The Silver Stair: Bridges of Time Series: Amazon.ca: Jean Rabe: Books

Product Description

For Goldmoon and her followers, Schallsea Island is a place of bright beginnings. In the shadow of the magical ruin called the Silver Stair, a translucent spiral that leads to visions and revelations, they have started construction on the Citadel of Light. For the first time since the Chaos War, the future looks promising.

But two forces challenge Goldmoon's plan to launch a new mystical order on Krynn -- one clad in the plate mail of a Solamnic Knight, the other hidden by mysterious magic and dark shadows.

Jean Rabe's novel tells the compelling tale of the struggle to preserve the Silver Stair and to prevent the dream of Schallsea Island from becoming a nightmare.

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First Sentence
The thick iron chains were uncomfortably heavy. Read the first page

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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover

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Customer Reviews

25 Reviews

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(5)
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Average Customer Review

2.9 out of 5 stars (25 customer reviews)

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3.0 out of 5 stars Another disappointment from Jean Rabe, Feb 4 2007

By

CK Jones "Dragonlance Collector" (South Dakota) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Silver Stair: Bridges of Time Series (Mass Market Paperback)

I've read other Dragonlance books by Jean Rabe, the Dawning of the Fifth Age Trilogy, followed by the Dhamon Saga, and was not impressed by either. I did like the concept of the five dragon overlords, sort of uber dragons that should be much harder than normal to kill, but Rabe's version of human and elf characters are mostly unrealistic compared to Dragonlance standards. Sometimes I wonder if Rabe has read the primary Dragonlance books. On page 16 she describes Gair as being tall for an elf at almost six feet tall. Elves have always been described as slightly taller than humans in Dragonlance books. This is Krynn, they aren't Keebler elves. Then on page 36, she describes how the Sentinel was abandoned by the Knights of Takhisis one year before the end of the War of the Lance. The Knights of Takhisis weren't even introduced until the Chaos War in "Dragons of Summer Flame" approximately 25 years after the War of the Lance. These are two major contrasts in the first 36 pages, were these books even edited ??

If you're an avid Dragonlance reader, you'll probably be disappointed in this book. If you've never read a Dragonlance novel in your life, you might enjoy it.

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2.0 out of 5 stars Frustrating characters, Aug 19 2003

By

Christopher Ware (Fremont, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Silver Stair: Bridges of Time Series (Mass Market Paperback)

Having read Rabe's DRAGONS OF A NEW AGE trilogy and now this, I've come to the conclusion that she has a difficult time writing characters that act like actual people would. This tended to improve as the aforementioned trilogy progressed, but it was terrible in this book. What I mean by this is, if something strange or suspicious occurs, most people would stop and question it. However, Rabe's characters tend to blithely continue on with what they were doing and don't give it a second thought. Very very frustrating to read when you know that it needs to be questioned. It's as if Ms. Rabe just wants to get where she's going and she completely disregards the fact that she needs to make her characters act like normal people in order to make them believable. This makes it very difficult to become emotionally involved with either the characters or the story. I'm guessing that this is one of her early works because, by the third book of DRAGONS OF A NEW AGE, her characters were behaving more reasonably.

The other thing about this book that caused me to dislike it so much was the fact that her main elf character, Gair, didn't act like an elf at all. He was impatient, impetuous, and, for someone who claimed to be a scholar in the field of magic, tended to jump right in to doing something without even considering the consequences. These characteristics are all the complete opposite of those describing an elf. They are more along the lines of a human. If you're going to create a character and assign them a race and you want them to be believable, they have to have at least some of the characteristics of that race. Gair seemed to have none. I felt no sympathy for him whatsoever. I am sure this was not Rabe's intent, but she fell completely flat in attempting to make me connect with the character.

Finally, since Gair was such an integral part of the plot and Ms. Rabe was forcing him into acting so unlike an elf, the whole story just seemed to contrived. It was simply a way of establishing Goldmoon's Citadel of Light for use in subsequent books. A story had to be created to put these pieces into place. The bad characterization just made it blatantly obvious to the reader that the whole point of the book was to get to the ending point. Unfortunately, Rabe's handling of the characters just made the journey unpleasant and unbelievable.

It was a decent story, but nothing to get excited about. The execution could have been light years better. Unless you're a hardcore Dragonlance fan, you can probably skip this book and not miss much (if anything).

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4.0 out of 5 stars Healing powers come back Krynn!!, Oct 19 2002

By

Andy. Gillum (indian mound, tn) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Silver Stair: Bridges of Time Series (Mass Market Paperback)

As a writer, Jean Rabe either runs hot or cold. There's no middle ground with her. Her novel Marquesta Kar-thon: I started reading & then quit. I'll go back & read it sometime. Her 5th Age trilogy was god-awful stupid.

On the other hand, her Dhamon trilogy - while I haven't read them yet - sounds promising. This book is very good. You know there's a threat to Goldmoon but you don't know where it's coming from until springs up. I was completely surprised.

The characters are well-developed, the plot's strong & it draws you in. The rules by which they recieve their clerical powers in this book actually makes sense unlike the rules they made for the wizards in the 5th Age. A good read.

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Most recent customer reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars The Silver Stair
First, DRAGON LANCE books are world class fanasty books. Unless you know nothing about reading these types of books you have no reason rating this book so low. Read more

Published on April 25 2002 by Helwen

1.0 out of 5 stars Just Rabe's other books
The characters are all shallow and the story is poorly written. The elf goes from being an inheritantly good person to the most evil person in the world in one chapter for no... Read more

Published on Mar 4 2002 by M. Montealegre