Customer Reviews

The Woods out Back (The Spearwielder's Tale)

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

 

 

Read Poul Anderson's "Three Hearts and Three Lions." Then, as soon as you're done, read R.A. Salvatore's "The Woods Out Back." They are essentially the same story. A mundane figure from `our world' finds himself in an alternate world (both involve the myth of Faerie), where he is chosen to wear the armor and guise of an old hero, and take up that hero's weapon - which, in both cases, is essentially a spear, or lance. The `stranger in a strange land' then becomes embroiled in a plot to save the world, confronts witches and trolls, befriends strange-accented little people (Hugi and Mickey are nearly the same character!), and ultimately tries to use his modern logic to win the day in a world that defies logic in all its forms. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Salvatore flatters Anderson in the same manner he often flatters Tolkien. If a novel's quality is gauged by its originality, then "The Woods Out Back," as you can tell, comes up short. Even so, it's a fast-paced read, and colorful enough that it differentiates itself a little from Anderson's likewise compelling (but superior) novel. Still, there's something to be said for borrowing concepts so blatantly from other writers. For goodness' sake, the lead characters in both "WOB" and "THaTL" are even similiar PHYSICALLY! I liked Salvatore's take on this kind of story, if only moderately, but I can't resist being the one to point out the glaring parallels between his work and Anderson's. Keep it in mind.

Ok so it's a fantasy .. so how can it be believable you may ask! It like reading a story about the A-Team in fantasy land. Endless encounters with foes that the party genarally escapes from unscratched. That is until the end .. which I will save until the last paragraph in case you still want to read the book after this review.

I just finished reading this as the first part of the series, the Spear Wielders Tale. So we know from page one of chapter one that it's going to be about someone from the US transported to a magic land, but the way he gets there is nothing original. Why have a US citizen be transported? Why not just find a character from their own land to wear the armour. It's not like it fits Gary properly anyway?

Gary, who is a young man magically transported to fairy land by Pixies to meet a Leprechaun. The leprechaun was in the debt of an elf. The elf has superhuman ( or should that be superelf) powers. There is nothing this elf can't do. Capture Leprecauns, kill trolls with his sword, enslave dwarves, shot ropes from a 100 yards with his bow and arrow, fight dragons .. he makes the A-team members look like amateur police cadets.

As for Gary .. yes he is a bit of a loser, but he somehow manages to perform remarkable feats of endurance in a suit of armour with which he is totally unfamiliar.

Gary comes up with this 'brilliant' escape plan from an island which involves a giant. How stupid are we supposed to believe these characters are, that none of the others could envision the same obvious escape plan.

Finally the battle .. (stop reading now if you still want to read this book) .. with the dragon. An elf armed only with a sword and shield is fighting a dragon. The shield stops the dragons breath from harming him, even though the rocks around him are bubbling from the heat. When the dragon finally gets astrike on the elf, the leprechaun conjures an illusion that not only fools the dragon into believing the elf has won, but also this illusion can somehow pick up a shield and hold the dragons mouth open with it.

On the up side, it is a light and very fast read (you don't want to spend time goiing over every detail because you'll find they just don't add up).

Finally I would like to give the book an extra half star just the attempt at humour, but I just can't bring myself to find 2 stars.

I am going to persevere with the two sequals just because they just can't get any worse.

I loved this book. In some ways, it's my favorite of Salvatore's books. Very humorous with some really interesting characters. Antagonist was a bit lacking, but wasn't bad. The supporting characters were wonderful!

I won't give it five stars, however. Not because it has any major faults, but because it still doesn't surpass Tolkien as my favorite. (Though they're really not that comparible)

Salvatore has written a jewel. It brings up alot of the problems of humanity while still delivering an humors adventure. I would most definitly recomend this book to anyone who likes salvatore's work, even if you don't this is a good book to get you into his writting.

Lord Theasa

Unfortunately for books like this, they are always compared to Salvatore's Drizzt novels. In my mind, it's tough to compare to the Drizzt novels, this book is not that good, but I still liked it. This book was very original and very different from the rest of his novels. It still had a lot of action like most of Salvatore's book, and it still had Salvatore's unique and fun characters. The story starts out with a normal guy being taken to a fantasy world. He meets a leprechaun and an elf and they try to reforge a famous spear. They go through many trials through a creative world with many references to "The Hobbit." The leprechaun was my favorite character, the rest of the characters were enjoyable too. This book reminded me a lot of "Magical Kingdom for Sale: Sold!" by Terry Brooks, I don't know which one was better. This is not the most advanced of books, but what do you expect from a 290 page first book. There are a lot of better series out there (LOTR, A Song of Fire and Ice, the Drizzt series, act.) but if you are looking for a simple and enjoyable book to read, this would not be a bad choice. I liked it, but it has too tough of competition to compete against. Hardcore Salvatore fans might want to give it a try, it's definitely better than "The Sword of Bedwyr."

