Dragon Wing (The Death Gate Cycle, Book 1)
Spectra - Spectra
Release date: 1990-10-01
Mass Market Paperback
Author: Tracy Hickman
Science fiction, Fiction, Fiction - Fantasy, Fantasy, Fantasy - Epic, Fiction / Fantasy / Epic, Fantasy - General
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Dragon Wing (The Death Gate Cycle, Book 1)
Date undefinedOne of the great series available. I am a DL fan, but this series is better and short and sweet with 7 books. All were good without other authors to ruin anything.
Dragon Wing (The Death Gate Cycle, Book 1)
Date undefinedI don't mind stereotype characters, as long as they're interesting and make for an interesting plot. Dragon Wing's characters, and the book itself, did neither.
We have Hugh. Oh my God, Hugh is a tough assassin who cares only for money. Yawn. Unfortunately for Hugh, he never gets any more than that. That is his entire character. The only changes he ever sees is because of some sort of magical mind-control from this one kid he's hired to kill named Prince Bane (I'm not kidding, that's seriously what he's named) and yada yada yada... Hugh is the most one dimensional character I've ever seen. Plus, what kind of fantasy-novel name is Hugh anyway? These authors badly need to take a page from Ursula LeGuin. Or an entire book. Preferably an entire book.
Then there was the whole segment with the dwarves and their "Kicksey Whinsey". I'd say that was a borderline racist stereotype but I'm not sure what race it was even supposed to represent. A bunch of dwarves go around and live their lives based on the whims of some badly-named machine, performing their badly-named daily activities. There's a badly-named revolutionary leading a badly-named group to try to throw off the oppressive blanket of society and the machine...only it's all supposed to be comical, because they all act like little children. It's like some dwarven version of 1984, only it has the writing quality you'd expect from monkeys. The dwarf segment is the sort of thing you'd expect to see in a D&D game where the DM thinks he's being really funny and clever, but everyone at the table just wants to punch him in the face.
I had to stop after that (halfway through the book). The low quality of writing made me so disgusted that I couldn't go any further. That's the first time a book has done that. Dragonlance (by the same authors) may be the lowest common denominator of fantasy, but at least it's finishable. This is just disgusting.
Or maybe it was made for the 11 year olds out there who find the dwarf thing 'funny' and would overlook boring one dimensional stereotype characters.
Dragon Wing (The Death Gate Cycle, Book 1)
Date undefinedThe Death Gate Cycle is without a doubt the best series Hickman and Weis have written since their original Dragonlance Chronicles and Legends. The story presents an orginal theme of a fantasy world split into four elemental worlds bound my magic and a darker past that comes to the surface as the reader goes through the books in this series.
Dragon Wing as a stand alone novel holds its own in presenting some new characters and without giving away any spoilers it introduces us to some old favorites in a creative and surprising way. The book is well written and the characters are interesting enough to keep you reading as you discover along with the main character what has happened to a world left to its own devices and the warring nations that fight to control it, oblivious as they are to the forces at work behind the scenes.
