Customer Reviews

Triumph of the Darksword (The Darksword Trilogy)

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Read the first two books and then make up your own ending.
If you read this book, it will ruin the first two for you.
So resist the temptation.
The merging of the modern world into an imaginary fantasy world should never happen, yet the authors try to do this.
Why? Why ruin such a great story?

...The Darksword Trilogy, as a whole, is an intruiging series. I always liked Saryon- he's just so kind and lovable. My absolute favorite character is Simkin, of course. Simkin represents the joker in all of us, and I laughed so hard I cried at some of his tricks. Joram is the exact opposite- he's the dark side in all of us, eager to find the light. I was always kind of hoping he would realize what a jerk he was being, but by the end of the first book I realized that wasn't going to happen, and it turned out for the better, apparently, in "Doom of the Darksword." Mosiah is most of us- trying (unsuccessfully) to get our friends to realize how hardheaded they're being and being quite helpful to others anyway. Other characters flit in and out of the novels (Blachloch, Elspeth, Anja) but the ones that last for a while are very good.
Okay. "Triumph of the Darksword" is a Five because of its flipping back and forth. You like Major Boris because he represents the good military man we know, but on the side of Thimhallan, who you've been following since the beginning, he and Menju represent everything evil to them- Technologists, Dead people who use the old art of Technology to destroy and annex and basically do bad things. The characters in this novel were as true to form as ever, and fit their molds in the Prophecy as expected (though I was a little put out at what happens to Simkin) and the plot is pretty good, as far as fantasy goes.
Personally, I liked the second book of the trilogy best, as far as character actions went. But for the plot and results of the entire trilogy- this one was the best. Read it and you'll fall in love.

This was nurdling on along just fine as another Hickman and Weis fantasy trilogy; nothing out of the ordinary, but perfectly readable.

Then you get to the end of this book, and it all completely falls apart. Boy, but did they ever ruin things here. Sigh.

quitre possibly the weakest, most badly written ending I have ever read on a series... it was so bad it made me swear off any further books by the author... i just don't want to invest time in a book or series that might have such a marginal payoff at the end..

I found this book to be a real page-turner. The story went at a quick pace and was very entertaining. There was a twist in this story that many have complained about. I found the direction that the story went in to be surprising and different and this made it refreshing. In any event reading this book is a must after the first to and considering that it isn't a challenging read, you really won't be wasting your time.

I often find the duo of Weis and Hickman unfairly maligned by fantasy fans (often simply because they had the audacity to work with TSR) but there are some valid criticisms. The major one I have is that they can't wrap up books - this, in my mind, was THE exception. I'm rather surprised others didn't find things that way, that some reviewers criticized the ending. So they deviated from the sappy finish you always see in fantasy, evident even in good series like Memory, Sorrow and Thorn..big deal. It's a pleasant change of pace and flowed logically from the story. This book, in my mind, really makes a good series great, starting with Joram and Gwen's return and the effects that has. Introduces some fine new characters and advances the bearing of others. This would have finally given Margaret and Tracy a series with a good ending - why the heck did they screw things up years later by plopping a fourth book onto a great trilogy? A very good read though, one I highly recommend.

I'm not going to complain, as others have, that they mixed Fantasy and SF in the same book; that's fine.

But what others call a "refreshing twist" is, IMHO, completely stupid and a commission of one of the cardinal sins of poor writing. A good author resolves a plot - characters' motivations get worked out, events progress to some natural conclusion, happy, sad, neutral, disturbing, or otherwise. Questions, at least some of them, get answered.

Weak authors build up piles of tension and intrigue then discover they've planned no way out. So instead of resolving plots and characters, they bring in new material that simply makes the previous thousand pages irrelevant.

Nations stand at the brink of war. Our hero is caught and conflicted, feeling responsible for the impending havoc. Each side thinks the other posesses the secret weapon. The motivations, hopes, and dreams of a few dozen supporting characters are balanced on the proverbial knife. The reader is on seats' edge, wondering which noble hearts will receive an unjust end, and whether villains will prosper or bleed out on the end of a white knight's sword.

When all of a sudden, a nameless, faceless force (farce?) with no logical motivation and with whom the reader has no relationship shows up and slaughters everyone. Can't figure out how to resolve that military hero, dear author? One blink of a tank's laser iris, and your conundrum vanishes - along with your reader's sense of resolution.

The series' most entertaining character and biggest enigma, Simkin, simply vanishes, with no explanation whatsoever except for some unsatisfactory handwaving in a weak and aimless epilogue.

Fun story, interesting characters throughout the trilogy. The ending, ashes and emptiness, sans denouement. The hovertanks were like the film melting in the projector just as Dirty Harry becomes trapped in a Mexican standoff, ten minutes before the credits roll.

"They all got run over by a truck. The end." I wish I knew what REALLY happened!

The Prophecy is fulfilled, the prophecy is modified, evil battles good and the sides become blurred, emperors fall and old ones come back, but what no one expected - or very likely wanted - is the resolution of a mystery of the beyond through the introduction of modern technology. Why do the authors attempt such a story line? Likely as a forced means of originality. Either way, the resulting twist is full of potholes, is uncomfortable and a letdown not only in the Darksword series, but also in the body of work of these two leading authors.

Of course, by now, most know Thimhallan is earth. If the introduction of a modern weaponry did not suffice references to Waterloo, Napoleon or Robin Hood would. Yet, did we need this genre purpose-defying surprise? Did we need these forces to arrive coincidentally at the exact same time as the board war? Did we really need the other world to have a sorcerer who cannot recall the Bishop, while the Bishop remembers the minor magician? Simkin will have one of his fainting spells.

Other fantasy books have attempted opening conduits to modern times The Summer Tree (The Fionavar Tapestry, Book 1), but never so awkwardly and never as disappointingly as Triumph Of The Darksword. Fans should keep reading, of course, to reach the conclusion and find out all about the surprises, but the authors have and will do much better writing and telling than this.

I had read Weis and Hickman's Dragonlance Chronicles and Legends and loved them both and that's why when I saw this trilogy, I decided to buy it. And I liked it as much as the Dragonlance series. The story was excellent and I really liked Joram and Saryon. Definitely worth buying.

It was good in most ways. The characters were very good, and the first thing I always look for in a book is good characters. The story was good except I resent it running like a science fiction novel. There were some really deep ideas in it, but at other times it could be light and funny. I thought the ending was really good except that it was not explained thoughly enough and was rather confusing to be the last book in the series.It was very origanal from other fantasy books I have read. I would recommend it to anyone looking for a good fantasy book to read because I could not put it down.