Book Review: The Quest for Lost heroes by David Gemmell

 

Book: The Quest for Lost Heroes
Author: David Gemmell
Pages: 291
Hard Core Scale: 3/4
Normal Scale: 9/10
Publish Date: 1990
About:  Chareos and other Heroes of the final battle of Gothir against  the Nadir are stunned. The opposing army just turned and walked away with a warning from general Tenaka that they are ghosts to be. Now they walk with their guilt trying to find purpose until a farm girl is kidnapped by a Nadir raid and a young farm boy seeks these old heroes' aid to get them back.


Review: A book way too long to finish due to retroactively putting it down and starting the series from scratch. Great plot and adventurous fantasy ideals far more than the previous work. In ways it escapes its patterns and escalates them.  Not a direct sequel in the sense of character picking up the pieces where the last leaves heart wrenching, but of the time long after with characters who are later in their lives. The look at life in character depth is a strength of Gemmell here. What is not right is the rape scene used for direct plot defining character. Then there is a random Deus ex thrown right before the end that lessens the strength of possibility. Though, everything else in the end is saved by correct tale formula angulation. Though the pondering of the afterlife for the Drenai world is one of messiness and freighting to our modern senses. Perhaps a little too cliff hangy in the ending, the truer promise is Gemmell’s ability to skip generations not have the same characters hold the torch book to book, such is the twists and turns of history. 

 


 Book Dover DelRey Books

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