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NoB is one of Knaak's most polished Dragonlance novels. While The Legend of Huma (a wonderful read) had many rough sentences and didn't always flow well, NoB has no such problems. It is, in fact, a testament to how much Knaak has improved as a writer - my hat is off to him for this.
Where Knaak fails is in his portrayal of minotaurs - the focus of the novel. The characters we get are humans in bulls' clothing - they have horns and fur, but they don't ACT differently than humans (a far cry from how every other novel in the series has portrayed them). They tend to be greedy, dishonorable, cowardly, and just plain duplicitous - the character Ardnor will tend to conjure mental images of Emperor Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix in Gladiator) rather than a powerful creature of fantasy and legend. Most of the time, the physical differences aren't even taken into account - clothing choices often wouldn't fit over a minotaur's irregular-shaped head, horns are never used in combat, etc... There is even a minotaur DANCE - which is described exactly as a human dance would be. More effort should have been put into making this once interesting race unique.
Short version: This book might be interesting to fans of the Dragonlance series, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone else.
For anyone who's ever read Machiavelli, this is a carbon copy of The Prince, only as application rather than theory. That in itself was enough to keep me reading (well, I am a political science major). It's all about the most effective way to seize and maintain power, how to deal with dissention, and how to gain and hold the support of the masses (and of course, keep them dependent on you). In that respect (as theory actually put into practice in this novel) it's even more chilling than Machiavelli. I loved and hated Hotak and his children. And although it took me longer to finish this one than any other DL novel (even the 600+ WoS ones) due to the slow-to-get going build-up, in the end I was not disappointed.
On the cover it states this is Volume One of a series, so don't go into this one expecting it to be a stand alone. But then again, considering all of the DragonLance (DL) novels that have comes before it, this isn't really the true starting point either. But Knaak gives a history of the minotaur race prior to the actual story which fills gives DL newbies most of the required information needed before stepping into this series. Not being a newbie however, I can only guess he did a decent job in describing what needs to be known to those who haven't read anything in DL before.
I've read several but not a large number of secondary authors for DragonLance (Hickman and Weis being the first tier). Up until now Mary H. Herbert was the only one I had a large amount of respect for, even though Jean Rabe has partially redeemed herself with the recent Dhammon Saga. To my pleasure, Richard A. Knaak has just been put up on that list as well.
The overall story flow is consistant with only a few minimal lulls in the action, and his characters are well defined and shown to be individuals different from each other even though 'cultural commonalities' can be seen in all of those in the minotaur nation. Most importantly, even though 'The Minotaur Wars' are about fighting and manuvering for power, much of the plot is character driven by strong characters that one could believe will be read about by students of history in the future of Krynn. There are times where one has to catch oneself reading this or else find themselves rooting for the wrong side (especially at the end of this first volume).
Now, I've seen this book advertised as the first post-War of Souls book. In reference to my review title, I want to state that although I get the feeling this series will lead into the times after the War of Souls, from what I can gather this one volume takes place primarilly slightly before and during Mina's War. The book covers something like five or six months worth of time (estimate), so I have no doubt the series will go into and past the event alluded to the DL readers at the end of WoS.
Yes, I'm doing what I can to avoid talking about the plot. You've already got the summaries up above for that. But I will state that this first volume of the series not only has me interested in the rest to be released, but I'm going back and finding Knaak's other novels in DragonLance to see what I've missed (specifically 'Reavers of the blood Sea' and 'The Legend of Huma').
This hardcover book is a good buy. Sit back and enjoy.
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