High Fantasy in the Tolkien tradition: The Iron Tower Trilogy by Dennis L. McKiernan
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The Iron Tower Trilogy: The Dark Tide, Shadows of Doom, and The Darkest Day
(Signet, August 1985, September 1985, and October 1985). Covers by Alan Lee
I recently posted some of my thoughts about High Fantasy. I haven’t read a large amount from that field but I did read Dennis L. McKiernan’s first trilogy of books, the Iron Tower trilogy, which is definitely High Fantasy written very strongly in the Tolkien tradition.
Here’s my review of those three books, which I read in an omnibus edition.
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Back covers for The Dark Tide, Shadows of Doom, and The Darkest Day
While laid up after a motorcycle accident for several months, Dennis L. McKiernan (1932 – ) began writing what he first intended to be a sequel to The Lord of the Rings. When that plan fell through, he changed some of the setting and produced his Iron Tower trilogy, which was published by Doubleday in 1984, although he started the work in 1977 after his accident.
I read the three in the omnibus edition shown below, but the three books are:
The Dark Tide (Signet, August 1985)
Shadows of Doom (Signet, September 1985)
The Darkest Day (Signet, October 1985)
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The omnibus edition of the Iron Tower trilogy (Roc, 2000). Cover by Jerry Vanderstelt
These are McKiernan’s first books and show his inexperience, but he did produce some memorable characters and I generally enjoyed the books.
Perhaps because of how the work was initially conceived, as a sequel to Tolkien’s work, they bear a very close resemblance to Tolkien’s setting, characters, and overall story arcs, so much so that one might be forgiven for considering them pastiche Tolkien. From what I’ve heard, McKiernan went on to write much more original material later.
However, though I have a couple of his later books I’ve not read any of them. Anyone have a recommendation for something good from him?
Charles Gramlich administers The Swords & Planet League group on Facebook, where this post first appeared. His last article for us was a a review of the Bigfoot: Sword of the Earthman graphic novel by Josh S. Henaman, Andy Taylor, and Tamra Bonvillain. See all of his recent posts for Black Gate here.
I’ve a fondness for “Voyage of the Fox Rider” and the “Tales of Mithgar”/”Red Slippers” anthologies – they’re firmly after he found his voice and settled into what Mithgar is and isn’t JUST aping Tolkein. I also tend to favor the smaller stories as a rule and they lack the sprawl of some of his larger arcs in the series.
Hands down favorite tho – likely unreasonably – is the graphic novel “Tales from the One-Eyed Crow: The Vulgmaster.” adapted from a McKiernan’s short story by David Keller and Alex Niño. My local library had a copy when I was but a boy and it served as my intro to Mithgar before anything else. Took a decade of hunting second hand stores pre-ebay to obtain my own copy. It’s short, potent, and has a B&W ink style illustration style that evokes Mithgar wonderfully while conjuring characters that carry on to some of his later works.
That tales from the One-eyed Crow sounds interesting. I’ll have to see if I can pick it up. I definitely need to read some later McKiernan
Tales from the One-Eyed Crow was my introduction as well. I literally had the same exact experience of looking for it for years and finally finding a copy on Ebay for way too much. It’s a great story. I think, Dennis Mckiernan’s greatest strengths as a writer is that is work is extremely atmospheric and evocative. It’s FANTASY and you can tell that as a writer he was obsessed with the vision he was creating. The covers for the trilogy above match the image that he paints in my mind as a reader. I’m partial to ‘Eye of the Hunter’. It actually shares many of the same main characters from ‘Tales from the One Eyed Crow’ and takes place over 1000 years. There are some very intense scenes which he depicts well with quality action building tension nicely.
Good to see McKiernan here, Charles.
I’ve failed to write about McKiernan, and Mithgar, for several years now.
Though I did work him into one of my Shelfie posts:
https://www.blackgate.com/2024/01/15/bobs-books-shelfie-7-mckiernan-watt-evans-lieber-bischoff-rosenberg/
I believe he’s as close to Tolkien as we’ll get. And it’s homage, not just copying.
He was in the phone book when he lived here in Columbus years ago. I called him up, he invited me out, and we talked for a couple hours and he signed a bunch of my Mithgar books. SUPER nice guy.
FYI – He was riding his bike when a car hit him. Basically bedridden in a body cast and unable to work at his job, circa 1980, he wrote The Silver Call Duology, as a sequel to the Moria story.
The Tolkien people told him NOPE. Nobody writes Tolkien. Drop it.
His agent told him to convert his world into what became Mithgar, and to write another story (to hone his craft). So, he wrote the Iron Tower Trilogy, as an original but very Tolkien-like world. I think he told me the trilogy part was intentional, to emulate LoTR.
That got printed by ROC, and The Silver Call Duology was printed next.
And so Mithgar was born.
You, sir, teased a McKiernan post on this very site 10 years ago. That’s more than several. That’s a decade. I’m still waiting!
A second vote for him being a nice guy.
I’ve also heard he’s a nice fellow but I haven’t met him
🙂
As I look to my left at my McKiernan shelfie.
And last year, I picked up all the books in that fairy tale, ‘Once Upon a..’ series. I should tackle the first one.
I’m lucky in that although I’ve been in 3 motorcycle accidents, none of which were my fault, I didn’t end up being bedridden. Had some broken ribs and a collar bone which cause me a lot of problems, and am still feeling some of the aftereffects, but I’m off motorcycles for good. Sounds like you’re more familiar with his work than I am for sure
Does anyone have any source on this “sequel to LOTR” story? I’ve seen it countless times on the Internet (this is how I first found out about him), but it seems to be all hearsay. I’ve never been able to find a statement by him in this regard (not even for the weaker claim that he wrote The Silver Call before The Iron Tower).
He wrote about it in the forward or afterward in one of the paperbacks I had. Collision, traction, time, etc. He wrote the Silver Call as a sequel to LOTR, and when the publisher asked him to make it a non-sequel, he wrote the Iron Tower trilogy to set up the Silver Call. Hence the bridge sequence in non-Moria.
As much as I lived and breathed LOTR in my youth, the heroics of the Silver call and Iron Tower vibed with me more.
I think I read it from him too in an introduction or something. I’ve had several versions of those books over the years
I don’t remember specifically where I read it. I thought it was in an introduction to one of his works but it’s not in the intro to the omnibus set I currently have. I’ve owned other versions of these books previously.
In the intro to the first edition paperback of Trek to Kraggen-Cor (Silver Call book one), he wrote about the car hitting him Memorial Day weekend of 1977.
He said he finished it and sent it off to Doubleday.
And while waiting on them, he started writing The Iron Tower Trilogy.
He is more specific about the order in the ROC reprint of the duology in one volume.
So that addresses the writing order, at least.
that sounds like one that I read
I’d never heard of these, but I just tracked down a used paperback on eBay for seven bucks. So we’ll see!
Let us know what you think