Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Knights of the Silver Dragon: Revelations Part 2- The Dragons Revealed by Matt Forbeck

Evil has overtaken Curston, with Demons from the Abyss running loose in town. Kendric has returned, but rejects Kellach as his student when Kellach blames him for not freeing his mother, Jourdain, from the Abyss, earlier. He is also disheartened by his own inability to deal with Lexos, despite the fact that Lexos is older and more powerful than he.

Kellach, devastated by Zendric's rejection, quits the Knights of the Silver Dragon and seems determined to wait out the fight in his home. Driskoll and Moyra try to get him to come with them, but eventually leave him to sulk and go out to do what they can on their own.

Jourdain, after making sure that her family is all right, has gone out to fight the demons. Most of the town has gathered in a place called "The Great Circle", where silvery veins run through the rock and a protective circle is warded into the very ground. Because of the power there, the Demons cannot attack anyone in the circle. But not everyone has made it there.

Driskoll goes to find Latislav, the chief Cleric in charge of the temple of Cuthbert, and convinces him to try and help fight the demons. However, Latislav is a traitor who is actually working with Lexos to destroy the town, and he does his best to undermine the town's efforts to fight. Kendric, meanwhile, is gathering spell ingredients to try and summon the town's winged allies to the fight, but he must also work with Jourdain to close the seal. Only then will the Demons be able to be defeated, as they cannot get more demons from the abyss to join them. Zendric prepares to close the seal, giving Kellach his pspers so he can cast the spell to raside the town's allies, and this time, he casts the spell on the Abyss side, with Jourdain casting it from the Dungeons of Doom. Before the seal can completely set, she tosses him something, and then he is gone into the Abyss.

Zellach, Driskoll and Moyra hurry back to town to cast the spell, and fail. Then Gryphyll arrives to tell them that they are missing one ingredient: the tears of a silver dragon. Can Driskoll tell a story sad enough to make the dragon cry? And who are these mysterious allies, anyhow?

More secrets of Curston are revealed, and the town changes forever as the missing Knights return from the Abyss. I did enjoy this book, but it did leave me with some questions. For one, Kellach doesn't know how or where his mother disappeared, and doesn't seem to have that many memories of her. But if she disappeared when he was 9, he should remember her just fine. It seems that the *many* writers of these books had different ideas about the backgrounds of Zellach and Driskoll, and what they felt or knew about their mother's disappearance. I know it allows the story to be more mysterious if he doesn't know, but it just ended up making him seem to have memory problems... not a good thing for a wizard.

Also the story seems to follow Book #8 in the continuity, but no mention of Jourdain is in the current following books. Again, Revelations seems to be some kind of alternate continuity that doesn't affect the other books.

Because of these sorts of concerns, I can't really say that I would recommend this two-part series to others. Others may call me nit-picky, but I just want the storylines to make sense. Is that so much to ask?

2 comments:

Matt Forbeck said...

Thanks for your reviews. I just wanted to point out that the Revelations books are the last two in the series. I can see this might not be clear, as they aren't numbered like the others. Perhaps that will help you fit the stories together better.

LadyRhian said...

Aha. Well, that certainly does make it clearer! Thank you very much. It's been a great series for kids, and I'll be sad to see it end. I was kind of looking forward to seeing Jourdain teach Kellach how to use magic. Ah well, good to know, though. Thanks again!