For me the second book of the series is mainly about the opposition of two religions, an ‘old’ and a ‘new’ one which can be even the paganism vs the early christianism. The best thing is that neither one is the ‘right’ one, the leader of the old one is a bloodthirsty maniac, opposing the insensitive and bigoted new. Of course besides all of these we got a great, exciting story as well. ( )

I've liked many of the books from this author, and if you've ready any of his other books, then you'll like this one for sure. If you haven't ready any of his other books, I probably wouldn't start with this one, unless you really, really like fantasy (there's magic, evil trolls, swords, a conflicted hero, etc.) ( )

Although The Ancient had some good points such as competent writing and a story that moved along pretty well, ultimately it was too convoluted and hard to get into. There were some good aspects to this. There were characters that you could root for like Bransen Garibond and Brother Cormac, and good bit of action. Ultimately what hurt this novel was that there were too many wars being fought by different factions, too many battles going on. They ultimately got all jumbled together. It was hard to tell which ones were important and which were just fluff. When they finally got together - which was extremely probably, almost ridiculously so - it was almost too late to matter.

While there was some entertainment value to this novel, it's not one that will resonate much longer after I've read it.

Carl Alves - author of Blood Street ( )

A typical Salvatore fantasy novel, set in his own world instead of the Forgotten Realms. Set before his DemonWars books, this again returns to the character of The Highwayman, from the novel of the same name. The Highwayman is again trying to do as much harm to the lords as he can, while at the same time, trying to stay free and independent. Nothing much in particular to make this story stand out, though at least there's no rangers in this one. This time, the monk and cleric stand out, while the dwarves and barbarians take a lesser role. In that sense, it reminds me of the Cadderly books, with the roles jumbled a bit. ( )