We made it. Fourteen posts covering one book about a half-elf and a human woman trying not to die on a desert planet ruled by tyrants. So what did we actually just read? Let me break it down.
Book: Cinnabar Shadows by Lynn Abbey | Series: Dark Sun - Chronicles of Athas, Book 4 | ISBN: 0-7869-0181-0
So we’re done. Fifteen chapters and an epilogue of Cinnabar Shadows. Time to step back and talk about the whole thing.
The escape fails. I’ll just say it upfront so you’re not holding your breath. After all that planning, all that fighting through guards and blasting psionicists, Jedra and Kayan don’t make it out. They end up right back where they started, except now their captors are angry and the timeline just got shorter.
Book: Cinnabar Shadows by Lynn Abbey | Series: Dark Sun - Chronicles of Athas, Book 4 | ISBN: 0-7869-0181-0
Pavek drifts in and out. He remembers fragments. Someone apologizing because there’s no piece of linen large enough to cover him head to foot. He remembers laughing at that. Remembers sunlight and food and sleeping under the stars because the halfling houses are too small for him.
The arena chapters have been building toward something terrible. You could feel it coming. Two people who love each other, forced to fight as gladiators, performing for a crowd that wants blood. The only question was how bad it would get.
Book: Cinnabar Shadows by Lynn Abbey | Series: Dark Sun - Chronicles of Athas, Book 4 | ISBN: 0-7869-0181-0
Chapter 15. The climax. And it starts in the worst possible place: a dirt pit beneath the black tree’s roots.
Tyr was supposed to be the destination. The city where things would get better. The place where Jedra and Kayan could finally stop running and start building something. But Athas doesn’t work like that. Athas takes your plans and feeds them to a mekillot.
Book: Cinnabar Shadows by Lynn Abbey | Series: Dark Sun - Chronicles of Athas, Book 4 | ISBN: 0-7869-0181-0
Chapter 14 switches back to Pavek, and it introduces one of the best new characters in the book: Commandant Javed.
You’d think almost dying inside a crystal world would be enough to keep someone from touching another one. You’d think that. But this is Jedra we’re talking about. The guy who grew up on the streets of Urik and apparently never learned the meaning of “maybe don’t do that.”
Book: Cinnabar Shadows by Lynn Abbey | Series: Dark Sun - Chronicles of Athas, Book 4 | ISBN: 0-7869-0181-0
Chapter 13 opens with Ruari cringing at his companions. Zvain announced they have a map. Mahtra told the armed strangers they’re looking for halflings and a big black tree. So much for keeping their mouths shut.
Remember last chapter when I said the crystals were a miracle and a potential disaster? This chapter is the disaster part. It happens fast, and Jedra has to grow up real quick to deal with it.
Book: Cinnabar Shadows by Lynn Abbey | Series: Dark Sun - Chronicles of Athas, Book 4 | ISBN: 0-7869-0181-0
“Pavek was gone. Pavek was dead.”
This chapter starts ugly and ends somewhere incredible. The emotional range is wild. You go from a relationship falling apart to one of the most mind-bending discoveries in the whole series.
Book: Cinnabar Shadows by Lynn Abbey | Series: Dark Sun - Chronicles of Athas, Book 4 | ISBN: 0-7869-0181-0
Chapter 11 starts with Cerk, and honestly, it’s the most revealing look we’ve gotten at Kakzim’s young apprentice. This little halfling has been underground, running from the fighting in the cavern, and he surfaces into daylight with one job: warn Brother Kakzim that the templars have found them.
This chapter is basically a tour of the coolest home on Athas. And the fact that it belongs to a giant insect philosopher makes it even better.
Book: Cinnabar Shadows by Lynn Abbey | Series: Dark Sun - Chronicles of Athas, Book 4 | ISBN: 0-7869-0181-0
After nearly dying on the Codesh killing floor, Pavek and his companions get the royal treatment. Luxurious rooms, incredible food, hot baths. It should feel like a reward. Instead, it feels like the calm before something terrible. And they are right.
This chapter is basically a walking interview. The three of them are crossing the desert toward Tyr, and Kitarak decides it’s the perfect time to figure out who he’s traveling with. But the way he does it tells you so much about who he is.
Book: Cinnabar Shadows by Lynn Abbey | Series: Dark Sun - Chronicles of Athas, Book 4 | ISBN: 0-7869-0181-0
This chapter is a ride. Pavek takes his crew into Codesh, the most dangerous slaughterhouse village on Athas, looking for a tunnel to the underground reservoir. What they find is Kakzim, a mob of butchers, and a fight that almost kills all of them.
