Customer Reviews

Wizard of the Grove (Daw Book Collectors)

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"In the Beginning there was Darkness and out of the Darkness came the Mother."--If you like a fantasy that starts out by creating its own theory of evolution, "Wizard of the Grove" is for you. By the time this book (actually two books in one: "Child of the Grove" and "The Last Wizard") begins, the Age of Mortals is in full swing and humans are running the show. Although a few hamadryads, centaurs, dwarves, and what-have-yous are left over from the creation of the Elder Races, they usually avoid humanity. There are a few important exceptions, including a hamadryad who bears the son of a human king, and a very bad wizard who has survived from a time when the wizards slew the gods, and dragons slew the wizards.

A lengthy prequel pits Rael, son of the hamadryad against the evil wizard, Kraydak. Rael survives to beget a line of kings who are part Elder Race. Eventually Crystal, the true heroine of this duology is born.

Kraydak, the wizard also survives. He has been waiting through many boring thousands of years for the birth of Crystal, the only human who might give him a magical run for his continuing existence. Meanwhile he amuses himself by building towers with human blood as mortar, torturing various walk-ons, etc.--even in this early novel, Tanya Huff writes zingy, attention-getting prose about evil--you gotta hate her bad guys, even though they're often her most interesting characters.

Presumably the good guys should be interesting, too. My only problem with Crystal is that she doesn't have room to grow. She starts out as a total knock-out with emerald eyes and silver hair, is born into the royal family, and is the world's most powerful wizard, except for Kraydak. The Centaurs educate Crystal offstage, which is too bad as this might have been the most appealing part of the book. As it is written, she enters the spotlight as a slightly sulky, sex-crazed teen-ager who happens to be a gorgeous princess-wizard.

In Book I, "Child of the Grove," Crystal battles Kraydak, the wizard who killed a god. Book II, "The Last Wizard" follows Crystal's adventures as she attempts to clean up a dead wizard's castle. Her quests are standard fantasy fare, but there's a strong cast of eccentric supporting characters, and even early Huff reads better than half the sword and sorcery stuff that's currently on the market

I am not impressed with this book. Much as I like Tanya Huff's other works this one has a weak and unfinished feel to it. The Heroine of the story is two-dimensional and we really don't spend enough time with her to learn who she is personally. Important portions of her training are glossed over but the begetting that occurred to make her took up the first half of the book. The plot itself moves along in a jerky pace until we get to the "ultimate weapon" discovered by Crystal to save everyone. The final battle lasts less than 3 pages and is pretty anticlimactic.

Most of the characters in this story are just plain boring and unfleshed out. The story basically reads like a rough plot that has just been expanded on a little. We don't know anything about her powers only that she can do nearly anything she wants, we don't know enough about the history of the world other than "wizards bad", and the oh so powerful elder races pop in say cryptic things and pop out.

The author also goes off in weird tangents involving minor characters from the beginning of the book then never resolves what happens with them. That is very annoying. If you aren't going to resolve it then don't bring it up I would rather not have a weird little tidbit about someone whose on scene a whole 5 pages then disappears to far off countries only to go back to her for a paragraph before never returning to her again. It breaks up the flow of the story. Honestly the first book of this omnibus is a rather sophomoric attempt. Huff can do amazing things when she writes but this one just doesn't cut it. It was not worth buying.

As for the second portion of this book, I am still unimpressed. While the characters are more believable this time through as well as more fleshed out the entire story plays out like some bizzare teenaged romance story. The brothers are childish and unimportant other than one of them has a romantic involvement with the lead. Death is whiney, though I must admit he is the most interesting character of the book. The story builds like some sort of dungeon crawl to the climax and that poofs out like some sort mystical author hand waving. In fact the ending is so vague the reader is left wondering what the heck happened. This is never truly resolved even in the epilogue. The entire tale plays out like a D&D game run by an inexperienced dungeon master. "Let's find treasure..........Lets go through this forest.....fight some baddies....Oh look a maze......We're in trouble now...... Oh yay the mystical whatzits has saved us." Honestly this is not what I expected when I got this book. An author such as this one should not have released such a poorly written manuscript. This whole omnibus was a complete dissapointment.

Some books I hate, others I love. I think it has to do with characters and what authors do to them. So many try to force the character to do something that they want, and when you read the passage, it just doesn't feel right. Not with this book, I like the fact that the author let the character be who she was. It was believable; she had faults as well as perfections. So for those who are looking for a story about a hero, but what a true hero that they can relate to, I highly recommend this book.

An excellent story about the trials and travels of Crystal, a young woman who also happens to be one of the last wizards. Tanya Huff does such a brilliant job of characterization and creates such an original plot that I find it hard to believe that this book is a compiliation of some of her earliest work! Plot outline: Everyone thought that the wizards were dead, killed by the dragons that they created in a fit of pride, but one very powerful and very evil wizard escaped, and hundreds of years later he has recovered his strength and is attempting to (what else?) take over the world. Realizing that that no mortal could hope to oppose a wizard, the Earth Mother, the last of the gods, and the Elder Races (dwarves, centaurs, hamadryads, etc.) collaborate to create one last wizard. Unfortunately for sixteen year old Crystal, that wizard is her! Now, even though she is barely trained in the use of her powers, she must save the world from her infinitely more experienced nemesis. And you thought that YOU had it rough as a teenager!

I found this book wonderful. I read it in three hours, and it was worth every second. I believe a few of the characters are under-developed, while most are well characterized. Most of the plot is understandable, although a few parts were hard to follow. This is one of my two favorite books.

