The Dwarves by Markus Heitz
I was in the city in February with a Dymocks gift voucher and did my usual browse of the fantasy shelves. The book 'The Dwarves' drew my attention, being a thick book (700+ pages) in a jet black binding. I read the blurb and decided it sounded like a good read. And it was.
But it does seem to be a book that inspires either love or loathing with little middle ground. The reviews on Goodreads were evenly split. Take the following comment by Dirk Grobbelaar:
This is one of those Fantasy books with highly improbably scenarios and bizarrely fortunate (read untouchable) protagonists, for the most part.....This isn't a bad novel, and I will certainly be checking out the rest of the series. BUT, despite the author's best intentions, it doesn't break a whole of a lot of new ground. There are some nice twists, but it isn't enough to make the story great.
And yes, it was book 1 of 4, with the original German book released in 2003-2006 and the English versions released in 2010-2012.
The Dwarves (Nov 2003)
The War of the Dwarves (Oct 2004)
The Revenge of the Dwarves (Oct 2005)
The Fate of the Dwarves (Feb 2008)
Having read book 1 which I enjoyed (although I did tend to agree with the comments above from Dirk Grobbelaar, I decided to buy the next book in the series. After 100 pages of so, I thought it seemed that there were huge gaps in the story and references to past events that it implied I should have already read about. To my embarrassment, I found I was reading book 3!!! So another trip to Dymocks to buy books 2 and 4 and a read that one first, then a finish to book 3 and then a read of book 4.
I can now say that the first book was the best and the fourth was the most disappointing - I feel that it just jumped from drama to drama with them all being solved in rather simplistic fashion.
So I am not sorry I bought the books but Tolkein they are not!
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I was in the city in February with a Dymocks gift voucher and did my usual browse of the fantasy shelves. The book 'The Dwarves' drew my attention, being a thick book (700+ pages) in a jet black binding. I read the blurb and decided it sounded like a good read. And it was.
But it does seem to be a book that inspires either love or loathing with little middle ground. The reviews on Goodreads were evenly split. Take the following comment by Dirk Grobbelaar:
This is one of those Fantasy books with highly improbably scenarios and bizarrely fortunate (read untouchable) protagonists, for the most part.....This isn't a bad novel, and I will certainly be checking out the rest of the series. BUT, despite the author's best intentions, it doesn't break a whole of a lot of new ground. There are some nice twists, but it isn't enough to make the story great.
And yes, it was book 1 of 4, with the original German book released in 2003-2006 and the English versions released in 2010-2012.
The Dwarves (Nov 2003)
The War of the Dwarves (Oct 2004)
The Revenge of the Dwarves (Oct 2005)
The Fate of the Dwarves (Feb 2008)
Having read book 1 which I enjoyed (although I did tend to agree with the comments above from Dirk Grobbelaar, I decided to buy the next book in the series. After 100 pages of so, I thought it seemed that there were huge gaps in the story and references to past events that it implied I should have already read about. To my embarrassment, I found I was reading book 3!!! So another trip to Dymocks to buy books 2 and 4 and a read that one first, then a finish to book 3 and then a read of book 4.
I can now say that the first book was the best and the fourth was the most disappointing - I feel that it just jumped from drama to drama with them all being solved in rather simplistic fashion.
So I am not sorry I bought the books but Tolkein they are not!
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