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.
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.”
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.
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.
Fires are burning inside the ramparts. The survivors of Quraite are gathered around them, beaten down, grieving, barely holding it together. And then Hamanu of Urik walks through the trees.
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.
This chapter opens with Zvain screaming and ends with a sorcerer-king eating a man alive. It is the most intense chapter in the entire book and I am still not totally over it.
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.
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
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.
Chapter 1 opens with a scene-setter that tells you everything you need to know about Athas. The twin moons have set. The sky is black. The heat of day has turned to bone-numbing cold. And the first thing Abbey tells us is the law of this world: nothing changes. What was will always be.
Book: The Rise and Fall of a Dragon King | Author: Lynn Abbey | Series: Chronicles of Athas, Book 5
Book: The Rise and Fall of a Dragon King | Author: Lynn Abbey | Series: Chronicles of Athas, Book 5
This is it. The final chapter. And Abbey opens it not with Hamanu, but with Ruari, the young half-elf druid, wedged into the corner of his bed, so drunk he thinks he might die. When a woman appears in his doorway, he literally thinks she’s Death come to claim him.
Book: The Rise and Fall of a Dragon King | Author: Lynn Abbey | Series: Chronicles of Athas, Book 5
This is the chapter that broke me. Fair warning.
Book: The Rise and Fall of a Dragon King | Author: Lynn Abbey | Series: Chronicles of Athas, Book 5
Chapter 13 opens with one of the most unexpectedly quiet moments in the book. Hamanu is in the Kreegills at sunset, weaving starlight between his fingers like a child playing with thread. For a few breaths, he forgets who he is. Just a man watching stars come out over mountains.
Book: The Rise and Fall of a Dragon King | Author: Lynn Abbey | Series: Chronicles of Athas, Book 5
Chapter 12 is the longest chapter in the book, and for good reason. It’s where everything converges. Hamanu has escaped Ur Draxa, barely survived his encounter with Rajaat, and now drifts aimlessly through the Gray netherworld with three days before the other champions close their noose around Urik.
Book: The Rise and Fall of a Dragon King | Author: Lynn Abbey | Series: Chronicles of Athas, Book 5
So here’s what happened. Hamanu has been sitting in his workroom for three straight days without moving. Not sleeping. Not eating. Just writing his history and drowning in memories of the past. His loyal dwarf steward Enver finally breaks through the warded door with a loaf of bread and a room full of worried faces.
Book: The Rise and Fall of a Dragon King | Author: Lynn Abbey | Series: Chronicles of Athas, Book 5
If Chapter 8 was a war chapter, Chapter 9 is the emotional core of this book. Abbey slows everything down and lets Hamanu sit with his own pain. It’s devastating.
Book: The Rise and Fall of a Dragon King | Author: Lynn Abbey | Series: Chronicles of Athas, Book 5
This chapter is a lot. Abbey throws crisis after crisis at Hamanu and doesn’t let up for a single page.
Book: The Rise and Fall of a Dragon King | Author: Lynn Abbey | Series: Chronicles of Athas, Book 5
We’re back in present-day Urik, and the chapter opens with Hamanu doing something surprisingly… normal. He’s sitting on his palace roof, half-listening to his dwarf steward Enver read a daily briefing scroll, and thinking about farming.
Book: The Rise and Fall of a Dragon King | Author: Lynn Abbey | Series: Chronicles of Athas, Book 5
Book: The Rise and Fall of a Dragon King | Author: Lynn Abbey | Series: Chronicles of Athas, Book 5
Book: The Rise and Fall of a Dragon King | Author: Lynn Abbey | Series: Chronicles of Athas, Book 5
Book: The Rise and Fall of a Dragon King | Author: Lynn Abbey | Series: Chronicles of Athas, Book 5
Book: The Rise and Fall of a Dragon King Author: Lynn Abbey Series: Chronicles of Athas, Book 5 Setting: Dark Sun (Dungeons & Dragons)