The War of the Dwarves / Markus Heitz

The War of the Dwarves

category: fantasy, author:

Markus Heitz (translated by Sally-Ann Spencer)

book 2 of The Dwarves
original copyright 2004, translated from German in 2010
read in October 2010

Agamedes' opinion: 6 out of 10

I read The Dwarves a few months ago and found it to be excellent. The War of the Dwarves is... a bit of a disappointment.

It's still a lot of fun to have a story told from a Dwarf perspective. There are still some good Dwarf characters. And the Dwarven hero finally gets his Dwarven girl.

Unfortunately, Heitz has taken a rollicking adventure -- and built on it.

First up, there are too many strands to this story:

The first book began -- as many fantasies do -- with a hero setting forth on an adventure. Along the way, the hero meets other people -- of various races and abilities -- and a group is formed. The group splits, only to be reunited at the climactic conclusion...

At the start of this second book -- The War of the Dwarves -- there are already a number of plot strands in place. Heitz follows these... and coherence is lost.

Yes, Tungdil the hero plays a major role in the story. Yet there are a dozen or more others who pop in and out of the narrative: friends, villains, kings, elves, dwarves and men. Worse yet, whole armies seem to appear as though from nowhere! Not really "nowhere", but the distance between points seems to grow and shrink at the author's whim: armies march for weeks in one direction then apparently take only days to return... Perhaps I simply did not pay enough attention to the geography!?

Then there are the names... Okay, I managed to keep track of most of the place names. After a fashion. But the elvish, dwarvish and human people names were just too much for me. Take the necessarily different naming styles of the major races. Add multi-part names, alternate names and alternate ways in which each name is used. With, perhaps, Germanic overtones... I just could not keep track of who was who.

A second or third reading -- or a slower and more careful first reading -- would sort out who was doing what to whom. On the other hand -- the book does not warrant a second reading.

Take a first book with interesting characters and strong action. Add more battle scenes, up the death count, unexpectedly kill off key characters -- and a lot of the book's enjoyment is lost.

The War of the Dwarves is just too violent, too realistic in its death count. Too over-the-top to be enjoyed. Okay, too over-the-top to be enjoyed by me. I like my fantasy to be more fantastic and less violent. Or at least less violent to the characters that I have come to like. War is a violent, almost non-stop, battle.

The Dwarves was an enjoyable adventure with the added perspective of the dwarven perspective. The War of the Dwarves adds somewhat to the dwarven story -- but at the expense of plot. Along the way, some of the enjoyment has been lost.

Still... There are plenty of indications that book three is on its way. I will probably read it. I just hope that the battles are toned down and the story depends more on plot than on violence.

..o0o..

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