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Screensize: 640 x 480 800 x 600 1024 x 768 1280 x 1024 UserName: Password: Format Mode: Basic  Help  Prompt  Format: Font Andale Mono Arial Arial Black Book Antiqua Century Gothic Comic Sans MS Courier New Georgia Impact Lucida Console Script MT Bold Stencil Tahoma Times New Roman Trebuchet MS Verdana   Size 1 2 3 4 5 6   Color Black Red Yellow Pink Green Orange Purple Blue Beige Brown Teal Navy Maroon LimeGreen Message: * HTML is OFF * Forum Code is ON Smilies [quote][i]Originally posted by Lord Karsus[/i] [br][i]Depths of Madness[/i] By Erik Scottt de Bie Book I, [i]The Dungeons[/i] I was not a very big fan of [i]The Dungeons[/i] series, in retrospect. In theory, the series had a lot of potential- a book about people wandering around in Undermountain probably would have been really, really good. As a whole, though, I think the series was underwhelming, at best. [i]Depths of Madness[/i] kicked off the series, and I think it encapsulated the series as a whole- it had it’s good points, and I didn’t stop reading in disgust, but overall, I found it uninspiring. And, before I go into further detail about my review, I just want to let it be known that Erik is a great guy, one of the more helpful WotC authors, who isn’t afraid to interact with us readers/fans, help us out, be buddy-buddy with us, and so on. I don’t want my criticisms to come off as attacks on him (I don’t think they will; I go into deeper detail because I like him, not because I’m trying to be a pain in his ass!), or his general writing ability- another one of his novels, [i]Ghostwalker[/i] was a great book, so don’t not go trying his books for yourselves because of this one review! For the most part, the book had interesting characters. The party in the novel is a “balanced D&D party”, something that sometimes grinds my goat in these kinds of book situations, but it doesn’t feel like it. Inter-character strife and problems, as well as characterization past “I’m the team healer; I’m the team magician; I’m the team fighter” makes it feel that way. The party might have the optimal party cross-section for D&D dungeon delving, but because there’s always lingering suspicions about the loyalties and motives of everybody, it doesn’t feel artificially constructed like that. By far, Gargan the Exiled was my favorite character. He was something of a philosophic, gentle giant, but whatever it was about him, he had the ‘It Factor’ that interesting characters have. For whatever reason, I don’t think that any other characters in the novel had it- Fox-At-Twilight included (I’ll get to her a little later). Davoren the Warlock could have had it, but at times, he felt too much like a generic, stereotypical evil-for-evil’s-sake villain. He did, of course, have Fiendish blood running within his veins, and was a servant of Asmodeus, so he had good reason to be evil-for-evil’s-sake, but, to me, those kinds of characters are very hit-or-miss with me. Davoren wasn’t a miss, per se, but it might have been that that ‘intangible’ factor that causes me to classify him as not having ‘It’, whatever ‘it’ is in my mind. The villains, I wasn’t really that big of a fan of them. Ruukthalmuramaxamin, it’s a Sharn, so it is what it was. You can’t comprehend those guys. Gestal, the Demon cultist, him I did not like. As a villain, he’s a generic evil cultist, which I have no problems with, but his relation to Liet, I don’t think that was expanded on enough in the novel. They’re the same person, but, was Liet something of a secondary personality to Gestal? Something in the sense of, since the individual who was Liet/Gestal was a normal person, and pledged himself to a Demon Lord, he needed to exorcise him of any goodness. So, Gestal was the pure and unadulterated evil personality that was normally in control, whereas Liet were the buried vestiges of any goodness the man once had? Something similar to, to use the best analogy I can, the relationship between Piccolo and Kami in Dragon Ball Z- they were once the same individual, but became two separate ones when Kami had to purge all of the evil from within himself, resulting in the birth of Piccolo (though, in this case, with Liet/Gestal, only one individual was involved, and they were more or less personalities, rather than different good/bad individuals)? Simply a ploy to gain Twilight’s trust, and lure her (and the others), to his inner sanctum, that somehow gained it’s own awareness? That relationship confused me- not necessarily to the point where the story didn’t make sense, since companions swerving and actually being antagonists is a regular story hook, but... Now, while the characters in the novel were mostly good, the plotline in [i]Depths of Madness[/i], unfortunately, I did not find too compelling. Most importantly, it took until the middle of the book (page 164) for us to learn how the members of the party got into the dungeon to begin with. For whatever reason, that bugged me. The novel opens up with the main characters being imprisoned, and eventually escaping their bondage and attempting to free themselves, but it took almost half the book for us to learn how they got down there in the first place. Their relative lack of purpose, other than escaping, and us readers not knowing the details as to how/why/when they all were imprisoned in the dungeon made certain parts at the beginning drag. And then, once we actually found out why the various characters were summoned- Gestal was looking for a partner!? Now, about Fox-at-Twilight for a second. I know a lot of people are big fans of hers. Me, I don’t love her, but I don’t dislike her, either. She has a ‘mostly positive’ rating in my book. Re-reading [i]Depths of Madness[/i] made me see her in a whole new light. Beforehand, as I remembered her mostly from the couple of short stories she was featured in, where she seemed the type of character who was always calm and collected, had things under control, and always had some kind of ace up her sleeve. The Fox-at-Twilight from [i]Depths of Madness[/i] painted a much more complicated version of who she is. On the surface, she seemed in cool, calm, control, but how often did we see her beating herself up over something she did, or failed to do? On the surface, she passes herself off as unattached and aloof, but on the inside, we see how much she actually cares for past and present friends and lovers. In the setting, we have quite a few characters who presented as the relatively ‘all-knowing’, ‘all-powerful’, ‘no problem, take on anything’ kind of characters, and I think seeing this side of one of those types of characters, their Human side (or, Demihuman side, in this case) was interesting. Miscellaneously, Negarath was a Netherese enclave, but it seemed like [i]Relativity[/i], or [i]House of Stairs[/i], the famous paintings by Maurits C. Escher that had the staircases going up, down, sideways, and every other perspective. I’m wondering, since Negarath was so weird, for a lack of better words, who (Nega, I am assuming) built it like that, and why? I don’t think that there were enough clues that Slip was evil, either. Her being evil, obviously, was supposed to be a huge swerve, and leave readers with a “WTF? Wow!” moment at the end of the book, but I think it could have been hinted at a little more. For example, when Gargan used his healing powers, it was described as feeling like an invigorating stream of fresh water coming down from the mountains. When Slip healed people, the healing power wasn’t really described in much prose. If it had been in some way (numbingly cool, for example, with the coldness alluding to her inner evil, since cold often equates with evil), subtle enough to go unnoticed, I think the “WTF? Wow!” moment at the end would have been even more “WTF? Wow!”-ier. One of those things where you say to yourself, “Oh, man, how did I not notice that!?” Overall, out of a possible Five Beholders, I give [i]Depths of Madness[/i] Three Beholders. [/quote]   Check here to include your profile signature. Check here to subscribe to this topic.