The Thieves' Guild

Dragonlance: Crossroads #2

by Jeff Crook, Paul B. Thompson

Ruled by the Knights of Neraka, the beautiful and glittering city of Palanthas confronts an old threat when the Thieves' Guild, once crushed by the Dark Knights, begins to rebuild itself, intent on regaining its lost wealth and power.

Genres: Dragonlance, Fantasy, Dungeons and Dragons, Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, High Fantasy

320 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published December 1, 2000

About the author

Jeff Crook and his lovely wife, Lady Jessica, live in the Quinn family home among Jeff's ancestors -- not in the Native American or even the John-Boy Walton sense, but in the Stephen King sense. As their niece Nickie said, "Those stairs are spooky!" There, Jeff grows tomatoes and grass (more grass than tomatoes), sometimes he works, and he writes the rest of the time, neglecting most everything else, except the cat that must be fed from time to time.

Jeff's first Dragonlance novel, The Rose and the Skull, hit the shelves in March 1999. He also worked on a second Dragonlance novel for the Crossroads series. One of his stories was also included in the 2000 Dragonlance anthology, Rebels and Tyrants. His story, "The Fractal," appeared in Relics and Omens, poetry in "The Final Word," and five AD&D adventures in Dungeon Magazine. He is currently the editor of Campaigns, the newsletter for the Southern Realms region of the RPGA.

When not writing or working or gardening or feeding the kitty, Jeff occasionally likes to mingle with humanity. He enjoys his food a bit too much, and wine is an expensive hobby he could probably do without, except life wouldn't be worth living. And when everything is quiet and the house is dark, the cat is asleep and the computer is turned off, Jeff lies in bed listening to things go bump in the night. He tries to turn off his brain so he can go to sleep, but it doesn't always work.

Reviews

[Jim C · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book takes place in the Dragonlance universe. This book is about an independent thief, Cael, who resides in the city of Palanthas. Also, in this city is a thieves' guild that doesn't like independent thieves and they capture Cael.

I thought the author did a good job with the setting and the atmosphere for this book. I also thought he had a good storyline but my problem with this book was its execution. First, I think this book tried too hard to tie in with the original trilogy of Dragonlance. If this book never mentioned anything about the original works, I believe it would have been better. Another issue I had was when the protagonist was in a bind. I understand that luck might be involved with main characters but the author's solution to these binds were too fortunate. It took away from the storyline.

I do like the author's writing style but this is not the best book in this universe.

[Brett · Rating 5 out of 5]

I cannot say enough about how just plain fun this book was to read.

[Oscar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Libro entretenido, que no aporta mucho al mundo de Krynn que digamos... y en el cual se insinúan ciertos matices (que no desvelaré para no destripar nada a nadie)... pero que a mi manera de ver, son poco convincentes...

Si fuera una película la calificaría, como mucho, de palomitas...

Buena lectura!!

[Tom Green · Rating 4 out of 5]

Decent and not a Mary Sue. Nice. The story had meaning and consequences.

[audrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

There needs to be a word in English for when a book you remember fondly from reading eons ago, as basically a whole different person, stands up to a much later re-read.

[E J · Rating 2 out of 5]

How this book got near 4 stars by the community is beyond me. The book feels like it was written by two authors; one for the first half, and a retarded simulacrum in the second half.

It was childish and immature, in a bad way. What starts out as promising, albeit slow, turns into several moments where I'm either skim reading it or going "WTF?" Alynthia's character devolves from a moderately bad ass, if not stubbornly combative, to a drip of a girl in the second half of the book, crying on whatshisname's shoulder and making interminably stupid decisions. How does a supposed 'captain' think like a character with an INT of 7 or less? Also, she's revealed to be married to the big baddie, and he just dumps her because she "betrayed the guild". Just a single casually tossed phrase and I'm meant to take their word for it that presumably decades of marriage, relationship trials and tests of personality and ego, et al are magically kaput? I felt absolutely no impact from Oros' exclamation.

Side characters die off one by one in a misguided attempt to ratchet up the stakes. I mean, it felt more like the author was flicking cigarettes out the car window than close-knit guildmates dying to tragic circumstances. Sir Arach's death was an absolute farce. Here was the most interesting character and he gets 2 paragraphs of a death scene.

Why did Cael and Alynthia go up to Bertram, a librarian, with a knife, and threaten him to reveal... whatever the fuck, I don't remember - that they wanted him to reveal? He went with them more than willingly and said they could exit out the front door when they were done. Cael and Alynthia rifle through three books, come up with fuck all and then tell him they have to go off somewhere, and Bertram basically goes, "yep, 'kay." Is this what counts as storytelling worthy of, at the time of writing, 3.96 stars on GR? If you say yes, you have no standards. Probably consider mac and cheese a food group, you fat, lazy fuck.

So many chapters are filled with extraneous fluff and flavour that went nowhere, and I'm not talking about the lore expositions. Characters were being chased into CONSECUTIVE chapters! This book should've been half it's length and it reads like it's from some horrible cliched crap from the early 80s. No please, by all means... explain why this book was rated so highly. It fucking sucked.

[Gentry · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was ok.