From archive (archive)
Subject: The Gryphon King (mild spoilers)
From: haste+@andrew.cmu.edu (Dani Zweig)
Organization: Graduate School of Industrial Administration, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
Date: 18 Jul 89 15:13:00 GMT



Readers who enjoyed Tom Deitz's "Windmaster's Bane" and "Fireshaper's
Doom" (i.e. just about anyone who read them, since they're both
excellent) are likely to be disappointed by his new book, "The Gryphon
King".  (Avon, $3.95).

It takes place in the same world as the other two (on the border of
Georgia and Faerie) but is not part of the same continuity, and has no
characters in common.  The story takes place in Athens, and concerns a
particularly nasty character who wasn't executed thoroughly enough a few
centuries ago and is trying to make a comeback.  Opposing him (though
not consciously, for most of the book) are a number of university
students.

Why doesn't this book work, where the other two worked so well?  A
number of factors.

--The characters are poorly developed.  Each can be fully described and
characterized in a single paragraph.  And most of that description would
be devoted to stereotype.

--The fantasy aspect of the book is poorly developed.  The bad guy casts
whatever spells he needs, as he needs them.  Similarly, the good guys
turn out to have ad-hoc access to whatever magic the author needs to
advance the plot.

--There *isn't* really that much of a plot.  The villain's plan is
pointlessly convoluted and ambitious, and it never enters the reader's
mind that it might succeed.

"The Gryphon King" isn't *bad*; Tom Deitz can write.  But anyone getting
it under the impression that it either continues the first two books or
is as well written as they are is likely to be in for a disappointment.

-----
Dani Zweig
haste+@andrew.cmu.edu 

   'T is with our judgements as our watches, none
   Go alike, yet each believes his own
		--Alexander Pope