So, I’ve been bad about posting lately, but it’s not for lack of things to talk about, perhaps it’s work, perhaps the fact that I can’t force myself to get online after a whole day of sitting in front of the computer at work, who knows.

A couple of weeks ago I re-read the Iron Tower trilogy (an aside, follow that link and read the first customer review on the page, “Like Watching a Train Wreck in Slow Motion”). The last time that I read it was when I was about 12 or 13 perhaps and back then I loved it. It Iron Towerwas by anyone’s reckoning, a Tolkien fan’s attempt at writing something in the Tolkien realm. The author, Dennis L. McKiernan, and his publisher had even reportedly asked the Tolkien estate if they could include this in the Middle-Earth realm, to which the Shire-folk politely declined. As a youngster, none of this bothered me. The only thing I cared about was the action, the monsters and the medieval setting. I played Dungeons and Dragons religiously and loved all things “dork”. I enjoyed the books of the Iron Tower trilogy immensely, to the point that I carried an emotional reverence for them into my adult years. So in the past year or so, when I finally started getting back into the speculative fiction realm, and paid my back-dues to the Nerd’s Industrial Union, Local #3.14etc… I was excited to read this book again. It was actually a quest in itself to get the book, I tracked down an old friend previously, he reminded me who the author was and then I had to look around quite a bit online because the book isn’t in print anymore.

Eventually I lucked out and found a copy on Bookmooch (cool idea, check it out).

Finally after a couple of months on the journey, the book arrived. I immediately began reading it, the child inside me ran skipping through fields, woo-hooing and scaring the rabbits from the tall grass. Fifty pages in, the adult Nathan was outwardly trying hard to stick with the book, trying not to feel like this was an author’s very trite dry-humping of a master’s style. I am nothing if not mulish in my stubbornness though, you can verify that with Juliette. I plodded on, dreading all of the crappy repetition of lines such as, “the arrow that strays might weller been throwed away”. I’ll not bother to give any context to the quote, then I’d have to recount some of the story, which I’d rather not do. I will say that this line is repeated no less than 500,000,000 times in the text. Hard to believe, I know, considering that would make this book about a million pages long. Believe me, it felt like it.

To his benefit, I’ve never read anything else that McKiernan has written and these were his first books. Doing a simple search on his name pulls up a multitude of books, giving the impression that he’s made a career of writing. Kudos to him, he has achieved something already that few will ever attain. The issue I have is more my own I suppose. This was one of those GREAT books of my childhood. I mean it must have made an impression on me if the good memories lasted all this time. Which is why I’m all the more disappointed by reading it again and seeing it so flawed.

This book made me appreciate Tolkien all the more, because it simplified the whole Lord of the Rings thing for me, which to a child can get a bit dry and tedious. But the curtain has been pulled back on the magic that the Iron Tower held for me. In a way, it’s a bit of lost innocence I suppose.

Anyways, I’m interested if anyone else has ever had this experience with a book they loved. Maybe something like my scenario, where you re-read something from childhood, or maybe just a couple years later and found it was not as good as you remembered?