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Title: The Gilded Chain: : A Tale of the King's Blades by Dave Duncan ISBN: 0-380-79126-9 Publisher: Eos Pub. Date: 07 September, 1999 Format: Mass Market Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $7.50 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.23 (65 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: A tale of the King¿s Blades
Comment: Dave Duncan is fine author and I very much enjoyed his tetrology, "A Man of his Word." "The Gilded Chain" is part of the "King's Blades" series, but can be read as a stand-alone fantasy.
It is based on the interesting premise: a sorcerous ritual of a sword through the heart binds each warrior to his master with absolute loyalty. Duncan is a 'show' not 'tell' author. If the spell that binds an apprentice swordsman to his blade is strong enough to kill, then by golly Duncan includes a scene where an apprentice dies.
The king to whom the hero, Durandel is eventually apprenticed is the written image of Henry VIII---from popular, overbearing youth to fat, ulcerous old age. He even has an unloved daughter who will succeed him when he dies.
If he dies. Within the plot, there is a carefully-worked-out core of sorcery. The author's magicks aren't just an overlay on the plot---they drive the action from beginning to end.
Once Durandel becomes a King's Blade, he is caught up in court politics, and earns a reputation as the only man who will say 'no' to the King. For his pains, Durandel is sent on a mission to a faraway country where a King's Blade went missing several years past.
Durandel reaches Samarinda (think Samarkand) with a minimum of travelogue, even though the journey takes two years through seas, mountains, deserts, wild beasts, hostile tribes, shipwrecks, scorpions, dysentery, and forest fires (none of which is relevant to the plot). He completes part of his mission, makes a deadly enemy, and loses a good friend. Then it's another briskly-handled two years back to King Ambrose. We can imagine the sights along the way from other fantasies (way too common) with long, pointless sections of travelogue.
What Durandel and his companions discovered in a monastery in Samarinda is the centerpiece to this book's climactic ending.
Subtract one star for overall goriness (only to be expected from a series called "The King's Blades"), and the lack of strong female characters (there is one, but she's the one plot element that seems to be tacked on as an afterthought).
Rating: 5
Summary: The book that redefines Fantasy.
Comment: What more can I say then that? Duncan has blown away the standards of the fantasy novel. The characters become more then alive and real as you pursue the pages, they become you're friends, talking to you, telling you their most intimate thoughts and emotions. As you read, you live with them, feeling the pain and suffering, the joy and adventure that they do, as they do.
By no means a "quick read" this book draws you into the depths of the story, stimulating your imagination to have you run along side as the events unfold. It's so enticing, so good, that one could easily read it in a single night, then wish they hadn't!
The characters, the plot, the illusion, the foreshadowing, it's all there, perfectly balanced in a way that almost makes one think it was an actual occurrence of a real life. By far, one of the best books I've ever had the pleasure of experiencing.
Well done!
Rating: 3
Summary: Boy makes good with a sword and common sense
Comment: This book is the first in the 'King's Blades' series of novels. It is essentially a series of highlights in the life of the most famous of Blades, Sir Durendal. I found this book a disappointment in many ways. Durendal leads a life of adventure and success, but for all that you don't really feel that you know him that well by the end of the story.
Another striking feature of the novel was how closely King Ambrose was modelled on the real King Henry 8th of England with access to magic. This book serves as an introduction to the Blades universe, but I'm not sure it's one that will make me follow through to read the other books in the series as for me this book was a curiously flat and uninvolving read into a distinctly boys-own world of swords and magic
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Title: Lord of the Fire Lands: A Tale of the King's Blades by Dave Duncan ISBN: 0380791277 Publisher: Eos Pub. Date: 01 September, 2000 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Sky of Swords: : A Tale of the King's Blades by Dave Duncan ISBN: 0380791285 Publisher: Eos Pub. Date: 04 September, 2001 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Paragon Lost : A Chronicle of the King's Blades by Dave Duncan ISBN: 0380818353 Publisher: Eos Pub. Date: 29 July, 2003 List Price(USD): $7.50 |
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Title: Sir Stalwart : Book One of the King's Daggers by Dave Duncan ISBN: 0380800985 Publisher: Avon Pub. Date: 09 November, 1999 List Price(USD): $5.95 |
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Title: Silvercloak : Book Three of the King's Daggers by Dave Duncan ISBN: 0380801000 Publisher: Avon Pub. Date: 16 October, 2001 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
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