In the first chapter of David Gemmell's Legend, the barbarian king bites the head off a chicken. Things go downhill from there.

Legend mostly concerns a siege of a Drenai fortress by the Nadir barbarians. Before that happens, though, there is some insufferable setup involving a seemingly cowardly (but actually brave) former captain, his newly discovered and swiftly conquered warrior princess, and Druss the Legend, perhaps the most (or only) interesting character in a cast of paper-thin figures. The siege itself is occasionally enjoyable, but mostly boring, especially since you don't really care who lives or dies. And the ending is just laughable.

I guess the only good thing about this book is that it occasionally manages to convey the despair of a small group of soldiers attempting to hold a doomed fortress against the inevitable victory of violent barbarians. And it also occasionally conveys the growing weariness of Druss, who is merely a man but who realizes that his legend precedes him--and, in many ways, sustains the increasingly hopeless Drenai.

Aside from that, though, the book is dreadful. Since this is Gemmell's first book, I can only hope that his later work improves significantly.

Copyright © 2002 Steven Wu