Most helpful customer reviews
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Monk Business, Dec 24 2003
This was a surprisingly good, lightweight, straightforward and entertaining dungeon crawl. Particularly in comparison to the two predecessors, the poor The Savage Caves, and the average Living Dead. In this tale, a monk, a sorceror, a gnomish wizard and dwarven cleric deal with Nerull, the god of death, and his cults attempt to destroy the monkish order the protagonist Ember belongs to. Nerull's influence apparently carrying over from the Living Dead, shades of Bhaal and the Forgotten Realms. This short book packs a lot into it, a fledgling romance between Ember and the sorceror, humor from the wizard-sorceror arguments of the two magic-users, a rather decent magic duel contest, and a quick dungeon crawl to root out the source of the cult's resurgence. Somewhat predictable, yes, the characters though are developed well enough for a short work and the ending is appropriate but slightly surprising. A nice night's light entertainment here, the series has improved with each volume to become solidly entertaining light reading.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
The best title in the series so far, Sep 20 2002
Although it is a very short story compared to other fantacy titles, but you will probably get everything from it, like Magic, Wand, Spell, Kon-Fu, Cipher, Puzzle, Treachery, Sacrifice, etc. It seems to me this title is the combination of Harry Potter plus Matrix, and there might still be a lot more to be dicovered, like Romance between Ember & Hennet.Author not only describe every details very carefully, but also emphasize the though and feeling of each character pretty well, which is definitely a plus. Smooth story line, it just simply fun and charming to read it on and on. The reason I didn't give it 5 stars is because the ending. For all the journey they went through, the final challenge facing Sosfane was surprisingly short and simply too fast to end. And during the most important battle like this one, Nebin was knock out cold even before it really started, and cause the life of Brek, who I had my tear for his memorial. Having said so, the potential branch story line author put in at the end, would definitely leave all readers the whole era of imagination. Like I stated in the subject, this is the best one in the series so far. I can't wait for the next title, "City of Fire". Job well done!
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