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| Amber and Ashes (Dragonlance: The Dark Disciple, Vol. 1) | 
 enlarge | Author: Margaret Weis
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
Category: Book
List Price: $7.99
Buy New: $2.70
You Save: $5.29 (66%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  (45 reviews)
Sales Rank: 11570
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Mass Market Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 6.7 x 4.2 x 1.4
ISBN: 0786937424
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780786937424
ASIN: 0786937424
Publication Date: June 28, 2005
Release Date: June 28, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Book 12: Amber and Ashes August 5, 2005
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
This book was pretty good. Original characters (except for the gods/goddesses of course) and more interaction with the lesser known gods such as Zeboim, Chemosh, and Nuitari. There's no mention of what happened to characters like Dalamar, but Palin gave up his magic, I guess, and became some political figure. I don't consider the side stories by other author's the main books, but consider them as supplements. Books that explain side events of secondary characters and such.
Although this is a great book my favorite books in Dragonlance will always be Time of the Twins, War of the Twins, Test of the Twins, The Second Generation, and Dragons of Summer Flame. I'm curious to see what Amber and Iron and Amber and Blood is all about.
The chronological order of books:
Dragons of Autumn Twilight
Dragons of Winter Night
Dragons of Spring Dawning
Time of the Twins
War of the Twins
Test of the Twins
The Second Generation
Dragons of Summer Flame
Dragons of a Fallen Sun
Dragons of a Lost Star
Dragons of a Vanished Moon
Amber and Ashes
Amber and Blood (coming soon)
Amber and Iron (coming soon)
 Fatal Mission Redux July 25, 2005
20 out of 29 found this review helpful
About a million years ago I used to follow the DragonLance series religiously. Everything that Margeret Weis and Tracy Hickman wrote went on my shelves. In their time they had a story line that combined both unusual and traditional plot and character work with considerable facility. Eventually, the inevitable doldrums set in, the writing got repetitious and many of the characters became parodies of themselves. Rather than continue with a series that was beginning to get on my nerves, I stopped reading the books. Until today, when I decided to check in and see if there was some light at the end of the tunnel. I chose Amber and Ashes because Weis was at the writer.
The book is the first of a new story arc, one that takes place after Takhesis' defeat and the Minotaur invasion and the exile of the elves. With the return of the gods to the world ancient conflicts return to life. Chemosh, god of death, seeks power over more than his world of darkness and reanimated corpses. He wants more direct access to the living and he seizes on Mina, once a servant of Takhesis, as a means of spreading a 'living' death and creating an army capable of contesting dominance over the planet.
Chemosh easily sways Mina, who depressed by failing Takhesis at a critical moment. In short order she wanders through the world making 'converts.' On of these kills off an entire monastery except for his own brother, Rhys. Rhys, with the help of a Nightshade, a kender with a talent for speaking to the dead, sets out to put an end to the plague of death that Chemosh has unleashed. He finds himself enlisted in the service of Zeboim a goddess who has little love for Chemosh and his minions. Rhys and Mina are headed for a confrontation, but they each have plenty to do before that fatal moment in a later volume.
Unfortunately, the book simply does not live up to its plot. After a slow beginning it never picks up the pace. The spoken dialogue lacks spark and the book seems written at a monotone. Both Rhys and Mina come off as weak characters - too weak for the major roles they play. These are common weaknesses in game driven novels, but the DragonLance series was, initially, more plot driven than say the Vampire: Masquerade novels which depend more on a wealth of detail to satisfy their readers. But this time the plot proceeds by fits and starts, interspersed with irritating attempts at divine monologue.
I guess I'm going to wait another million years before my next visit to this series.
 Not one of the best DL Books July 15, 2005
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
Firstly I must say I'm not an native English Speaker. I enjoy reading Fantasy Literature and read almost every book by MW and TH in the Dragonlance Setting (also some other books from the same setting). I enjoy the writing style of Margaret Weis because it is fluent and let you immerse yourself in the story.
I must say, I agree with the "Sex Zombies" review. This book is clearly not about the stories of heroism, valor, sacrifice and magic. It has more an Forgotten Realms feeling and the frequent interaction between characters and gods make the appereance of the gods an usual event.
Still I can recommend this a book as an nice Summer reading. You won't regret reading this book, if you don't expect much from it.
Attack of the Evil Sex Zombies June 29, 2005
6 out of 8 found this review helpful
Wizards of the Coast, on the back cover of this novel, say it's a strange vamperic cult, but I beg to differ. To me the villains in this novel will always be evil sex zombies. You can try to pretty it up with beautiful words, but when you see an evil sex zombie, you know it's an evil sex zombie. This novel teams up Mina, formerly the Disciple of Takhisis well known from the War of Souls Trilogy, and Chemosh, the God of Death. Chemosh is rather sick of all his followers being fugly old people and rotting corpses so he seduces Mina into joining his side in the godly war and to slip into his bed. She becomes the High Priestess of Chemosh and a sex maniac all in one, hence the evil sex zombies soon roaming the countryside. The only thing that stands in their way is a chaste monk of the Mantis God and a kender that talks to the dead...where's Raistlin when you need him?
It's a good novel, decently written with slightly interesting characters, Mina herself probably the chief among them-but the plot is more akin to Species 15 and a half than it is to a Dragonlance novel. My problems with the book aren't really geeky in nature, I didn't really feel the urge to nitpick little points about whether kenders really wear purple or if the Inn of the Last Home was four or five stories above the ground.
What annoyed me was that the gods don't act like gods. Not even in the Greek sense of the Olympus. Not one had any weight to them and if Chemosh had been changed to be a powerful mage instead of a god, nothing would changed with his actual character. Power alone isn't enough; you need a sense of awe as well and by having four plus gods make a showing, Weis really dragged down the awe factor, hurting the novel. The other problem I had was one of preference; she used a great deal of "blah blah, for it is said" sentences. I've never really liked the use of "for" in that fashion, it always seems too old fashion and serious, almost biblical in nature, and people don't talk that way. Ever time I saw it, I'd cringed, and I saw a lot of it.
Final Thought: It's a good book and its out in paperback now, so pick it up. I'm actually looking forward to the next one instead of just planning on buying it "because it's DL", and I sadly don't do that often any more with these books. I wouldn't go as far as to say its twenty five dollar hardcover material, however.
Added Thought: Beware the evil sex zombies, people.
Do not read Dennis Drury's review June 18, 2005
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
Do not put any stock into the review by Dennis Drury as he has it completely wrong.
The Kingpriest was in fact evil, or at least became evil in the end. His intentions were good, but he was misguided and definately did evil things. And he did indeed demand Paladine to make him a God. Dennis should try reading Legends again or the Kingpriest Trilogy to improve his own understanding before accusing authors of getting it wrong. They know their own work better than he does I'm sure.
Good and evil is also not so black and white. Even if the D&D sense terms a character evil, it's not so cut and dried. That can change, and there is such thing as shades of grey. Even so, a book that reads like a D&D module adhering to statistics is a poor book, which is why books don't follow D&D strictly.
This in itself is not a review, but a critique on another review. The rating I have given is equal to the average rating at the time of writing.
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