The existance of the fantasy genre owes itself to J.R.R. Tolkien, and the portrayal of things like goblins, elves and generic medieval civilizations always hinge on how the Master did it. But in his debut novel "The Dark Tide," Dennis McKiernan takes so much so that the derivative elements far outweigh the original stuff. It's turgid, silly, and almost funny.Tuck Underbank is a Warrow -- think a hobbit with shoes and "large jewel-like eyes" -- living in the peaceful Boskydells. When an unnaturally cold winter strikes and the evil Modru threatens the world, he and a number of his fellow Thornwalkers go to the High King's aid. But a vast expanse of lightless blizzard called the Dimmendark (sounds bad, doesn't it?) is spreading over the land, and Tuck soon finds that the "dark tide" is going to swamp them all.
Despite the fact that they're tiny and temperamental, the Warrows get included in the military forces. But the High King doesn't have enough warriors to hold off the horde of slobbering monsters who are coming to attack. And the battle goes horribly wrong, separating the friends from one another and possibly dooming them all.
The general feeling when reading "Dark Tide" is that McKiernan wanted to rewrite "Lord of the Rings" in his own way, by including some horribly nauseating romance. There is literally nothing in here that Tolkien didn't do first and better. Even some of the names, such as Gildor and Laurelin, are lifted directly, while others (Underbank, Proudhand) are barely altered.
The Warrows themselves are like hobbits on some sort of armed testosterone trip. Imagine Frodo Baggins in the Marines -- silly image, isn't it? McKiernan doesn't stop there, carefully retreading every single fantasy cliches, including the Strong Noble Hero, the Damsel in Distress, the Evil Creepy Creatures, The Cackling Dark Lord, and the Small Yet Plucky Hero Who Must Save The World. It's all been done before, and it was a lot better the first time.
McKiernan writes in his own painful ye olde fantasye style, full of semicolons, mangled old-English phrases, and words like "naytheless" which actually don't make any sense. He assigns four or five names to every species, land, seasonal holiday, and so forth -- then insists on trotting those names out whenever he can. He also has difficulty with accents: One minute the Warrows sound like English countryfolk, then pirates, then Cockneys, then some sort of crazed redneck dialect.
He also tries to duplicate Tolkien's style, spelling "wagon" as "waggon" and having crowd murmurs in italics, as well as having Tuck and Company switch from using contractions and ordinary words, to formal prose. Every now and then he throws in the word "lo." His writing is full of unwanted details. And sometimes his use of words is bewildering: on the very first page, we hear about Tuck kicking up "clots" of snow.
The good guys tend to all be buddies, and all the humans inexplicably adore the Warrows. Tuck Underbank is a pitiful excuse for a hero. He cries constantly, and never takes the initiative. High King Aurion and his son Galen are sickeningly noble and brave, while Gildor is just a generic elf. And the female characters are simply insulting: Merrilee is Tuck's token girlfriend, while Laurelin is a sweet, innocent, beautiful, utterly helpless princess who gets kidnapped and has to be rescued.
"Dark Tide" rips off and distorts J.R.R. Tolkien, and mixes the remains with some bad sword-and-sorcery. Derivative and horribly written, McKiernan's debut is recommended for people who want some good comic fantasy.
