THE GUARDIANS OF THE FLAME, Books 5-8, by Joel Rosenberg

Overall Rating: 5

Others have given the second half of the Guardians of the Flame series fairly decent reviews, but for the most part I found them a let-down. It seemed to me that Rosenberg had forgotten the series name itself: the Other Siders truly were Guardians of the Flame, the light that would bring justice to the long-suffering Eren regions. Somewhere those threads slipped by the wayside, and for the most part the books slip more and more into vignettes and farther away from the plotlines and characterization that made them such enjoyable reading.

As always, Rosenberg's writing is excellent and he always has a tendency to draw the reader in, though these books didn't bind me so tightly as the first four had, and with them I didn't find myself continually carrying one of the series around with me to dive back into whenever I got the chance. Rosenberg committed what could have been a fatal mistake for lesser writers, in the death of one of the major characters; for him it didn't have to be, but it came very close.

Books 6 and 7 also shift from third-person to the first-person view of the roguish character Walter Slovotsky, which added a nicely quirky POV to the series but didn't help the plot out at all. While The Warrior Lives moved well and kept up my interest (even knowing that the dead character probably really was still dead), the next two books plodded until close to the end--at which point the action picked up just in time for the book's conclusion. And several of the plotlines disappear entirely, including the shadowy presence of Professor Arthur Deighton, who sent them to their new home in the first place with a secret agenda that Rosenberg never follows up.

And finally, the most recent book in the series, Not Exactly the Three Musketeers, was to me the most disappointing of all. Instead of getting back to the roots of the series or developing the major characters, which Rosenberg remains adept at, he backtracks instead of follow the exploits of three side characters, with little more than cameos from many of the remaining Other Siders. All through the book I kept wondering...why?

Still, I'll keep my fingers crossed and keep an eye out for the next book in the Rosenberg series. And I'll keep my hopes up with it that Rosenberg will eventually come back around to the story and the characters who kept me enthralled for so many pages.

This page modified 27-Jul-2000 10:34:16.