Customer Reviews

Spectre of the Black Rose

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Warning if u like Lord Soth as darklord, you will be VERY SAD at the end of this novel.

The HIstory is a bit "hard" to get, sometimes u will need to re-read some parts to understand what is happing. Lord Soth in this novel is one of the important characters, since mainly the Sithicus domain is descripted. But, once u got the taste of reading the book.... you will feel being one traveling throught sithicus, overseeing all the events.

It is a must read for every fan from the Ravenloft Campaign setting, since it helps a lot to understand the Ravenloft Gazetter IV.

Spectre of the Black Rose is the follow up book to Knight of the Black Rose. Lowder returns in a dubious paring with Voronica Whitney-Robinson. I am uncertain what makes this book so bad. The story has such promise and yet falls so short of the mark that it is almost sickening.
This complete tragedy of a novel might have been good if the authors would have focused on Soth. The reader comes away from the book feeling like nothing was accomplished. The best character in the novel barely works. The Bloody Cobbler who is victimized by a stupid name but has the best lines in the entire novel, struggles to save this book from being a total waste of paper. He fails. In short, the best part of this novel is the beautiful binding and cover art. This is definitely one book that you cannot judge by the cover.

Lowder is an excellent writer. He has great characters, and then proceeds to kill them at an alarming rate (though you never suspect when it will happen). The deaths make the tale all the more beleivable. I hate reading a book where characters facing overwhelming odds and no one dies. The best part about this book is the way Lowder breaks from the Ravenloft tradition and does something unbelievable with Soth (although I think the tale was a command performance by DL editors!). You will love the Bloody Cobbler, although you will realize who the White Rose is early on if you are any kind of DL fan. Read this book! As I said, you can see that this is one of the last in the series since Lowder breaks sooo many rules.

"Knight of the Black Rose" was an outstanding book. I reviewed it and gave it 5 stars. So when I saw there was a sequel to it, I didn't even hesitate buying it. Alas, I should have paid more attention to the reviews for this book because they could have saved me 312 pages of utter bordem. This book is virtually impossible to follow. From one paragraph to the next the book will jump to an entirely different "sceen" without having any breaks in between to let you know you are supposed to ready yourself for another line of thinking. So you go on for several sentences or paragraphs thinking you are still reading about the Bloody Cobbler only to find out that you are reading about 3 new characters you didn't even know existed. And the book goes on like that chapter after chapter. As soon as you finally get interested in the story, it will just abruptly stop and then move on to some other new set of characters who up to that point have never been mentioned. And it never goes back to the previous point where it abrupty stopped. It will go back to those characters, but they are magically off doing something completely different seemingly unrelated to the rest of the story.

And worst of all, Lord Soth who is on the cover of the book and who is supposed to be the star of the book is little more than a side character in this book. Of course there is no main character in this book. People either get killed off or just fall out of the story for no reason.

Bottom line... don't waste your time or money. Go read my review of "Carnival of Fear" (it wasn't a good review to say the least) but my feelings are that that book was 10 fold better than this one. If I could have given this book ZERO stars, I would have.

If you aren't into the character of Lord Soth or into the DragonLance world, this book is not for you. Taken by itself this book is a slow read and terribly involved. When taken as a whole of the DragonLance world, it is almost required reading. You can see Lord Soth going from being a virtual prisoner to the demiplane of Ravenloft to regaining his sanity and attempting to be the first Darklord to escape back to his home land.

this book sucks. i've read virtually all of the ravenloft novels. that being said this novel: spectre of the black rose- was like having 5 root canals done at once. painfully slow reading,entirely unabsorbing characters that seemed to go nowhere and do nothing. it's a shame because i loved the book "knight of the black rose". if you're looking for Soth to kick some butt in this book you've come to the wrong place. there are like 3 minor skirmishes in this hunk of junk. i'd find reading stereo assembly instructions more compelling. if you want real ravenloft i suggest you pick up anything P.N. Elrod touches.

I have read all the Ravenloft novels that were published, and I especially liked the character of Lord Soth, starting from Dragonlance, and into the depth of the dark lands in Ravenloft. Alas, I shan't uncover anything for the readers to be, but let me tell you, after thou hath read Knight of the Black Rose, thou must read Spectre, for 'tis such a marvelous novel!
So entangled are the sub-plots, and in such a magnificant way they were entwined together, a stroke of genius!
I have spoken with James Lowder at times, and he is a brilliant author indeed. I must bid every Ravenloft reader, and especially a Lord Soth fan to read this great work of art. As I've stated before, there are many sub-plots, well more than the average Ravenloft book, but it only adds to the overall drama and the extreme tragedy of the ending and the chain of event!

All I can say is great job James and Veronica! May T.S.R and Wizards abide thee to create more works of this sort, and may the dark lord of Sithicus endure upon his pain in existance fore'emore!

When Lord Soth had first come to Ravenloft in the first volume i was impressed that the Ravenloft authors had the guts to take him from Dragonlance and they showed his power, but in this volume they make him look weak, tired and about to loose his mind. I was expecting Lord Soth to once again be the ruthless, destructive, and a master of his own destiny.

Okay, I read the first two Dragonlance Series, and the Knight of the Black Rose which were all pretty darn good... Then I got this one.

Part of my main complaint on this book was the fact that every time I got into a character, he/she would die. They didn't leave me a helluva lot to vote for. I tend to get into books that give you a character that has a well-defined personality, and is in it for more than thirty pages... As many of the other reviews will tell you, Lord Soth wasn't in this one all that much, although the entire story revolves around him in one way or another.

The characters that are in this book all seemed urged on by self interest. The only really cool character is the Bloody Cobbler, and he isn't the entire book (I would gladly pick up another Ravenloft book if he's in it, I really wish they would have had more of him in this one).

The end was cool, but the beginning and a lot of the middle were basically describing a character, building them into a person, and then killin' them off. Again, the end was cool, but the rest was kind of off the subject.

I still have to say, though ... that is probably one of the coolest book covers I've seen!

I was disappointed with the ending which seemed rather anti-climatic and rushed. This book featured Soth as a minor character, and though I liked the new people introduced, Ganelon and the Bloody Cobbler,this book should not be advertised under the impression that it is a sequel to Knight of the Black Rose.