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.

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)

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?

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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.