The Lord Soth Series:

Knight of the Black Rose

NO STARS

Spectre of the Black Rose

By: James Lowder and Voronica Whitney-Robinson

A Review by Tommy N. Jeffers

Knight of the Black Rose is a very well written book by James Lowder.  It chronicles the events of Lord Soth’s life after his disappearance from Krynn.  The black knight finds himself ripped from the famed lands of the Dragonlance and deposited into the world of Strad in Ravenloft.  This book is full of great dark characters, and the reader gets to know more about the famed death knight along the way.  The book has it all.  The excitement and superb storytelling make it a fun read.  The characters are richly portrayed and find themselves in exciting fights and difficult situations.  Soth is forced to confront his past.  As his future is left hanging in the balance, the death knight has amazing encounters with every sort of denizen and the confrontations he has with the vampric Lord Strad are the thing of fantasy legend.  All in all this is an excellent read.

Spectre of the Black Rose is the follow up book to Knight of the Black Rose.  Lowder returns in a dubious paring with Voronica Whitney-Robinson.  I am uncertain what makes this book so bad.  The story has such promise and yet falls so short of the mark that it is almost sickening.

This complete tragedy of a novel might have been good if the authors would have focused on Soth.  The reader comes away from the book feeling like nothing was accomplished.  The best character in the novel barely works.  The Bloody Cobbler who is victimized by a stupid name but has the best lines in the entire novel, struggles to save this book from being a total waste of paper.  He fails.  In short, the best part of this novel is the beautiful binding and cover art.  This is definitely one book that you cannot judge by the cover.