The crew of the Mourning Dawn have pieced together what Ashrem's Legacy is, gone through some major battles in the Frostfell and Mournland, but there are major revelations left and there are a few surprising additions to the crew as well. This was a great conclusion to a trilogy that had some rough starts. Recommended to any Eberron fan who can muscle through two and a half books without a decent copy editor. I swear, it's worth it.

I may be overcompensating with this rating the same way I undercut 'Flight of the Dying Sun', but the story really came together here. Wulf had made use of a lot of secondary characters and flashbacks throughout, but they all serve a purpose by the second half of 'Seventh Moon'. A very nice juggling act.

This was a good book and in the denouement there were several meta jokes that absolutely referred to the typographical errors and other "rough" patches to the book. It's pretty funny - there must have been just enough lag time between publishing the books for the author to see the finished product of at least book one and inserted some commentary.

I'll continue to read Eberron novels, but I'll try to scope out online which series were plagued with publisher-errors and read with appropriate caution.

Heirs of Ash

Previous: 'Flight of the Dying Sun'

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'

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'

I occasionally listen to Science Friday podcasts in between audio books and their latest podcast (May 3rd) includes a segment on Alexander von Humboldt, and an interview with Andrea Wulf and the illustrator of her new book, The Adventures of Alexander Von Humboldt - Andrea Wulf, Lillian Melcher.  BrokenTune, Lillelara and I were discussing it (briefly) in the comments of one of Lillelara's posts just last week so this seemed especially timely. 

There's a link off the podcast (which Ira, the host, reads out as well) to an excerpt of the book, which is an illustrated, comic book edition of the original The Invention of Nature.

So for anyone who might be interested, it's Science Friday by WNYC Studios, and the link my iPhone gave me is:

https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/science-friday/id73329284

which seems to go to all the episodes, but the Humboldt one is at the top of the list (May 3rd/4th).

Well, this was a phenomenal read about a fascinating man, who defined the way we look at nature nowadays and which I consider a sort of rockstar of his time.

And if this books shows one thing, it´s the fact that humanity hasn´t gotten wiser over the last 200 years.