R.A. Salvatore is a prolific author, probably best know for his series of Forgotten Realms books featuring Drizzt Do'Urden (amounting to some 17 books). He is also known for The Demon Wars Saga (a 7 book series), and two books that he has written for the Star Wars franchise. However, in my opinion, Salvatore's best work is The Spearwielder Trilogy, which begins with The Woods Out Back. Unlike most of his other work, The Spearwielder Trilogy does not take itself particularly seriously. It is light, fun, and often very funny. Though it is not humorous fantasy, like Split Heirs, which I reviewed a while back, The Woods Out Back walks a very fine line between being a serious story with many humorous moments, and being straight humor.

Overall: 8.0/10

All in all this is definitely worth a read. The basic concept is a bit cliche, young man transported to another world blah, blah, blah, but the execution is excellent. The Woods Out Back manages a fresh approach to this story. Salvatore also makes some very welcome additions such as - Medieval villages are muddy, dirty, stinky places, and walking all day in hot, heavy armor is not easy or fun. One of the things that makes this book great is Salvatore's intentional deromanticization of adventure, and the many humorous moments that go along with that deromanticization.

Writing: 8.0/10

Salvatore's writing is always strong. He is well known for his lively action scenes, and he has a strong grasp of effective written communication. His use of subtle humor in The Woods Out Back is often impressive.

Characters: 9.5/10

Salvatore's characters feel real, and pleasantly unreal at the same time. Gary Leger (the young man transported to another world) is the most real of them all, but Kelsey, Mickey, and Geno all have their moments of intense reality. However, they are also pleasantly mystical and mysterious. One of the most refreshing things about this book is that Salvatore uses its light nature to ask a lot of his readers. There are no complex explanations of what magic is and how it works, it just does. Mickey can walk through trees because he's a leprechaun, and leprechauns can do that kind of thing. The light note to the story and characters allows Salvatore to do things that a more serious book could not get away with.

World: 6.0/10
While we see a fair bit of Salvatore's fantasy world in the novel, it is generally light on details. Again, because the novel is light, humorous, and fun this lack generally goes unnoticed. Enough detail is given to satisfy the reader, but if you (like me) love the little details of a world - all the things that make it complex and unique - then you may feel the lack.

Plot: 9.5/10

The plot of the book revolves around reforging the legendary magical spear of Cedric Donigarten (a long dead hero) and all of the difficulties that reforging an ancient and incredibly powerful magical weapon entails. There are elves, dwarves, trolls, nobles, an evil witch, and a rampaging dragon to contend with, along with the more mundane dangers of the road (like heat exhaustion). While it sounds cliche the story is written with such humor and panache that the things that should be cliche become fun, and many things that are unexpected come out of things that see straightforward.

Pacing: 10/10

The story has a pleasant back and forth flow that keeps the action going at a reasonable speed. There are some parts that are faster than others, but nowhere does the book become slow or boring.

Commentary: 3.0/10

While there is some commentary, The Woods Out Back is not a book that you read for deep insight. The capacity of the human spirit, and moving beyond expectations are two major themes in the book. However, overall the commentary is fairly light, and sometimes a little shallow.

Conclusion:

The next time you need a quick, fun read pick up The Woods Out Back and give it a try. You won't be disappointed.

The Woods Out Back (Spearwielder's Tale #1)

Read by Paul Boehmer
10 CDs
12 hours

Gary Leger lives Massachusetts and is forced to make do with a miserable job in a plastics factory with no real prospects of doing anything but making ends meet at a job that offers little for his very active imagination. A natural athlete with no interest in sports, Gary finds solace in long walks in the woods behind his house and in his dog-eared copy of The Hobbit.

While on one of these hikes, Gary sits for a bit of reading and finds himself staring at a real life pixie who shoots him with a tiny drugged arrow that causes him to faint. When he awakens he is no longer in Massachusetts - he is in the magic-filled world of Faerie. Gary finds that he has been kidnapped from his own world by a leprechaun named Mickey McMickey in order to wear the armor and carry the broken spear of a long dead human king named Cedric Donigarten in an epic quest led by a grumpy elf named Kelsenellenelvial Gil-Ravardy (but everyone refers to him by Kelsey, a fact that makes him even grumpier).

