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I'm reading the Forgotten Realms Novels- #202 The Howling Delve by Jaleigh Johnson (Dungeons 2)
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<blockquote data-quote="Alzrius" data-source="post: 8038038" data-attributes="member: 8461"><p>A minor correction: from what I've been able to find, Lynn Abbey <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravenloft#Novels" target="_blank">never wrote a Ravenloft novel</a>. I even pulled my copy of the Tales of Ravenloft anthology off the shelf to check the list of short stories, and she's not one of the authors listed there.</p><p></p><p>Having said that, the only Dark Sun novel of hers that I read was The Rise and Fall of a Dragon King, and I agree that she's an exceptionally talented writer. Her plot progression was solid, and her characters were exceptionally vivid. But what drove me up the wall at the time was that she got certain aspects of the setting wrong. It was never anything major...except for a few things where it was (i.e. large-scale spellcasting does not accelerate a sorcerer-king's dragon transformation).</p><p></p><p>That bothered me a lot when I was younger, though I've mellowed out on it somewhat since then (or rather, become mildly embittered by successive edition changes that have continually retconned things). Even so, I do still consider that to be a problem. The particular how's and why's of a given fantasy setting are important, at least to my mind, because they not only form the underpinnings of what makes that particular setting distinctive (alongside the characters and narrative sequences themselves), but also because they lay the foundations for the world's internal logic and self-consistency. You can get those things wrong and still make entertaining stories, to be certain, but be prepared for those stories to be difficult to reconcile with the larger setting.</p><p></p><p>Now, to be fair, this is hardly something specific to Lynn Abbey. Paul Kidd's Greyhawk books gleefully butcher the setting's canon and are still a lot of fun to read. Laurel K. Hamilton's Ravenloft book, Death of a Darklord, not so much. But Abbey's Dark Sun novels (or at least the one I read) manage to do pretty well regardless of the non-canon aspects. I just wish she'd adhered closer to the game rules when writing the books, so that they could be enjoyed for what they said about the setting as well as the characters.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Alzrius, post: 8038038, member: 8461"] A minor correction: from what I've been able to find, Lynn Abbey [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravenloft#Novels]never wrote a Ravenloft novel[/url]. I even pulled my copy of the Tales of Ravenloft anthology off the shelf to check the list of short stories, and she's not one of the authors listed there. Having said that, the only Dark Sun novel of hers that I read was The Rise and Fall of a Dragon King, and I agree that she's an exceptionally talented writer. Her plot progression was solid, and her characters were exceptionally vivid. But what drove me up the wall at the time was that she got certain aspects of the setting wrong. It was never anything major...except for a few things where it was (i.e. large-scale spellcasting does not accelerate a sorcerer-king's dragon transformation). That bothered me a lot when I was younger, though I've mellowed out on it somewhat since then (or rather, become mildly embittered by successive edition changes that have continually retconned things). Even so, I do still consider that to be a problem. The particular how's and why's of a given fantasy setting are important, at least to my mind, because they not only form the underpinnings of what makes that particular setting distinctive (alongside the characters and narrative sequences themselves), but also because they lay the foundations for the world's internal logic and self-consistency. You can get those things wrong and still make entertaining stories, to be certain, but be prepared for those stories to be difficult to reconcile with the larger setting. Now, to be fair, this is hardly something specific to Lynn Abbey. Paul Kidd's Greyhawk books gleefully butcher the setting's canon and are still a lot of fun to read. Laurel K. Hamilton's Ravenloft book, Death of a Darklord, not so much. But Abbey's Dark Sun novels (or at least the one I read) manage to do pretty well regardless of the non-canon aspects. I just wish she'd adhered closer to the game rules when writing the books, so that they could be enjoyed for what they said about the setting as well as the characters. [/QUOTE]
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I'm reading the Forgotten Realms Novels- #202 The Howling Delve by Jaleigh Johnson (Dungeons 2)
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