CONTROVERSY!

 Before I get deep into this, let's discuss some of the fun behind James Lowder's Knight of the Black Rose, or what happens when creators clash with property owners. According to the copyright, this got released in 1992, which was after Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis were on the outs with TSR, However, their DragonLance novels and game accessories were quite popular even then. (Of note, the game module that inspired the entire setting of Ravenloft was written by Tracy and his wife..) Anyway, Lord Soth was a secondary antagonist in the DragonLance setting, a Death Knight who was working with Kitiara for his own reasons. His backstory was tragic, and he was an inveterate scene stealer. Plus, he just LOOKED cool. So it wasn't a particularly great surprise that TSR decided to make D&D Reese Cups by having the Mists swallow Soth on Krynn and drop him in the new Gothic Horror setting. Now, he eventually escaped and wound up back on Krynn (with one partial escape assumed to be during The Grand Conjunction as chronicled in the debatebly canon source book World of Krynn), only to die a final and noble death during The War of Souls. As far as Soth's creators are concerned, Soth never left Krynn. As far as D&D canon goes, he did, although most people reconcile it by assuming he escaped to return at the moment of his exit. Anyway, info dump done, let's discuss.

So, we open towards the very end of the Blue Lady's War, when Kitiara went to Palanthus to greet whichever Krynnish god wound up coming out of the dragon portal. (The entire story is told in Legends.) Kitiara dies, and Soth heads back to his lovely Dargaard  Keep with his banshees and skeletal men at arms. However, we expand here on Soth sending his seneschal Caradoc to the Abyss to go get Kitiara's soul, so Soth can reanimate her body to be his eternal companion. (Soth has relationship issues.)

Caradoc winds up hiding Kit's soul, thinking Soth won't return him to mortality. (Mind you, some of the discussions here closely mirror the Planescape setting. Which I think came out somewhere around when this got written.) Soth strangles the ghost (perk of being undead, I suppose), the mists close in, and hey, everyone's in Barovia. 

What follows is a showdown between a Chaotic Evil vampire and Lawful Evil Death Knight. We also meet a Vistani lass named Magda (the Vistani during this era were basically stereotyped Roma, straight out of central casting) and a werebadger named Azreal. They cross Barovia into Gunderak and back, and eventually, Soth winds up in the Mists again, and ultimately refuses redemption, so he becomes the Dark Lord of Sithicus. 

By far the best part of this story is how in depth we plunge into Soth's days before the Curse. We hear the tale throughout DragonLance, but here, we're on Soth's shoulder as he has his first wife killed, married his second, gets expelled from the Knighthood, and ultimately fails in his redemption and gets cursed by wife #2. It adds a lot of humanizing effect onto the character, showing us his tragic nature. He's really a dark mirror image of the stereotypical paladin. Yes, his honor is tarnished and rusted, but the iron is still strong under it all. 

Now, I first read this when it was published, having picked it up at the local bookstore/smoke shop a few blocks from my house. At the time, I had not read the earlier source material, and had no real idea of who Soth was. Now, having read all of it, this made a hell of a lot more sense. I'm really happy I found my copy again, it was fun to reconnect with it after all these years.

When the Sky Falls....

 So, on a whim, I checked out James's Rollins's The Starless Crown out of the library, thinking it looked interesting. Which it wound up being, although given the large amount of queer adjacent fiction I've been reading of late, the lack of anything resembling queer folks in here was kind of a shock.(Yeah, I know.)

Anyway, we open on a knight helping a "Pleasure Serf" escape into a swamp. Said serf gives birth to a girl not long after the knight runs off to prevent pursuit of the surf. 

Over the course of the story, we find out the girl survived and was raised by human sized bats, giving her access to certain ancestral memories. Nyx, as she is now known, gets dragged into what looks to be a trilogy, along with her support scribe, Jace, as the King of Halandii wants her in relation to a prophecy that she will destroy the world. Along the way, we get involved in the crown prince trying to kill his brother, a thief who found an alchemical wonder of an animated copper woman, and Nyx's long exiled father. So, yeah, fairly standard for fantasy story lines.

The setting (planet Urth) is a bit more original, although there are hints we're in the old trope of a future Earth. The Urth is tidally locked with the Son, so that one hemisphere is constantly light, and one dark. (Much like the Moon here in the present Earth.) As such, as far as we know, everything mostly lives in "The Crown", towards the area where twilight would be the norm. (The sun doesn't really set, and there are seasons, so axial tilt is still a thing.)  The two major factions present in Halandii (and rumored to have a different integration in the enemy state Klashe) are the Alchymists and the Religious, although there are Orders on both sides who have mastered both mysteries. And as we get hints of throughout the book, it's likely the moon will crash into Urth within a few years of they can't find a way to stop it. 

I enjoyed reading this, even if nothing in here is particularly original. Still fun though.

I'm sensing a recurring theme here

 Olivie Blake's The Atlas Paradox has now joined the done reading list, and I find myself confused by, well, just about everything.

This is not to say it's not an enjoyable read, it's more a case of trying to figure out exactly what the heck is actually going on. 

So, we pick up where the last one left off, with the 5 remaining trying to figure out where the 6th initiate is. (Short answer, 30 years in the past.) With that member trying to find their way back to the present, we spend much of this volume swinging back and forth in time, as time is passing for all characters, and various plot boil around during all eras. Add into this various conversations being presented, and then flowing back to other conversations happening earlier then catching up with the narrative, there is much going on. 

I still have no idea who the actual antagonist is in this. We have 2 possibilities, plus a dark horse (Dalton, who has a whole subset of things locked up in his mind). We have an entire narrative on whether or not the initiates are actually Gods of some sort because of their powers. We have entire conversations about alternate universes (or Quantum realities if you prefer), and whether you could insert yourself into one, or even create your own universe. 

On a much less lofty note, we end with a same gendered kiss between a couple I'd assumed were together, so ya know...

I'm unsure if the author is going for a trilogy or an ongoing series. Either way, I'm curious what direction this is going in next.

Another take on Dark Academia

 So, I'm not quite sure how I found Leigh Bardugo's Ninth House, but I'm really happy I did. 

The general premise here is that the secret societies (Houses) of Yale (Skull and Bones, Manuscript, etc) all have access to various schools of magic, with Lethe being the society designated to keep an eye on the Ancient Eight to prevent magical problems. 

Lethe involves about 5 titles, Virgil, Dante, Centurion, Oculus, and Dean, plus a society of alumni we don't really meet. Alex (aka Galaxy) is our Dante, newly initiated into the House, under the guidance of Darlington, her Virgil, who was the prior Dante. Dawes in the Oculus, a grad student who spends most of her time researching and crushing on Darlinton. The Centurion, Turner, works for the New Haven Police. 

Alex was chosen for the position of Dante by Dean Virgil, who found out she can see ghosts ("Greys" or "Quiet Ones") without the aid of a rather poisonous magical potion. That she was a street rat in Cali before getting uprooted to Ivy League Connecticut makes her life more difficult. 

Anyway, as we jump between Fall and Winter, we see Alex and Darlington supervise other House's rituals, prior to Darlington getting sucked into a portal. We watch as Alex undertakes an investigation against the wishes of the Dean into the death of a drug dealing townie that interrupted a Bones rite involving reading the entrails of a live victim. We watch as she violates a few rules in the name of solving a murder of someone no one on campus cared about. 

It's a really engaging read I couldn't put down easily. While I did figure out a few twists ahead of time, there were plenty of other surprises lurking behind the doors. I can't wait for the next volume.