Eberron novel line. Any standouts?

[Duncan Haldane]

Huhthewha-?

Don is openly gay (on a gaymer list I'm on), and I got the feeling that the shifter and his companion were "more than just good friends"

If you think it's possible, and re-read the start of the first book, you'll see what I mean.

 

[Hellcow]

I'm the first to say that I'm not on the same scale as GRRM or Mieville. The Dreaming Dark books are my first novels, and I've learned a LOT from each one. I've also received some very useful criticism and feedback from the boards. Fictionwise, don't expect Song of Ice & Fire from my Eberron books.

However, I do know Eberron, and do my best to adhere to the rules of D&D. If you take a scene like Lei fighting the minotaur, I can tell you exactly what infusions she used to accomplish it. With that in mind...

A House Canith character gets to deactivate construct with her dragonmark in the introduction...

No, she doesn't. The scene is on page 4 of The City of Towers. She touches a warforged, concentrates, and destroys him. This has nothing to do with her dragonmark, and glancing at it, I don't see anything indicating that it does. It's stated that "Since she was a child, she had been taught to weave these webs, to create magical artifacts and bring life to the lifeless."

This isn't about her dragonmark. A dragonmark is an innate power. This is about her trained skill - in other words, the fact that she is an artificer.

Meanwhile, the power used isn't disable construct; it's simply inflict damage. She touches the warforged and inflicts enough damage to destroy him. Inflict Moderate Damage or inflict serious damage are both sufficient to accomplish this task.

...and the power never turns up again, despite it’s obvious power and utility in later scenes.

Actually, she uses it again on page 299-300 of City of Towers, and she also uses it multiple times in The Shattered Land and The Gates of Night.

I can see a possible point of confusion being that she fails to completely destroy the warforged in question when she uses this infusion a second time in CoT. However, this is no different than a mage killing the first-level character with a magic missile and then failing to kill the sixth-level character using magic missile later on. She can inflict a certain amount of damage to warforged by touch. In the first instance this causes destruction; the second warforged has more HP and is merely incapacitated.

Warforged are immune to Mind Flayer mind-blasts...

This is a misunderstanding, and it's certainly a flaw in my description of the scene. But it's never stated that they are immune. The precise phrase is that "the warforged were largely unaffected by the mental assault." This wasn't intended as a blanket statement about all warforged in the world, but rather a specific statement about the warforged in the room, who were, largely, unaffected. Meaning that they made their saving throws. It is possible for ANY creature to resist mind flayer mind blasts, warforged or not. The second attack against Pierce isn't actually a mind blast; it's a targeted effect against him which would normally cause paralysis. I'd have to refer to the XPH to recall what power I had in mind, but again, Pierce resists it (and warforged ARE immune to paralysis). But, of course, if the scene is confusing, that is my fault.

So, I'm the first to admit that my WRITING has lots of room for improvement, and that's something I'm working on every day. If I could match GRRM on my first novel, I'd be amazed. But while I admit that the DD trilogy isn't the best fantasy in the world, I certainly try not to "unnecessarily violate a lot of Eberron tenets."

 

[Duncan Haldane]

Hope you don't mind me reprising an old thread - been unable to get to the boards for a couple of months, and wanted to check if anyone had responded to my posts. Having read Keith's post...

I'm the first to say that I'm not on the same scale as GRRM or Mieville. The Dreaming Dark books are my first novels, and I've learned a LOT from each one. I've also received some very useful criticism and feedback from the boards. Fictionwise, don't expect Song of Ice & Fire from my Eberron books.

However, I do know Eberron, and do my best to adhere to the rules of D&D. If you take a scene like Lei fighting the minotaur, I can tell you exactly what infusions she used to accomplish it. With that in mind...

Keith, have you ever wondered if you should be supplying a "D&D script" with a novel, listing what is done when? At least it might save you some grief

In my reading of D&D fiction there are a few authors that don't seem to come close to the rules. Ed Greenwood comes to mind - too often in his books I knew someone was casting a spell, but I had no idea what it was after seeing the effects.