The dying creature is not what they think it is.
Jedra looks down at it and sees a thri-kreen, one of those giant mantis-like insect people. But something about it seems off. Bigger cranial bulge behind the eyes. Narrower face. And strapped to its back is a massive pack stuffed with gear, most of it made of metal. On Athas, where a single metal knife can buy you a month of food, this creature is carrying a fortune in hardware. Cooking pots, gythka blades, curved throwing weapons, and tools Jedra cannot even identify.
Book: Cinnabar Shadows by Lynn Abbey | Series: Dark Sun - Chronicles of Athas, Book 4 | ISBN: 0-7869-0181-0
This is one of those chapters that is quiet on the surface but full of weight underneath. Pavek takes possession of House Escrissar, the home of the dead high templar who tortured his friends. What he finds inside forces him to confront things no amount of sword practice can solve.
Kayan collapses within a mile.
It is the middle of the day. The sun is relentless. They were exiled with three days of food and water, and the chief’s parting threat is still ringing in their ears. They are so exhausted from the cloud ray battle and Kayan’s healing that they can barely walk. And the elves sent them out at noon, which on Athas is basically a death sentence.
Book: Cinnabar Shadows by Lynn Abbey | Series: Dark Sun - Chronicles of Athas, Book 4 | ISBN: 0-7869-0181-0
After the emotional bomb that was Chapter 6, this chapter slows down and lets Pavek sit with his thoughts on a ten-day kank ride across the Tablelands. And honestly, I needed the breather too.
The chapter opens with Jedra staring at the chief like the man just said it was going to rain. “Anybody here can call anybody else a coward, and that person has to fight? That’s a tribal rule?”
Book: Cinnabar Shadows by Lynn Abbey | Series: Dark Sun - Chronicles of Athas, Book 4 | ISBN: 0-7869-0181-0
This chapter hit me like a truck. We finally get the full picture of who Mahtra is, where she came from, and what “made, not born” actually means. But that is only half the story. The other half belongs to Akashia, and it is devastating.
The book opens with a slave caravan burning in the desert while a tribe of elves throws a party around the wreckage.
Book: Cinnabar Shadows by Lynn Abbey | Series: Dark Sun - Chronicles of Athas, Book 4 | ISBN: 0-7869-0181-0
Salt sprites are still dancing on the Sun’s Fist as sunset dies. Golden Guthay (one of Athas’s moons) climbs the eastern horizon. Pavek stops Ruari and Zvain at the edge of the salt flats. No point risking themselves out there until the sun is well set and the moonlight is strong enough to navigate by.
So I just finished the second book in the Dark Sun Chronicles of Athas series, and I have thoughts.
The Darkness Before the Dawn by Ryan Hughes is set in the Dark Sun campaign world, which is basically the bleakest Dungeons & Dragons setting ever created. If you are picturing green forests and friendly taverns, stop. That is not what this is. Athas is a dying world. The sun is red. The desert goes on forever. Water is worth more than gold. Metal is so rare that people fight with weapons made from bone and obsidian. And the people who run things are immortal sorcerer-kings who have been draining the life from the planet for thousands of years.
Book: Cinnabar Shadows by Lynn Abbey | Series: Dark Sun - Chronicles of Athas, Book 4 | ISBN: 0-7869-0181-0
After three chapters of scheming halflings, massacred cavern-folk, and a mysterious New Race woman meeting the Lion-King, we finally meet our main character. And he’s… weeding.
Book: Cinnabar Shadows by Lynn Abbey | Series: Dark Sun - Chronicles of Athas, Book 4 | ISBN: 0-7869-0181-0
Chapter 3 opens inside Mahtra’s recurring nightmare, and it’s rough.
Book: Cinnabar Shadows by Lynn Abbey | Series: Dark Sun - Chronicles of Athas, Book 4 | ISBN: 0-7869-0181-0
Chapter 2 shifts us completely away from Kakzim and Codesh. We enter Urik itself, in the predawn hours, and meet one of the most unusual characters I’ve come across in fantasy fiction.
Book: Cinnabar Shadows by Lynn Abbey | Series: Dark Sun - Chronicles of Athas, Book 4 | ISBN: 0-7869-0181-0
The book opens with a bird’s-eye view. Literally. We see the city of Urik through the eyes of a soaring kes’trekel (a scaled bird native to Athas). The city looks like a giant sulfur growth rising from a green plain, its walls covered with murals of the same figure over and over: a powerful man with a lion’s head, bronze skin, black mane, and fierce yellow eyes that flash in the sunlight.