Wizard of the Grove (1994) is a Fantasy omnibus of the Crystal duology, containing Child of the Grove and The Last Wizard. Millennia afore, the Wizards constructed dragons and died while fighting them. Then the dragons returned to the earth from which they were made.

A millennium ago, seven clans had come south and settled there. They fought among themselves, but were wise enough to consider another way. The clan leaders chose one from among them to be the King and the others became Dukes within the Kingdom of Ardhan.

Kraydak was the last survivor of the old Wizards. He had remained hidden for many centuries until he convinced himself that his dragon was dead. Then he became an advisor to the King of Melac.

The Child of the Grove (1988) is the first Fantasy novel in this duology. King Raen of Ardhan begat a child on Milthra, the Eldest hamadryad of the Sacred Grove. This child was named Rael and was both loved and feared by the people of Ardhan. Rael loves the blue-eyed daughter of the Duke of Belkar, but has not spoken to her about his love.

In this story, Rael visits his mother within the Sacred Grove. He asks her why she doesn't visit his father and she explains that a hamadryad cannot leave her tree and live. Yet she would welcome a visit from his father.

When he returns to the palace, Rael asks his father why he doesn't visit his mother in the Sacred Grove. King Raen displays his aged face and tells him that the immortal hamadryad should not suffer the sight of his mortal self.

Rael is convinced that his mother would appreciate a visit even from an aged mortal, but cannot find a way to tell this to his father. But his father has a surprise for him. Rael is to lead the Elite unit in the coming battle.

Two weeks later, the armies of Ardhan leave for battle. They reach the pass while the Melac forces are still struggling through the mountains and slaughter the enemy forces. But Kraydak keeps sending more troops against them.

This tale skips forward four generations and introduces Tayer, the third child of the king. She encounters an Elder being within the Sacred Grove and becomes pregnant with his child. Her daughter is named Crystal and becomes a wizard.

The Last Wizard (1989) is the second Fantasy novel in this duology. Crystal was trained by the Centaurs and is now the last Wizard.

In this story, twelve years have past since the end of the war with Melac. Crystal is talking to Lord Death in a tavern when Jago is brought into the room more dead than alive. A brindle had attacked him and only Raulin's frantic thrusts had kept Jago alive. Lord Death suggests that Crystal save Jago's life.

Two and a half days later, Crystal gains consciousness in a room within the tavern. The innkeeper had placed her in a room upstairs and had tended her while she was asleep. Unlike many who had encountered Crystal, Dorses sees Crystal as a young woman who happens to have the powers of a wizard.

Others at the tavern also accept Crystal as a person rather than a wizard. The barkeep Ivan is half in love with her. Nad the blacksmith accepts her talents and skills as not unlike his own, although much more powerful. Yet others both fear and hate her for being a wizard.

Crystal discovers that seven goddesses have survived within her mind. Whenever she loosens her mind shields, some of the goddesses try to escape. They are very powerful when acting in concert.

Raulin and Jago ask Crystal to go with them to find a wizard's tower. They have come upon a map showing the way to the tower and could use someone with wizard powers to nullify the magical traps.

But Crystal decides that she has more important things to do. She needs to learn how to prevent the goddesses from possessing her body. She leaves the tavern to go her own way, but soon finds herself traveling with the brothers on the way to the tower.

This duology is filled with adventure and magic. Then Crystal finds a lover. Read and enjoy!

Highly recommended for Huff fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of high magic, divine intrigue, and true romance.

-Arthur W. Jordin

I'm torn between giving this book a two star or a four star rating. The first section is jerkily paced, badly plotted, extremely anticlimactic, and everyone gets more character development than the main character, who has none at all. The second section really has no point. Having killed off the villain in the first book there is no antagonist left. Supposedly, Crystal is going to clean up the remains of the wizards, but she only goes after one of the wizards' towers, leaving five at large at the end of the book with no expectation of cleaning them up. There is an odd romance, Indiana Jones style boobytrapped tower and a giant, but none of it really adds up to a plot. All this rates the book two stars at most.

On the other hand, I really enjoyed reading it. I'm not entirely sure why. One of the characters in the second section is characterized as always living in the moment, and it seems to me that as long as you read each moment of this book in itself, without trying to fit it to the moments before or the moments to come, it's a very entertaining read, which merits it a four star rating.

Overall, I did like this book, once it got going, but getting it going was a major problem. This book would be significantly improved if the first six chapter's were excised. We really don't need to be told the story of the main character's creation right away, especially not when that story goes back several generations.

Other than that, the characters are interesting, the plot is exciting, and the writing is good. Though, the ending is a little confusing.

This is a wonderful book. I'm a Tanya Huff fan, so I decided, what the hey, I'll try this. I was drawn in almost immediately. At the beginning it takes a while to realize that Crystal,the last wizard, doesn't appear till later in the book, a few generations later. I found the story utterly engaging, humerous, and completely the kind of book I was looking for. It is different than most science fiction/fantasy books, which all seem to have the same plot overall, this book is quite unique. I highly recommend it.

compared to other science fantasy books I've read, this one is ok. The characters are kind of undeveloped. I didn't really feel any sympathy or...actually, I couldn't feel anything for Crystal. She was a very bland character. However, I do agree with other online reviewers that the best character was Lord Death. His character for some reason was very developed and I could feel his thoughts more than those of Crystal, when I think it should have been the opposite since the main heroine was Crystal.