GREATHEART [Mass Market Paperback]

Dungeons and Dragons based novels always start out with an intriguing premise and untold potential. The authors have a wealth of knowledge to draw upon when writing their manuscripts, with all the adventures, supplements, rulebooks, maps, and other novels already fleshing out the basics of the story's world. Unfortunately, "Greatheart" squanders all this potential even more than most of the other D&D novels. All the elements for a rousing good adventure tale are present - an age long struggle between gods of opposing moral fiber, a dark plane of shadows and evil creatures on the brink of spilling into the natural world, a young hero in the making bent on proving his merit as a warrior, and a twisted arch-villain intent on securing his place as ruler or everything and everyone. It would almost seem like it would be impossible to not make this book work, even in the hands of a completely novice writer. Somehow, Dixie Lee McKeone has taken what really should have been an excellent novel and jettisoned it into the realm of "paperback trash", that ugly place populated with books that are neither socially redeeming, nor even interesting enough to warrant reading anyway.

"Greatheart" follows the life of Cald Desheft, a human orphaned when his family's caravan is assaulted by a raiding band of gnolls. Cald is taken in by a noble elf prince, despite the stern disapproval of virtually the entire elven nation, who are all incredibly xenophobic. The elves inhabiting this particular forest actually have a "shoot first" policy, as they have been ordered to kill anything entering their territory that isn't an elf. Racial prejudice seems to play a big part in this book, as nearly every race is immediately distrustful, or outright hateful, towards everyone else. The humans distrust the elves, the elves hate everyone, the gnolls just want to pillage and kill, etc. At one point, when an elf is saved from certain death by a lowly goblin, it begins to appear that all this prejudice is actually going somewhere, as though McKeone might actually be trying to make some kind of point about racial relations, but this notion is quickly squashed to oblivion when every character continues to act the exact same way and no changes or consequences occur.

Plenty of opportunities arise in which the story could have grabbed the reader by the throat, demanding they continue reading until the thing was done. All of these opportunities were left far behind, without so much as a backward glance. When the characters first see a portal open between the natural world and the Plane of Shadow, the description of events are handled in such a glib manner as to make the reader think this sort of thing is completely ordinary, and certainly nothing to take particular note of. This would have been a perfect point to interject some serious horror, to give the reader a rising sense of dread that things are definitely NOT as they should be.

The entire story is told in a very jilted manner, completely out of order chronologically. Switching between timeframes can and has been used effectively, but it isn't implemented well here. The patchwork of timeframes just makes things confusing, starting off with Cald returning to the elven forest many years after the main events of the story, then returning to Cald's past to show his upbringing and heroic deeds in later years. We then return again to the beginning (which is actually the end?), to have a little resolution of an earlier plot point. The end of the novels then returns to the very beginning of the whole saga, when the main events are just starting to occur thousands of years ago. Unfortunately there are no dates or timeframes listed, so it may take the reader some time to figure out that the end is actually supposed to be the beginning.

Two stars for the excellent premise, but there isn't any redeeming value past that. Hardcore D&D fans will probably enjoy this somewhat, but everyone else can pass on this one.

The best of the best another great book from the Birthright Series

I fell in love with this novel. All of the characters are interesting, the plot is amazing, and there is never a dull moment. I strongly suggest reading this book.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 3 reviews  4.0 out of 5 stars