A Brief Introduction

The first book, The Stowaway, begins in medias res, with Maimun imprisoned in a cave somewhere.  He begins telling his story to one of the pirates, which lets us as readers catch up on his story.  In The Shadowmask, the second book in the series, Maimun continues telling his story.

Maimun is a young man is suddenly caught up in a series of crazy, confusing events.  He finds himself alone in the world, trying to avoid a powerful enemy he never knew existed and trying to figure out the mystery of the stone that’s been his from birth.  As readers, we follow along with Maimun’s story, waiting to see how Maimun ended up in that cave in the first place and how the whole story ends.

Thoughts on The Stowaway

The Stowaway is an intriguing book, and I very much enjoyed stepping into Maimun’s story.  The structure was a bit difficult to follow at times, though; there’s a little bit of back-tracking to fill in Maimun’s history, and the back-and-forth nature of the story-telling was a little confusing at times, but all the confusing wrinkles were ironed out by the end of the book.  The book ends with the introduction of another antagonist, who leaves Maimun with a difficult situation to address in the next book.

Thoughts on The Shadowmask

The Shadowmask picks up immediately where The Stowaway ended.  We learn more of Maimun’s story as he continues telling his tale to the pirate.  We see a little bit more character growth in this book, especially as Maimun tries to unravel the mystery introduced at the conclusion of the previous book.  The Shadowmask ends fairly abruptly, leaving readers waiting for the next book in the series to find out what happens to bring about Maimun’s imprisonment and if he can escape.

Thoughts on the Pair

The books share a similar structure: three sections, which are introduced by Maimun’s conversation with the pirate.  I like the conversations as a way to foreshadow the upcoming story, though, as I mentioned, it was a little difficult to follow in the early part of the first book.

There’s a good combination of light-heartedness and drama throughout both books, and the balance of action and story-telling moves the plot along without dragging.  I did find some of the story to be a bit predictable, but considering the young adult audience, it was not overly annoying; I would advise mature readers to be prepared for obvious plot devices and predictable behavior from Maimun.

Both books are set during the time of R.A. Salvatore’s The Pirate King, and there are cameo appearances by Drizzt, Bruenor, Wulfgar, Catti-Brie and Regis.  The cameos from are lightly handled and do not take over the story too much.  In The Stowaway, the encounters between Maimun and Drizzt feel more casual than they do in The Shadowmask, mostly due to the differences in plot surrounding those encounters.

Overall, I enjoyed both books as light, quick reads, and I am looking forward to the future release of the third.  The Stowaway is currently available, and The Shadowmask releases Tuesday, Nov 11.  For those who enjoy a good, young adult fantasy story with a bit of swashbuckling action thrown in, I recommend these books.

Basic Info – No Spoilers!

The first book in the Kingkiller Chronicle series, The Name of the Wind begins the story of Kvothe, a man of mystery who is credited for performing many legendary acts.  Since every good story should begin at the beginning, this story takes us through the early years of Kvothe’s life.

But the book doesn’t actually begin with Kvothe’s childhood story; it begins at an inn in a small town.  The story is told by the innkeeper, with occassional interruptions from his audience.  The book ends with all the open-ended story elements neatly concluded and story elements from the next book foreshadowed, preparing you to move on to the next part of the story.

My Impressions

When I first picked up this book, I was intrigued.  The intro chapter, the back cover description… it all sounded so interesting.  But when I first started to read it, I found myself easily distracted and quickly set it aside for a couple of months.  But like most good books, it sat there on the bookshelf,  patiently waiting for me to come back and try it again.

Second time was the charm for me; once I got through the first couple of short chapters, I found myself drawn into the story very quickly.  I took that book with me everywhere, reading every few minutes I had to spare.  I was well and thoroughly hooked, and I couldn’t wait to read what happened next.  Then, as I got closer and closer to the end of the book, I found myself slowing down, not because I wasn’t interested but because I didn’t want it to end!

The storytelling, for me, was perfect.  There were triumphant moments shared with the hero and tense moments as I waited to see how things would resolve.  Not every dramatic moment ended happily for the hero; sometimes, bad things happened, but there was character growth from those setbacks.

Overall

I truly enjoyed this story, and I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a well-written, immersive story.

The new Prescient Bard build in the book sets the flavor for many of the new bardic abilities. These turn your bard into something of a short-term prophet, able to see the future and to mess with it a little to his advantage. There are a lot of really cool powers to choose from, but on occasion I feel they didn’t try hard enough to engage the player’s imagination and just relied on the combat mechanics. (This is one of my primary complaints with 4e in general, not just this book.) Take for instance the Horrifying Truth power, whose description reads “Your cruel pronouncement becomes truer with every strike.” It deals damage, dazes the target, and stuns the target if it doesn’t save. With that kind of description, I’m expecting a gypsy to hop out of my lute and rub the target’s nose and say “THINNER!”. Or maybe the ghost of a creepy Japanese girl to appear and proclaim the target not a pitcher, but a belly-itcher, causing him 4d8+CHA self-esteem damage.

