Rating: 
Summary: Sadly, this book is just plain horrible......
Review: Let me first state that I am huge Dragonlance fan and an admirer of Tracy Hickman's work. I really had high expectations for this book. I mean it sounds cool right? Three worlds, one where dragons rule over men and dwarves, one where fairies are at war with centaurs, and a third with goblins searching these huge titan robots for technology. I bought it and I have to admit that I didn't even finish it. I got maybe 3/4 of the way through before I just gave up. You keep asking yourself: Is this really the same guy who wrote the Dragonlance Chronicles? Makes you wonder how much input he really had.
Now to the book itself. The main character Galen right off is given the ability to talk to inanimate objects. Terrible and stupid idea. (Wasn't a show on television with the same plot cancelled after just two episodes?) (Yes, Wonderfalls)! He spends the rest of the book in a slave caravan maoaning about his wife. Am I supposed to like this guy? Then the story shifts to the fairy world. Expecting exciting battles between fairies and centaurs. Nope, nonexistent. The goblin world is even worse and horribly drab. All the time you are wondering how these stories are going to connect and whether you really care or not.
Terrible characters, no excitement or action, tediously long dream sequences which make no sense, boring dialogue, I can't go on! I have no intention of even glancing at the second novel. R.A. Salvatore's recommendation is on the back cover. But if you read it closely it seems like he is really reviewing the author's previous work and never even read this piece of garbage. Salvatore deserves better.
In conclusion, this should get no stars! Only read this book if you can borrow it.
Rating: 
Summary: Blah blah blah blah
Review: I bought this book right out when it first came out and i am still trying to force myself to finish the book so that i can stick it in the back of the collection to be forgotten about. It starts out okay but it just takes a nose dive after a while and it just doesnt get better from there on. I will borrow the next one before i go out and but it
Rating:
Summary: What Plot?
Review: I obtained the audio book to "Mystic Warrior" by Tracy & Laura Hickman, and I have to say it is one of the worst books on CD that I have ever listen to. The storyline jumps around so much that who knows what the plot is all about. The Characters are flat and do not seem to develop during the adventures. I stop listing to the book for a few days as I became bored with it, but since I paid good money to rent the CD audio book I finished it. The story proceeds at a snails pace and there are far to many gaps in the storyline with all the jumping around. I found myself not really listing to the books as just trying to get through the CD's so that I could send the CD's back to Blackstone audio books. This is my first experience with Tracy Hickman's work and I am not impressed. Mr. Hickman needs to take a page out of Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Time" books or Terry Goodkind "Sword of Truth" Books on how to develop a new world and have characters progress through out the story. I will hold my judgment on further books by Tracy Hickman until I experience a few other stories, but I do not think I will read or listen to the sequel to "Mystic Warrior".
Rating: 
Summary: Good plotting and world-building, but overwritten
Review: I've enjoyed many of the books I've read where Tracy Hickman has collaborated with Margaret Weis. So I was really eager to read the first book in the Bronze Canticles when it first came out in hardcover. When I finally got to reading it, even though I really liked the world, I found his writing style to be way too clunky and overwritten.
A couple examples of what I mean. He says, "Bertika's hair was a brown nimbus..." which I find to be a bit too odd of a description. When describing a window, he finishes by talking about the world "beyond its glazing." This is just in the first few pages. Personally, I find that kind of writing difficult to wade through, and a little pretentious, as if the authors are trying to show just how many words they know.
I'll be looking forward to other things Tracy Hickman and his wife are involved in, but I just can't recommend this book due to the difficult to slog through writing.
Rating:
Summary: Mystic Boredom
Review: I've liked Hickman's work in the past, but I found this story rather slow. While Galen is likeable enough, he's too complacent with his 'insanity' and I quite simply didn't CARE about him OR his madness. The visions he had seemed more suitable to a Disney movie (I kept thinking of Belle with the talking broomsticks and teacups), and quite frankly I found Galen's relationship with his wife boring. (Then again, I prefer my fantasy characters to be single at least at the beginning of a story). Perhaps its my fault for listening to the audio version, which only prolonged the first section of this novel -but I found this book tedious and dry. Perhaps the sequel will be better?