Kelsey is convinced that if he can kidnap the best Dwarven smithey, subdue a dragon in single combat and use them both to re-forge the broken spear (using the fire of a dragon's breath), the mere fact that it has come back in existance will inspire the people of Faerie to live up to the forgotten standards of their ancestors and restore some of the lost lustre of Faerie. Gary has been chosen to wear the armor because he is the first human that they found in our world that could fit in it, a fact that makes Gary doubt the soundness of the plan quite often. It is not clear why a human from Faerie was not chosen except that all of the humans we meet in the book are physically wrecked by disease and famine or are not of high enough character to fulfill the quest.

Written as a light-hearted adventure, the book works because the reader sees the world of Faerie through his eyes and Faerie is just as new to him as it is to the reader. The customs of the humans, dwarfs, leprochauns, evil witches, goblins, trolls, dragons, giants and elves that Gary encounters confound Gary throughout but, with the help of his companions, Gary and the reader mostly muddle through. One of the most amusing aspects of the book is Gary's well worn copy of The Hobbit. Mickey McMickey, the leprachaun reads it as they travel and he makes comments throughout.

When I first began to listen to the book I was trying to imagine parrallels with The Wizard of Oz (Dorothy was taken unwillingly to a strange, magical land, she goes on a quest with strange companions, she wants to return home, etc.) but I soon enough realized that Salvatore's true inspiration was actually The Hobbit. Like Gary Leger, Bilbo Baggins is forced out of his comfortable but very stale day-to-day life in order to go on a quest. Like Bilbo, Gary finds this quest to be eye-opening, fascinating, morally challenging and in the end he is a much better person than when he started.

This is not a perfect book - Gary is often guilty of just accepting the strange things that happen around him as they are rather than asking questions that would help the reader. The language is sometimes stilted with worn, overused phrases ("glowering eyes" was especially grating for this reviewer). The characters are straight from central casting of any Tolkein-inspired book. The audiobook format provides additional issues. Paul Boehmer is the reader and he does a truly great job of creating different voices for the characters. But, his reading of the actual narration of the book (all of the non-speaking parts) is quirky. Oftentimes, he emphasizes his sentences in an odd manner that was distracting for the first couple of hours.

Despite those issues, the book's fast-paced, good-humored nature draws the reader in and makes the world of Faerie a fine place to visit - good thing there are two more installments!

Life is certainly not turning out for Gary Leger the way he had hoped that it would - trapped in a factory job filled with mindless repetition, broken only by the wandering of Gary's imagination. However, when he finds himself spirited away to the land of Faerie, he finds himself drawn along on the dangerous quest of the elfin lord Kelsenellenelvial Gil-Favadry (call him Kelsey, everyone else does). Now life is anything but boring! Wrapped in the armor of Cedric Donigarten, and carrying a broken magical spear that must be reforged, Gary must complete the quest, and, if at all possible, stay alive!

R.A. Salvatore is best known for his excellent Drizzt Do'Urden stories, but those are not the only great works that he has produced. The Spearwielder tales are, admittedly, somewhat light. The characters are quite interesting, but the land of Faerie is somewhat shallow, not giving the reader the feel of a real world, but seeming more like a stage for the characters to perform on.

But, that said, I did enjoy this book's take on dwarves and leprechauns. Also, I found the storyline to be interesting, and I really enjoyed the action. So, if you are looking for another Lord of the Rings, you will be disappointed. But, if you want a highly-entertaining swords-and-sorcery, elves and dwarves type story, then this is the book for you. I highly recommend it.

I'm not normally a fan of fantasy writing, but I couldn't put this book down!! Same goes for the following two books. Just to give you an idea of what you're in for, this book (for me) is a cross between Harry Potter & Lord of the Rings. Our young hero finds himself in an unfamiliar setting where success depends on him (likening to H.P.). That setting just happens to be that of the land of Fairie; full of elves, leprechauns, and dwarfs (going into Tolken now).

This book really has a human element that will keep you interested, and enough fantasy to let you get lost in it's pages. You won't go wrong with this book whether you are an avid fan of fantasy or just a beginner.

I though this book was excellent. it kept you on your toes from cover to cover and it was very exciting