They’ve added several bardic paragon paths in Arcane Power as well:

• Cunning Prevaricator – basically your bard is fantastic at lying and exaggerating. Somehow this translates into making him and all his allies invisible at strategically opportune times. (As an aside, “Lying Lights” sounds to me like the name of something I would have watched on Cinemax as a teenager when my parents had gone to bed.) Later powers let him misdirect the opponent’s attacks back upon himself or other enemies, presumably so the bard can ask him “why do ya keep hitting yourself?”
• Euphonic Bow – The concept for this one is, in my opinion, one of the coolest things in the book. You’re a bard, except your bow plays notes as you attack. The path description says something about the sound your arrows make as they hit their targets providing percussion for the song of battle, and all I can think of is Freddie Mercury singing, “out of the doorway, the bullets rip — to the sound of the beat!” It’s sort of like multiclassing your bard with an arcane archer, but without quite the range of abilities. Still neat.
• Grave Caller – Apparently they have bardic assassins. Who knew? This one seemed a little out of place to me, since I guess I always imagined assassins as being quiet and not singing. Then again, I’ve watched enough anime in my day to know that a really talented assassin can use anything they want as a weapon, immense size and noise be damned. Either way, if you’re looking to cause grief (possibly in the form of death) to one unlucky creature at a time, the deathmark ability and its associated powers are a good way to get there.
• Half-Elf Emissary – Ever have one of those people in your group that tried to max their Diplomacy skill and use it as often as possible? Well, now that person’s empathy and oratory ability are deadly weapons. (For, ahem, “aggressive negotiations”, I would assume.) This path gets automatic points against it for only being available to half-elves. Because everyone knows dwarves and half-orcs can never, ever be charismatic and likeable. This path’s powers are based largely on him being such a galactically amazing social butterfly that the number of people he can see, friends and enemies alike, make his abilities stronger. I kind of want to bludgeon myself into unconsciousness when I think about this one too hard.
• Karmic Shaper – Sort of the “evolved” form of the Prescient Bard build, this path is all about squaring up karmic debts. Well, sort of. You “interpret” karma, so that means if your enemy does something bad to you, your powers make him pay for it. If one of your allies screws up, you interpret all the good times you’ve had together and replace his attack roll with one of your own. It’s kind of like D&D My Name Is Earl, but backwards and with swords and a touch of godlike power to change fate.
• Life Singer – You’re a bard who comes from this place where some bad stuff happened and evil spirits cursed you with bad weather. Now, in order to combat the evil spirit (which I thusly dub “El Niño”), you become a tree-hugging pacifist hippie. Your power is that of smugness, and atop your ivory tower of morality, you grant bonuses to all your allies only if they do not attack anything. This will almost certainly set a new standard for the paragon everyone regrets picking almost immediately due to everyone hating them forever. This paragon path may ruin long-standing friendships. I worry for the future of gaming now that this is out.

A few odd complaints aside, I would wholeheartedly recommend this book if you’ve got a bard. The only thing I’m really disappointed in is the lack of the 3.5 book Complete Arcane‘s Seeker of the Song prestige class. I had my fingers crossed, and was denied.

Next time, I’ll review the Sorcerer class. Spicy!

Now, I am a huge fan of the Forgotten Realms, but Waterdeep is not one of the places I have visited often. Everyone knows of the City of Splendors, but my knowledge of the history and lore of the city are pretty slim. And I only had passing familiarity with Khelban Blackstaff or the Blackstaff Tower.

Schend did a great job of involving me in the story. The first chapter was very disconnected from the prologue, so it took me a little while to be fully introduced to the characters and how they all fit into the story. Very quickly, though, I was immersed. The story was engaging; I became invested in the characters and needed to know what happened next. Before I knew it, I was a third of the way through and in danger of staying up all night to finish the book! (I didn’t, but only because I had to work the next morning.)

It’s an epic tale of good versus evil with plenty of intrigue and suspense thrown in for good measure. Without ruining the tale (because I highly recommend reading it for yourself), the story follows the adventures of a noble-born, a spellcaster, a thief, a sellsword and the Blackstaff heir in their quest to prevent the evil mage from taking control of Waterdeep.

There were several things I liked about Schend’s writing style. First, he was able to draw me into the quest very quickly and with only a little effort. I was concerned for the good guys, I despised the bad guys, and I desperately wanted to see the good guys succeed, especially during those times when I was sure they couldn’t possibly overcome of the odds. Second, Schend easily provided me with the information I needed to feel comfortable in Waterdeep; one of the characters was a student of Waterdavian history, who shared information about the city without lecturing so there was never too much unnecessary information to bog down the story.

