The Dark Tide

The Dark Tide, the first book in Dennis L McKiernan's Iron Tower trilogy is a diverting and entertaining novel. It is filled with standard fantasy elements---a long-dormant evil power in the north awakens to threaten and overwhelm the good and free peoples in the south---and is somewhat derivative of Tolkien---small humanoids called Warrows in place of hobbits, one of whom is named Tuckerby Underbank, an obvious play on Frodo Baggins' famous alias of Underhill---but is still a fun read for all that. McKiernan makes an effort to differentiate his Warrows from Tolkien's hobbits and the kender of the Dragonlance novels (both of which he references in the "Foreword Anew" of the 2000 Roc omnibus edition of the trilogy, The Iron Tower, so at least he acknowledges his debts) and does so successfully, in my opinion. The Warrows are much more aggressive than hobbits and are keen-eyed archers. Indeed, despite its similarities to Tolkien's famous Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Dark Tide is in many ways its own entity. The narrative moves along at a brisker pace and the battle scenes are much more visceral and gory. The writing itself is generally well crafted, although it is occasionally clunky in its efforts to sound 'fantasy-ish' and some of the exposition of the languages, culture, and history of the realm of Mithgar occur rather un-organically amid the dialogue of some of the characters. The Dark Tide is a solid and entertaining, if somewhat standard, fantasy novel. I enjoyed it, and I look forward to reading the next two works in the trilogy (Shadows of Doom and The Darkest Day).