The Lord of the Troll Bats

Wizenbeak Trilogy #3

by Alexis A. Gilliland

Wizenbeak's comfortable life is gone now that he is wed to the twelve-year-old princess who holds the essence of her dead mother, Queen Shaia, and when Shaia's spirit disappears, Wizenbeak is left alone to battle the Troll-Bats. Original.

Genres: Fantasy

233 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published May 1, 1992

About the author

Alexis Arnaldus Gilliland (born August 10, 1931 in Bangor, Maine) is an American science fiction writer and cartoonist. He resides in Arlington, Virginia.

Gilliland won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 1982, notably beating David Brin and Michael Swanwick for the honor. Gilliland also won four Hugo Awards for Best Fan Artist (1980, 1983, 1984, 1985), the Rotsler Award (Lifetime Achievement in Fan Cartooning) in 2006, and the Tucker Award (for Excellence in Partying) in 1988.

He and his first wife, Dolly (died 1991) hosted meetings of science fiction fans in his home approximately once a month from November 1967 until July 2006, and twice monthly since. In 1993 he married Lee Uba (née Elisabeth Swanson).

Reviews

[T.A. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tried I really did but at page 91 I realised I just didn’t care and I didn’t want to read it.

This is partly my own fault as I bought this book years ago but didn’t realise it was the last book in a trilogy. I did look to buy the others by the one was selling for an obscene amount of money that I wouldn’t pay for my favourite author.

So I decided to try anyway as there’s a ‘previously on’ at the start but I was just to confusing and not my style of writing.

I would say in my defence though that there is absolutely no indication on the book cover that this is part of a trilogy and as I bought it before I had a smart phone I had no way of knowing.

Anyway if you’ve read the first two you’ll probably get on better than I did. Marking it as read as it took me so long to read those 91 pages I feel I deserve the credit 😆

[Kim · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this book in an exercise of not judging a book by its cover (and to get the book with the most embarrassingly ridiculous title off my shelves). Unfortunately, you may feel free to judge this book by its cover.

The other unfortunate thing about this book is that I didn't realize before starting it that this is the third book in a series. Perhaps some of what was lacking in this book is explained in the first two books in the series, but I'll never know as I have no intention of ever reading them.

This story started out with a whole lot of characters with unrememberable names doing things for unknown reasons. It skipped back and forth between different plots confusingly. I had difficulty paying attention and found myself thinking about other things as I was reading this. Eventually, though, things settled down, plots were thinned out, characters were killed off and it became easier to follow what was supposed to be happening. I don't know if it was really because the writing got better or just because I got a little more used to it.

Throughout the book, though, the writing was clunky, the plot was disjointed, and the characters were shallow. Plot lines were dropped at seeming random and characters would suddenly do things that previously there was no suggestion they ever might do.

The best I can say for this book is that halfway through I still wanted to finish it, although if I had somehow lost my copy, I wouldn't have bothered to pick up a new one.