I'm not saying this is a good or a bad thing, it just is.

Duncan

 

[WayneLigon]

I'm starting my first Eberron campaign (we had the first session this past Friday), and one of the players went out and bought all the Eberron novels in existane. As he gets done with one he loans it to me and so forth.

So far I've read the Dragon Below series, Blood and Honor, and I just started on Claws of the Tiger.

So far, I've enjoyed everything I've read a great deal, especially Blood and Honor. The main thing I'm impressed with over other game fiction I've read in the past is that there is so far nothing, nothing I've seen the characters do that the PC's in my game could not do. So many other books I've read (or more accurately 'attempted to read') fell down on this point, usually giving the characters outlandish special powers or weapons that most PC's would never see. I can usually tell what spell or ability someone is using, and it flows naturally with the story I'm reading. I don't get the sense of being jarred out of a novel and into reading a session writeup.

The main reason I've been reading these is to get a sense of the world and how characters move in it and react to it. These books have been invaluable to me for that.

 

[Crothian]

I'm also reading them to get a feel for the setting. The book of Short Stories was very hit and miss. Writers I'd heard of were the hits.

I'm just 100pgs into City of Towers and so far it is pretty good. It has the feel of a PC group in that they are kind of randomly attached to each other by circumstance and just manage to get their way through it. I like the use of the infusions in the book and I hope the artificer PC has read it. If not I'm suggesting he does.

I read the first book in the Dragon Below series (Binding Stone). I found it by far more interesting plot wise then any of the others and like how it deals with areas the RPG books really suck at covering.

I also read the first in the Lost Mark (Marked for Death). I really like the idea behind the lost mark making a come back but I feel the writer had no real idea how to pull together a coherent 300page story. It reads like a bunch of random encounters practically and the characters are just not all that great. But it is a series I will complete by getting the books from the library.

 

[BadMojo]

The Binding Stone (Don Bassingthwait)
The Grieving Tree (Don Bassingthwait)

I just finished reading "The Binding Stone" recently and really enjoyed it. It stayed true to the setting and the mechanics of D&D but not in a way that you could "hear the dice rolling". The characters were interesting and nuanced.

I actually thought the Psion was one of the more interesting characters in the book. I'll definitely be reading the rest of the series. Good stuff!

 

[Randolpho]

The Eberron novel line has been around long enough that there are many authors taking a go at the setting.

I've been holding out on reading much (I grabbed the first two Keith Baker novels, that's all) that has been published. I'm curious if there are any Eberron novels out that truly are worth getting, for any reason whatsoever. Great story, great take on something old, great characters, great character portrayals, talented writing, great expose on some part of the world, great execution of "fantasy noir"... whatever.

What can people recommend?

Here's my .02 GP:

I've only read the Dreaming Dark trilogy, and found it to be superior in most aspects to every other D&D-setting fiction that I've ever read, the sole exception being the original Dragonlance series.

Here, have some salt.

The Dreaming Dark trilogy was not what I would consider well-crafted fiction. It had some interesting moments, but they were not really part of the fiction so much as interesting facts about the setting and/or Warforged. The plot and its "twists" read like an epic D&D adventure -- a very cliched one. All the characters were cliched, right down to the red-haired green-eyed Mary Sue leading lady and the swordsman with a past, and Baker killed off the only one that came remotely close to being interesting. The endings of each book were less than satisfying, the ending of the final book triply so. I firmly believe that Baker simply ended them because he didn't know what to do next.

Not that I can do much better, mind.

On the whole, the books were interesting for exposition of the setting and as game/idea fodder -- and I would recommend them as such -- but not as fiction.

 

[Crothian]

Well, Lei was far from a true Mary Sue. She was a plot device for sure, but she couldn't do everything. I just finished the trilogy this week and it just had too many character mysteries and too many things left unanswered. Also, while well written there was too much in the book that is not in the RPG. As the first trilogy ity should have been an example of what the RPG is and not have so much depend on things not in the game.

 

[Meloncov]

Has anyone read the Last War short story compellation?

 

[Crothian]

Ya, I read those.