Current mood:	annoyed
Entry tags:	emily fiegenshuh, figure in the frost, knights of the silver dragon, lana perez

Figure in the Frost: Fourth Knights of the Silver Dragon book
This is the fifth Knights of the Silver Dragon book. This is a series of Dungeons and Dragons novels that WOTC is publishing in an effort to draw kids into gaming. The first book, Secret of the Spiritkeeper, was great, as was the fourth. The second and third books were sub-par. This book sucks. It doesn't remotely feel like D&D (one of the selling points of the series), the characters don't at all feel like the same people from the first four books, and the author has clearly decided that not only are the main characters stupid (a trait they never exibited overly before), but the audience is too! I may not be the target audience of this book, but I would have been kind of offended by it even if I was twelve!

It doesn't fill me with confidence that the author, Lana Perez, claims to be the author of teen books. But not under the name Lana Perez. That's a pen name. Ok, that's strange, if you ask me. Pen names aren't unusual, but why take one just for this and the other few books written for WOTC if you aren't embarassed by them or something? Otherwise, what would be so wrong about letting these books be associated with her "real" work? Of course, given the quality of this book, I'd probably avoid her "real" books if I knew what they were. On the other hand, if they are teen books, maybe they are better. Maybe she doesn't have the same problem with totally underestimating teen agers that she clearly has with kids (largely 9-13 year olds is my guess).

Regardless, the plot makes little sense and the characters are just plain stupid. I'm mostly done with the book and feel pretty confident saying this is *easily* the worst in the series yet. I hope not to see any more of this author from the series. They can do far better. The first and fourth books were wonderful. They felt like D&D, real kids, and real adventure. And the rogue character was a rogue! And there weren't pixies *everywhere*! And the kids had far more than three brain cells to rub together between them! I may write a letter to the editor of the series about this one. I have her email address somewhere. Oh well. Hopefully none of the others will be this bad (assuming I can get up the courage to read them at some point).