Ssssshhhhhhh....!!!! I'm reading

Just a quinth of the way through it, so far.

I am deeply saddened, in the knowledge ,that this was the last Dark Sun book. As you all know, I am a mul who cares with all my heart for the Tablelands and Athas although the existence of this book escaped me until a year ago. I finally sourced a (cheap enough) copy from Canada.

So far, The Rise and Fall of a Dragon King has not disappointed. Okay, Lynn Abbey seemed to have disregarded previous sourcebook descriptions of Urik and has made the city her own. I found her first book The Brazen Gambit quite a struggle to get in to... it seemed to have a very slow pace and displayed too many emotional updates on the characters for a Dark Sun novel. Eventually I got past that and began to appreciate how well she had fleshed out the city of Urik (especially the ranks of the Templarate).

I certainly don't agree with her belief that elves would ride on kanks or that the Oba of Gulg is a weak sorcerer queen. She also paints a picture of a rather magic free Athas where the templars rarely cast any spells for fear of asking for their sorcerer king's magic. Even in her Athas the druids use little or no magic. Elemental clerics seem to want to deify acts of nature... but rarely (if ever) cast magic. Not a mention of any Veiled Alliance or barely any mention of defilers. Hardly anyone uses the way... this is where I begin to wonder Lynn was ever sat down and told any basics about the world of Athas.

Okay, so if you can look past all this... then what you are looking at is a stripped down very basic version of Athas. Athas minus the common use of psionics and magic.

..... and so far an interesting wee book.