Don’t Read Dragonlord Of Mystara!

Generally D&D based books are not going to be award winners, but Dragonlord of Mystara has got to rank among the worst of them.  It was written in 1994 by Thorarinn Gunnarsson.  Which according to Wikipedia is a pen name, and that makes sense because if I had written this book I wouldn’t want my name on it either.  I thought my book was bad, but I am feeling better about myself now.

Like all bad fantasy books (mine included), Dragonlord of Mystara is about an orphan, and wouldn’t you guess he is destined for something special.  He is also of an unknown race living amongst people who dislike outsiders, so you know that Gunnarsson was really swinging for the fences as far as fantasy tropes go.  He goes on a quest to discover his past, and it all gets worse from there.

This book starts out in the so bad it is funny category, but then quickly devolves to just being so bad it is hard to read.  If it had stayed over the top bad, I might have been able to suggest it to small subset of fantasy readers as a farce, but no this book insists that no one like it.  Sadly it is unsuccessful at even that, I have read on Amazon that a few people did actually enjoy this book, but they are all dragon lovers, and any book that treats dragons as smart and non-monstrous is a winner.  They are wrong, and I am sorry they have so few books to read to satisfy them.

There are two more books in the series (because everything in fantasy is a trilogy, especially bad fantasy), I shudder to think what horrors Gunnarsson has loosed on the art of writing in those tomes.  I will never know because I stop my journey with Thelvyn Fox Eyes here!  Oh, did I say that was the main character’s name?  I didn’t, but terrible books deserve terrible reviews!