Shadows of Doom

Shadows of Doom is the second book in Dennis L McKiernan's Iron Tower trilogy. Much of what I said in my review of The Dark Tide, the first book of the trilogy, is true for book two as well. I probably like Shadows of Doom a little bit more than the first book, because there is some fascinating cosmology and mythology divulged here, hinting at the "bones beneath the soup." McKiernan really did a good job of building and populating a fantasy world, and these first two books really have been enjoyable. But they are frustrating at the same time because large sections are profoundly derivative of Tolkien's famed Lord of the Rings trilogy, coming perilously close to the borderline between pastiche and rip-off. For example, in Shadows of Doom, our intrepid heroes find themselves in great peril in an underground Dwarven realm. It is a gripping and well-described section of the adventure, but it is also aggravating because it is so obviously derivative of Tolkien's Moria scene. The shadow of Tolkien looms large over the first two books in The Iron Tower trilogy (as I'm sure it will over the third as well) and this fact does not heighten my enjoyment of the books, but rather diminishes it because of McKiernan's lack of originality in these passages. It's not the use of standard fantasy elements that I object to (evil in the North, magic weapons that will fulfill a destiny, diminutive halfling-like people who turn out to be great heroes, and so on); I've read and enjoyed tons of that sort of fare. It's in those sections where McKiernan does not recombine these elements to make them his own that my disappointment lies. In those passages of the book wherein McKiernan does his own inventing or recombining, he shows that he is a quite capable and good world-builder and fantasy writer. Perhaps in the future, if I read some of McKiernan's non-Iron Tower books, I will find that the shadow of Tolkien has receded from them and I will enjoy them even more.