Best of all, Schend handled the combat sequences beautifully. As I read about the battles, I could imagine sitting around the table, rolling the dice… the successes and near misses were so vivid. I simultaneously felt as if I was watching the battle and participating in the roleplaying.

The one thing I would have changed was the ending. Not to say that the story didn’t end well: all the lose ends were wrapped up and there was a sense of closure. However, it seemed a little rushed; I wanted it to be drawn out a bit. I’m sure this is partly because I was having a great time and didn’t want to see it end. To me, it felt hurried during a time when I wanted to savor the successful end of the quest.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and will definitely read it again. I highly recommend this to anyone who enjoys stories of the Realms.

I consider that a dirty shame.

What is it?

The Silmarillion is essentially a collection of myths, legends, and histories of Middle Earth. This includes, but is not focused on, the Third Age of Middle Earth which contains the Lord of the Rings stories that everyone loves.

This work is considered by most to reflect the main body of Tolkien’s unfinished works. He started writing the stories that would eventually become this work in 1914, and continued revising and expanding them all throughout his life. At one point, he heavily desired that The Silmarillion be released alongside the Lord of the Rings stories but his publisher wasn’t biting.

Why you should care.

There are five main sections of The Silmarillion, and you can find out more about their contents courtesy of a very well crafted Wikipedia article on the topic. One of my favorite sections is the first, which mirrors an allegorical retelling of the creation story regarding Middle Earth and its races.

As the book progresses, its tone shifts first to myths and histories of the elves and we are given a wonderful love story, “Of Beren and Lúthien”. I will not do the story the injustice of being summarized by my clumsy hand, but suffice it to say if you want depth of characters and a lesson in epic storyline construction you really can start there and be completely satisfied.

I could go on and on about how excellent aspects of this text is, but that would take a long time and my hands would be numb from typing. Anyone who delights in world-building would benefit from the depth and grandeur that Tolkien (and his son, who edited The Silmarillion) gives Middle Earth beyond what most people are familiar with.

It is a shining example of how being passionate about world-building does not have to involve every last detail you ever conceived of in every storyline. If Tolkien had included 1/5 of the characters that he speaks about in The Silmarillion in The Lord of the Rings stories, it would’ve been fifteen volumes and nobody would’ve ever heard about it because the first person to start reading it wouldn’t be done yet. It takes a light touch to color a small portion of your landscape correctly with the right characters, and Tolkien gives a master’s course in doing this in The Lord of the Rings.

In addition to the world-building aspect, you also get some excellent character archetypes from the tales contained in its 365 pages. The aforementioned Beren and Lúthien are great examples, as are Fëanor and his line, who created the magical jewels called Silmarils that the collection is named after. The passion, motivation, and depth of these characters are excellent examples of how good character development can be in a short space. Taking a few of these stories, reading them, and reflecting on how you can build characters as dynamic as these would be an excellent exercise to prepare you for your next campaign, whether writing one or playing in one.

This article is clearly biased.

This week, I was able to add a first edition / first printing of this book to my collection and I consider it a true prize. It doesn’t trouble me at all that many of my Tolkien-nerd friends don’t apprecaite it. I do, and that’s the important part!

Dante looked at me and asked if there was anything in there. I told him that since it was locked, the more important question was, where is the key.

Fortunately, I rolled really high on my Remember Where Random Item Is Located roll and found the key in a basket on top of the kitchen shelves. Upon opening the safe, it was, in fact, empty.

Dante got a gleam in his eye and headed over to the hutch in which we keep Important Documents. I briefly wondered what he decided was important enough to go in the safe that has been empty for four years, but my contemplations were short-lived as he quickly returned in plopped something right in the safe.

I asked what he put in there, and he lifted from the safe one of the D&D books signed by Gary Gygax. Because, of course, what document could be more important to save during a fire?

I remember that one such book named “Space Vampire” (by Edward Packard) used to scare the crap out of me when I was a kid. It wasn’t the storyline, per se, but there were several “failure” illustrations that showed your gaunt dessicated corpse after the Space Vampire did his thing. Judith Mitchell certainly had the “creepy enough to seep into my dreams” illustration thing down.

Write your own adventure, or use a stock adventure?

This is one of the eternal questions, and it comes down to matter of preference. Personally, I find it generally easier for me to invest myself in a storyline or plot point if I create it from the ground up. I tend to either forget (I’m not much of a note-taker) or fail miserably at adapting the stock adventure elements to my own storyline, so I tend to prefer hand-rolling my own modular adventures.

There was a small part of me that was somewhat compelled to write my own “Choose Your Own Adventure” book when I was a kid, and I have to believe that was some of my proto-DM tendencies wanting to be released to the world.

Has anyone else been otherwise inspired by these books, or am I just particularly insane for keeping a special place in my heart for them?