Book: Cinnabar Shadows by Lynn Abbey | Series: Dark Sun - Chronicles of Athas, Book 4 | ISBN: 0-7869-0181-0
So I picked up Cinnabar Shadows by Lynn Abbey. It’s the fourth book in the Chronicles of Athas series, set in the Dark Sun world. If you’re not familiar with Dark Sun, you’re in for something different. This isn’t your typical swords-and-sorcery setting with lush forests and noble kings. No. This is a post-apocalyptic desert hellscape where magic has literally drained the life from the planet.
We’ve reached the end. Every chapter covered. Every character accounted for. Sandy MacGregor’s journey from Baltimore to Zarathandra and everything that happened in between.
Book: A Name to Conjure With by Donald Aamodt (1989)
After everything Sandy has been through, you’d think meeting the Goddess face to face would be the reward. The big moment where the deity shows up, says “well done,” and sends him home to Baltimore.
Book: A Name to Conjure With by Donald Aamodt (1989)
This is it. The whole book has been building to this moment. Every chapter, every setback, every small victory, every death. It all comes down to Sandy MacGregor standing in front of a dark god and opening his mouth.
Book: A Name to Conjure With by Donald Aamodt (1989)
The mountain is gone. Like, completely gone. Sandy wakes up and the entire fortress that they just raided has been wiped off the map. Where Tham Og Zalkri stood, there’s nothing. Rubble, dust, and open sky where a mountain used to be.
Book: A Name to Conjure With by Donald Aamodt (1989)
They’re going in. After all the traveling, the desert crossings, the bar fights, and the sorcerer’s enchantments, the group is finally entering Tham Og Zalkri. The Black Mountain. Home of a death cult that worships a dark god.
Book: A Name to Conjure With by Donald Aamodt (1989)
The group is about to raid a mountain full of murderous cultists. And Zhadnoboth, the sorcerer who got them into this whole mess, picks this exact moment to do the best work of his entire career. Then he bails.
Book: A Name to Conjure With by Donald Aamodt (1989)
Just before daybreak, they see Tham Og Zalkri. The house of Zalkri.
So we’re done. Twelve posts covering one Forgotten Realms novel from 1997 that most people have never heard of. And I want to wrap up with why I think this book deserves more attention than it gets.
So that’s Planeswalker. Twenty-four chapters of a Phyrexian newt trying to save a broken god from himself, and in the end giving her life to finish what he couldn’t.
This is the payoff. Two chapters. Everything the book has been building toward lands here, and it lands in a way I genuinely did not expect from a D&D novel.
Book: A Name to Conjure With by Donald Aamodt (1989)
Sandy wakes with sun blasting his eyes and sand in his mouth. He spits it out, crawls to shade, and passes out again.
This is it. The final chapter. And it’s devastating.
The sun has just risen over the Kher Ridge. Xantcha and Ratepe are on one side of the mountain, waiting for Ratepe to recover from the three-step walk from Pincar City. Urza is already at the cavern. He’s sworn he won’t go after Gix until they arrive.
Everything has been building to the Sunglade. The scattered Cha’Tel’Quessir, the lurking Red Wizards, the ancient gods stirring beneath the forest floor. These three chapters are where it all crashes together, and the results are brutal.
Book: A Name to Conjure With by Donald Aamodt (1989)
Three nights of hard travel. Everyone’s short-tempered. Nobody talks except to argue. Sandy passes the time composing bawdy limericks for Glupp. The grundzar beams at every one, probably because he doesn’t understand any of them. Sandy calls him a bootlicker. Glupp literally licks his boot.
Chapter 23 is the longest chapter in the book and it earns every page. This is the climax of the Efuan Pincar storyline, the screaming spiders storyline, and the Gix storyline all at once. Buckle up.
Book: A Name to Conjure With by Donald Aamodt (1989)
The group crawls out of the ruined tower to find the oasis destroyed. The Shurva wrecked everything. Vegetation is blackened scraps and ash. Only the fortress survived, protected by whatever ancient power lingers in its walls.
These three chapters are a lot. They cover Bro recovering from his arrow wound, falling for a woman who is secretly the most powerful wizard on the continent, losing more friends, and then we cut to Lauzoril having one of the most emotionally intense father-daughter scenes in any D&D novel. So let’s get into it.
Chapter 22 starts with a storm and ends with Urza casually dismantling the life Xantcha and Ratepe have built together. It’s a lot.
Book: A Name to Conjure With by Donald Aamodt (1989)
After the battle at the Naz Mathoni camp, things should calm down. The enemies are defeated. Water is secured. The Key of Arimithos has been found. Time to rest, right?