Rating:
Summary: Disappointingly Average fare from Excellent Author(s)
Review: The Bronze Canticles rested within my "to be read" stack for several months, before I picked it up last week.
Before going further, I should state that I am, in general, a tremendous fan of Tracy Hickman. Besides his well known "Dragonlance" series (co-authored with Margaret Weiss), I also found his solo novel "The Immortals" to be a tremendous effort. However, I never "clicked" with this novel.
I found Galen, one of the 3-4 protagonists, to be "whiny". I found Mimic to be aptly named (a positive) and insufficiently detailed. Additionally, Dwynnwyn, the faery portent, was (initially) stoically presented. By the end, she's running roughshod (albeit through means not of her own) over the humoursly recalcitrant Xian.
And perhaps that is the gist of it: the book is ~420 pages. It has 3 (again, at least) protagonists, large (easily readable) typeface, and, as a result, none of them are fleshed out. While each viewpoint, ala George RR Martins A Sword of Fire and Ice series, drives the plot forward, there are still great, inexplicable "gaps" in the storyline.
To whit: if Galen is "unaware" of his "mystic power" and "Deep Magic", how does he facilitate the end game (of book 1)?
I suppose, in reading this critique, it may be asked why the book didn't garner "*" versus "***". At least that part is easily explainable:
(a) I like the author(s), and am more than willing to cede at least one extra point for that alone and
(b) the last portion of the book, "Warriors", rised substantially above the muck (but not dreck) that precedes it. A "****" quadrant to conclude the book.
And perhaps that's the summary: Disappoingtly average muck that rises substantially at the end; enough so that I, at the least, will read volume 2.
Rating: 
Summary: pretty good!
Review: this book was pretty good i only hated the parts when galen complaned about him not being insane from what i read i think he s lol well anyway i loved the book and i think anyone who is into magical tales and a great drawn fantasy world should bye this book!
Rating: 
Summary: fine fantasy
Review: Three different worlds exist in different dimensions but what happens in one world affects the other two. In the world of humans and dwarves, the seven dragons rule. An annual festival is held in which those that are mad or have Deep Magic are taken away from their homes never to be seen again. Galen Arnold hears inanimate objects talk and visits other realms in his dreams and he is caught by the Inquisitor and brought to a central location where others like him are trained to fight in a war that the general populace doesn't know exists. The Titans once ruled another world but all that is left is machines that don't work and books that are used for burning. The goblins want to fix these machines but the only one who has an affinity for them is Mimic who rises to power. Queen Tatayna's world of faery is besieged on two fronts. In the north the centaurs and satyrs struggle to take control; while Lord Pheor in the south plans to overthrow her highness and marry her daughter to become the ruler. The faery seeker Dwynwym struggles to find a truth that will save her homeland. Galen's Deep Magic has the power to influence events in the other worlds and is strong enough if he learns to use it properly to change his own. Tracy and Laura Hickman have created fantasy worlds that exist on separate planes but impact each other. Just how deep they interact will be explained in further installments of The Bronze Canticles. Each world is different and fascinating with characters created specifically for that realm. Readers will care about several protagonists, hoping they survive their trials and tribulations. The Hickmans deserve an award for originality and creativity. Harriet Klausner
Rating:
Summary: Good reading...
Review: Three worlds exist alongside one another. While each one has its own problems, seemingly separate, in a magical way, they are all connected. On one world, magic and madness are two sides of one coin. Ruled by dragons, the world's towns are culled of the mad and the magically gifted in the rite of Election. Those chosen are taken away, never to be seen again, as if they never existed. Galen is a man whose dreams are filled with magic and madness both, so while he is horrified to be Elected, it is unsurprising. Being elected brings him into contact with other chosen people and involves him in a quest to save all three worlds. On one world, the fairys live, and their fate is tied to a princess. On the third, the goblins and their machines rule, but for some reason, the machines are being problematic. All three worlds' fates rest in the hands of "madmen" and dreamers. *** The Hickmans have created a highly complex world system. At its heart is love and loyalty. At times it may be difficult to see how the three plotlines interconnect, but it is a challenging read for the academic fantasy lover. ***
Amanda Killgore
Rating:
Summary: "You want me again?" said the dragon.
