movie. And Elora Danan; the Empress Brat Herself. If the fate of the world rested in her hands one would be better advised to invest in Twinkies and automatic weapons than this pre-pubescent monster. Although it's obvious that Willow loves her, gimme a break! Enough is enough - I would have given her the whupping of her life half-way through the book. Those two obnoxious brownies are still around, unfortunately - though why the authors chose to save them I'll never know - the little toads. And not only did Lucas/Claremont kill Madmartigan and Sorsha, they killed the only good character in THIS book at the end! Boy, they sure don't leave you in suspense. To be completely honest, I bought this book mainly because of the interesting cover, but the next time I see such a book, I'll be sure to avail myself of the library first. Obviously somebody's wife needed a Mercedes because this pathetic excuse for fantasy can have no other motive than income