Three chapters. Three completely different vibes. A room full of the most dangerous wizards in Faerun. A queen strapping on leather armor. And a boy getting shot in the back with an arrow right after hugging his dad.
Chapter 21 is where everything the book has been building toward starts to crack open. Xantcha has to deal with what happened with Gix in the catacombs, and the truth she discovers at Koilos changes everything.
Book: A Name to Conjure With by Donald Aamodt (1989)
Last chapter ended with a ridiculous plan. Sandy and Zhadnoboth would walk into a camp full of enemies and pretend to be harmless travelers. Uskban and Pognak would hide in the desert, waiting.
Bro finally made it to the Yuirwood. He’s walking through the forest he’s dreamed about for seven years. And it’s nothing like he remembers.
Wait. Let me clarify something about the chapter split here. Chapter 19 covered the journey from Serra’s realm through the multiverse and arriving at Equilor. Chapter 20 goes deeper into the Equilor visit and ends with their return to Dominaria.
Book: It’s About Squirrels… | Author: Lynn Abbey
So we made it through the whole story. Squirrels, ghosts, brownies, a fairy queen who can’t pronounce “electricity,” and a Rube Goldberg trap made of beer cups and silverware balanced on a rocking chair. What a ride.
Chapters 12 through 14 give us a dead father reunion, a sister intervention, and Lauzoril having a very bad day with his undead relatives. These are the chapters where every thread starts pulling tighter.
Book: A Name to Conjure With by Donald Aamodt (1989)
There’s something about desert stories that just hits different. The constant threat of death by dehydration. The emptiness. The heat. When you strip away everything else, survival comes down to one thing: water.
Chapter 19 is the “time passes” chapter. And a lot of time passes. We’re talking thousands of years compressed into one chapter. Lynn Abbey pulls it off, though.
Previous: The Phyrexian Portal Is Destroyed
Chapter 18 covers a lot of ground. Urza builds a new weapon. Months pass. Ratepe becomes a secret agent. And Xantcha walks straight into the demon she hoped was dead.
Chapters 9 through 11 are where the book shifts gears in a really satisfying way. We jump between three very different settings: Thayan spy games, the Simbul’s disastrous private chambers, and Lauzoril’s complicated home life. And honestly, these chapters are some of the most character-revealing in the whole book.
Book: It’s About Squirrels… | Author: Lynn Abbey
So we’re at the part where Nic decides to rescue a brownie from a dead hard drive using beer and Vienna sausages. I love this story.
Book: A Name to Conjure With by Donald Aamodt (1989)
Up to this point, A Name to Conjure With has been weird, funny, and kind of charming. Sandy got pulled into another world, teamed up with a cranky sorcerer and a desert warrior, and they’ve been stumbling from one mess to the next. It felt like a rough adventure. Messy but manageable.
Previous: Xantcha Reunites With Urza in Serra’s Palace
Chapter 17 drops us back to Dominaria and the aftermath of the ambulator battle. And it’s one of those chapters where three characters stand around a Phyrexian corpse and everyone learns something they didn’t want to know.
Book: It’s About Squirrels… by Lynn Abbey
So Nic is napping between resume emails when someone bangs on her door. Her first thought is that something happened to her parents. That’s the kind of headspace she’s in.
Book: A Name to Conjure With by Donald Aamodt (1989)
The group is in a desert town. It’s hot, dusty, and full of the kind of people who don’t ask questions because they don’t want questions asked of them. The town exists as a waypoint for traders, smugglers, and anyone else who needs supplies before heading into the deeper desert.
Chapter 6 opens with the Simbul standing over Bro in the Yuirwood, thumping her staff on the ground next to his head.
Previous: Colliding Islands in Serra’s Crumbling Realm
Chapter 16 is maybe the most emotionally devastating chapter in the entire book. Xantcha finally finds Urza. And then he tells her he’s done with her.
Book: A Name to Conjure With by Donald Aamodt (1989)
Sandy wakes up on the floor of a sorcerer’s laboratory. His head hurts. His body aches. The last thing he remembers is falling through an elevator shaft that turned out to be a portal between worlds.
Book: It’s About Squirrels… | Author: Lynn Abbey
So up to this point, the story has been weird but explainable. Squirrels frying themselves on a transformer? That’s just Florida wildlife being Florida wildlife. A dead hard drive? Bad luck. But in this section, Lynn Abbey pulls the rug right out from under you. And it happens on the side of a road with no sidewalks.
Chapter 3 is where this book goes from interesting to genuinely wild. We leave Bro and the Yuirwood behind and drop into a crypt in Thazalhar, eastern Thay. And we meet Lauzoril’s family.
