Customer Reviews

The Silver Crown (Guardians of the Flame, Book 3)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Although I can only recommend starting at the beginning, this third book of the series is a spectacular read. The characters are well fleshed out and rarely have I been so involved in the lives of fantasy characters.

Algernon is my kind of hero. Sweet, sensitive, funny yet sassy. Old enough to know better, but young enough not to care. The best best part is he eats your enemies!

A 3 book series that is well worth the read. Clever and well written. A little dated but hey, what can you do? Anyone interested in the Sci-Fi Fantasy genre should invest in these books. I went to the author's web page and mailed my copies to him, now I have signed copies! Hooray for me!

The Silver Crown is no worse and no better than The Sword and the Chain. Like its immediate predecessor, it seems to have no real theme other than the use of violent means to achieve noble ends. The promising theme of The Sleeping Dragon - the adaptation of people from our world to a fantasy world - has been all but abandoned. What we are left with is not much more than entertainment; enjoyable but neither provocative nor moving.

To be fair, there is a suggestion that the true plot of the series is a long-term effort by erstwhile professor Deighton to control the fantasy world. Deighton even makes an appearance in The Silver Crown. It could be that an incredibly complex storyline is about to emerge, in which case my opinion of books two and three may have to be revisited. For now, however, I remain of the view that The Silver Crown is a harmless read that should be enjoyed by most fantasy readers who don't mind a bit of violence in their stories.

This is the third of the trilogy, but not end of the series itself. It fleshes out the characters and is very graphic at times. I wish someone would reprint all three in a nice trade paperback. They are not huge Jordanish novels and could easily fit in a nice trade. I consider them classics of fantasy.

Karl fights to free slaves and to destroy the slave guild. This is a good book especially if you like alot of fighting scenes with pretty graphic descriptions on how people are being killed than this is the book for you!

Joel Rosenberg has cemented his status in the fantasy-fiction world with his third installment of the Guardians of the Flame Series. The title in itself is prophetic, and to have Karl leading the region is somnething no one could have expected. As I said earlier in another review, Mr. Rosenberg does not mince when it comes to the question of likeable characters getting hurt seriously or killed off. There were many times in this book that I was upset about what happened to a favorite character, but I realize that Mr. Rosenberg is putting as much "reality" in it as possible. Characters do NOT live forever, and yes, sometimes the favorite ones get killed.

Once again, Mr. Rosenberg has outdone the preceeding edition, and I am sure that he will continue to do so.