A Man With An Agenda

Seren Morisse left home after her father at the end of the Last War. The stipend from the Brelish government was only enough to keep her mother, so she left home for the capitol and didn't look back. As a young woman Wroat with no real training she had few options, but she discovered she had a talent for stealing. She fell in with an old man, Jamus, who needed a young accomplice and taught her the trade. When a risky job backfires and Jamus is murdered by their employer, Seren joins the Cannith Guildmaster she robbed and his small crew on an airship seeking out the lost Legacy of Ashrem d'Cannith - an avowed pacifist and genius artificer who claimed he was working on something that could change the future of Khorvaire and all of Eberron.

'Voyage of the Mourning Dawn' follows Seren and the crew of the 'Karia Naille' as they seek to discover the whereabouts of the Legacy and what exactly it is. Others, particularly a sinister changeling named Marth, are seeking the Legacy, too.

This was a decent start to a trilogy, but I haven't fallen in love with any of the characters yet. Seren remains a cypher despite a lot of time spent with her, and the rest of the cast is only given a brush of characterization. The villain Marth is given enough time that the reader has some doubts about how villainous he actually is. Eberron is a setting that deliberately blurs the often rigid lines of good and evil in Dungeons and Dragons.

This is the first long-format (more than one book) storyline that I've read in Eberron since the first trilogy and I'm hoping to get a little deeper into some Eberron lore. The next book promises a meatier flashback of the 'Day of Mourning' when the nation of Cyre was swallowed up by a magical terrorist attack (or industrial accident?), so that should be good.

Heirs of Ash

Next: 'Flight of the Dying Sun'