A Man With An Agenda

So this was an enjoyable enough parade through Eberron, the quest is sufficiently high stakes, and the characters are beginning to come into sharper focus. However, that focus is all sneers, and I just can't reward that kind of behavior.

Wulf relies heavily on sneering. Characters sneer at each other when they make witty ripostes, when they mock each other, when they monologue, when they accept a plate of stew for dinner. Even when it seems like a nice, friendly conversation, a sneer creeps in.

On top of that, this trilogy is riddled with typographic errors: words repeated, words omitted, words misused - the best being a flag described as hanging 'limpidly' in 'Voyage'. The flag was translucent? Is this some magician's trick? I expect errors in these tie-in, mass market books, but there are so many errors.

Another potential issue is that 'Flight of the Dying Sun' makes heavy use of flashbacks, but with little warning and without the usual narrative tricks that signal the reader to what's going - a little bit of white space is mostly all we get.

I was surprised, in a good way, that we got as open and candid an explanation as one could ask for about the Day of Mourning - the magical event that left the entire nation of Cyre dead and surrounded in mist - as I thought that was going to be a deep secret forever. This doesn't have to be canon, many DMs will continue to offer alternative explanations in game, but it was nice to have an answer laid out like that.

Another book will round out the trilogy, let's hope people start smiling, or even grinning.

Heirs of Ash

Next: 'Rise of the Seventh Sun'

Previous: 'Voyage of the Mourning Dawn'