Previous: Xantcha Wakes in Serra’s Realm
Chapter 15 is pure chaos after the slow burn of the previous chapter. Islands collide. Everything falls apart. And Serra’s idea of peacekeeping is basically a giant laser.
Before we hit the actual chapters, the book opens with two documents from Candlekeep. The first is a history of the Simbul, Alassra Shentrantra. The second is study notes about a forgotten goddess named Zandilar. Both are important, so let me cover them quick.
Book: It’s About Squirrels… by Lynn Abbey
So Nic calls the utility company. She’s lost power at exactly 9am for four days straight. Not a full blackout. Just a tiny hiccup. Barely enough to notice, really. Your microwave clock wouldn’t even blink. But her computer? Dead. Hard drive completely fried.
Book: A Name to Conjure With by Donald Aamodt (1989)
Sandy MacGregor is having a normal Saturday afternoon in Baltimore. He’s eating at a Chinese restaurant. Wonton soup, barbecued ribs, fried rice. Standard comfort food.
Previous: Summer Journey to Efuan Pincar
Chapter 14 throws us into a completely different setting and honestly, the tonal shift is jarring in the best way. We go from sword fights and Phyrexian ambushes to… an eternal sunset, golden grass, and a very unhelpful woman.
Book: A Name to Conjure With by Donald Aamodt (1989)
Some books get lost in time. Not because they’re bad. Because the publishing world moves fast and forgets things. A Name to Conjure With by Donald Aamodt is one of those books.
Book: It’s About Squirrels… | Author: Lynn Abbey
So here’s a story that caught me off guard. I picked up Lynn Abbey’s “It’s About Squirrels…” expecting something lightweight, maybe funny. And it is funny. But it’s also this sneaky little fantasy story that slips magic into the most unglamorous setting possible: a trailer park in dead-center Florida.
So I’m starting a retelling series of a Forgotten Realms novel that almost nobody talks about. The Simbul’s Gift by Lynn Abbey. Published in 1997 as Book 6 of the Nobles series. And honestly, it deserves way more attention than it gets.
Previous: Urza Invades Phyrexia on His Dragon
Chapter 13 is where Planeswalker stops being a story about cosmic battles and becomes something more personal. And honestly? It’s better for it.
This is post 13 of a chapter-by-chapter retelling of “Planeswalker” by Lynn Abbey, Book II of the Artifact Cycle in Magic: The Gathering.
This is post 12 of a chapter-by-chapter retelling of “Planeswalker” by Lynn Abbey, Book II of the Artifact Cycle in Magic: The Gathering.
This is post 11 of a chapter-by-chapter retelling of “Planeswalker” by Lynn Abbey, Book II of the Artifact Cycle in Magic: The Gathering.
This is post 10 of a chapter-by-chapter retelling of “Planeswalker” by Lynn Abbey, Book II of the Artifact Cycle in Magic: The Gathering.
This is post 9 of a chapter-by-chapter retelling of “Planeswalker” by Lynn Abbey, Book II of the Artifact Cycle in Magic: The Gathering.
This is post 8 of a chapter-by-chapter retelling of “Planeswalker” by Lynn Abbey, Book II of the Artifact Cycle in Magic: The Gathering.
Previous: Xantcha Frees Ratepe From Slavery
The title of this post is a bit misleading, because Chapter 6 is actually about Xantcha’s past. Rat falls asleep by the dying fire, and while she watches over him with one hand on his chain, Xantcha’s mind goes back to Phyrexia again. This time, deeper.
Previous: Xantcha Arrives in Efuan Pincar
This chapter is about two people who don’t trust each other trying to survive together. It’s also about what freedom actually means when you’ve lost everything.
Previous: Xantcha’s Phyrexian Origins and the Sphere
Xantcha wakes up from her memories just in time to avoid crashing into a tree. That’s the kind of chapter opening that sets the tone for what’s ahead.
Previous: Xantcha and The Antiquity Wars
This chapter is almost entirely flashback, and it’s one of the best pieces of worldbuilding in Magic: The Gathering fiction. We get Xantcha’s full origin story, and Phyrexia has never felt more real or more horrifying.
Previous: Urza Returns to Koilos After the Brothers War
Chapter 2 shifts the point of view to Xantcha, and the book immediately gets better for it.
Previous: Planeswalker by Lynn Abbey: A Magic The Gathering Retelling Series
Chapter 1 drops us right into Urza’s headspace, and honestly, it’s a rough place to be.
So you want to know what happens in Planeswalker by Lynn Abbey? Good. Because this book is one of those stories that sticks with you long after you close the cover.