Review: Tracey Hickman and dragons go together...well, almost as well as Margaret Weis and Dragons. So it's no surprise that one of the co-creators of the Dragonlance Chronicles has written another book involving dragons. In this case, Mystic Warrior is also book one in yet another fantasy series (doesn't anybody write stand-alones anymore?). The trick to making these series interesting is to have a world that the reader enjoys entering and learning more about. Does that happen in this case? I'm happy to say that Hickman, and his wife, Laura, have created a novel world using some standard fantasy tropes and turning them on their side a bit. While some clichés are still used (dwarves live underground, dragons are mean and nasty), they add just enough new stuff to make a fascinating first book. Mystic Warrior is a tale of three different worlds. All of them occupy the same space, but on a different plane, and communication between these worlds is only possible for certain people through what appear to be dreams. On the faerie world, the inhabitants are under attack from hordes of satyrs and centaurs as their way of life is threatened. On another, goblins scour the countryside looking for ancient machines that can be made to work, especially signs of the old Titans who inhabited the land before goblinkind. On the human dominated world, Galen is a master ironworker along with the dwarf Cephas, who runs the forge. Each year, the local religion runs what they call an "election," where people who have some form of insanity are magically brought out and taken away. Galen has had objects talking to him for years, but he has managed to avoid being present for the Election and has thus been passed over. Not this year, however. Taken away from his loving wife and his livelihood, he is forced into a war between five dragons who have marshaled their forces for 400 years, fighting insignificant battles over nothing. But Galen discovers that the "insanity" that made him one of the elect is actually a form of magic, a magic linking all the worlds together, allowing one of the faeries, the "winged woman" of his supposed dreams, to aid him. But will he survive long enough to learn what this magic is? I loved the concept of these three linked worlds, especially when images are taken from one of the worlds and seen by other characters who have no idea how to interpret them. Dwynwyn, who happens to be the winged woman Galen sees, has her own problems in the faerie realm dealing with her people's problems. However, she and Galen are linked in some mysterious way, and they end up helping each other even though they don't understand what it is that they are seeing. The main goblin character, Mimic, is also involved in some other, more obscure way. The other characters never see him, but the war between the mechanical beings that he sets up for his ruler, the Dong Mehaj-Megong, to enjoy bears a striking resemblance to the war that Galen is currently fighting in. The story takes us along the three storylines, jumping back and forth between them as we see the rise of Mimic from a lowly 4th class engineer to much higher in the goblin social structure. We see Dwynwyn's attempts to safeguard her charge, the princess Aislynn from the onrushing hordes and a forced marriage to cement an alliance that would bring her people to the point of oblivion. The Hickmans slowly start to merge the storylines as the book wears on. At first, each story has its own chapter, using the chapter breaks to jump to something else. As things become more tightly entwined, the breaks are more frenetic, jumping three or four times per chapter and ramping up the tension. This effectively darkens the mood as we come closer to understanding how everything links together. The pacing of the book is really nicely done in that sense. This caused me to read the last half of the book at an accelerated rate, as I wanted to find out what happened next. Unfortunately, the first part of the book dragged at times. I wasn't as interested in the characters as I could have been, especially Mimic and the Goblins. The Goblin world is given short shrift in the beginning of the book, and thus the scenes that take place there aren't as interesting as the other two worlds. It would have been nice to learn a little bit more about Goblin culture aside from the acquisition of mechanical artifacts and how possession of these is the ultimate status symbol. The other problem is with some of the characterization. It wasn't necessarily bad, but it wasn't that interesting either. Galen tended to whine a lot right after he was selected, and while that may be understandable in real life, it's not that interesting to read about. Tragget, the Inquisitor of one of the dragon's religions, and the person who saw Galen in his dreams, is a bit more intriguing, but the political fighting within the church just became boring. It picks up when we start to learn the secret behind the religions, especially how all of the dragons interact. After that, the book grabs you and doesn't let you go. It's a shame that the beginning is such a struggle, as Mystic Warrior would be a first-rate book otherwise, and one I would recommend whole-heartedly. Instead, it's just a very good book. It will be interesting to see where the Hickmans go with this. If the more boring set-up at the beginning of this book becomes necessary in subsequent books, I'll stand corrected. That doesn't mean that it couldn't have been made more appealing, though. David Roy
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