Dragonlance: The Crown and the Sword (Rise of Solamnia, Book II) Review
By Ian Strelec, Staff Reviewer
Initiative Round
The Crown and the Sword, written by Douglas Niles, is book II in the Rise of Solamnia series, set in the world of Dragonlance by Wizards of the Coast. It takes place, by my best guess, following the events of the War of Souls. Well, what’s the War of Souls, you ask? Unfortunately, as the book doesn’t really explain and I haven’t read those books, I have no idea. I do know it involves someone named Mina, who apparently was involved to the point of having been mostly in charge. I do know a little about her, but it doesn’t exactly apply here.
Anyway, the book takes off immediately, dropping you in the midst of a major battle between the Knights of Solamnia (an order of knights, paladins in terms of D&D, who operate out of a nation called Solamnia. Funny how that works out, huh?) and monstrous creatures such as goblins, hobgoblins, and ogres, led by a half-giant named Ankhar. The leader of the Knights is one Jaymes Markham, the Knight of No Order.
Now, the Knights are organized into three basic ranks; that is, the Knights of the Crown, the Sword, and the Rose, the Crown being lowest and Rose highest in terms of rank. At their head, apparently, is Jaymes Markham, who bears the sign on his flag of all three. The book is written from both the point of view of Ankhar and Markham, detailing both of their efforts to beat the other into submission. From what is explained, the war has already been going on for two years, and while Jaymes is developing the volatile substance known as black powder, Ankhar goes hunting for an ally deep underground and returns with the king of all elementals chained and bonded magically inside a ruby-studded box by his wizard ally the Thorn Knight. Battles and political intrigue abound as Jaymes attempts to break the two-year siege on the major Solamnian city of Solanthus and Ankhar attempts to break it down and gut it from the inside out.
Critical Hit
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find much good to say about this book. Niles does a great job using descriptive text, though some of it is hard to picture (admittedly, I can’t imagine something as earth-shaking as a 50-foot tall colossus of raw elemental power being easy to describe), but once you’ve got an image in your head watching that elemental wreak havoc really is very cool. Other than that, this book just lacks a great deal of good points.
Critical Fumble
Problems. Where to begin? First, the author does not do a very good job of explaining what’s going on and what’s happened before in anything but vague references, which left me somewhat confused. Next up, his use of the three different armies, one for each order of knights, doesn’t match up with what the Dragonlance Chronicles explained. According to the Dragonlance Chronicles (the first trilogy published for the Dragonlance setting, also known as the War of the Lance), the Knights of the Rose were not numerous and generally held only command positions. While I can grasp change over time easily enough, going from command positions only to an entire army doesn’t make a lot of sense. It also doesn’t make a great deal of tactical sense to make one army of the low-ranked soldiers, one of the middle, and one of your commanders. Lacking an explanation (it could be, for instance, that the names of the different armies don’t reflect their makeup, but the author never says yea or nay in this regard) I can only believe that the author is kind of clueless about warfare and as such shouldn’t be making books about war. This opinion is drastically changed by intelligent use of tactics and strategy and an understanding that likely trumps mine later on. I can’t be sure what to believe at that point.
Next up on my list is Jaymes. He’s just too cool, and I don’t mean that as a compliment. He’s just too much of the typical “bad boy†garbage everyone seems to like.. It’s like he’s what every guy wants to be. He literally has three women throwing themselves at him over the course of the book (though, admittedly, one was hit with a love potion at the time; a plot they never explained) and he’s definitely got the “I’m too cool to treat authority with respect†attitude down. Also, his position in the army is never really explained, and while he is in a command position for most of the book, one encounter with a Knight of the Rose leaves me feeling he’s more on their level. The strict sense of order, duty, and respect for command doesn’t mesh with the way the Rose Knight deals with Markham. The book just doesn’t add up.
Third and last is the black powder. You never ever introduce black powder into a medieval fantasy setting. The problem it creates is that with gunpowder comes cannons, then its refined to make guns, and suddenly you rapidly start developing technology and its no longer a medieval fantasy setting. Its modern-day with magic, and that’s not what I want to read about in a world initially designed, to the best of my knowledge, for D&D games. From what I hear, the Forgotten Realms have the same problem.
Coup de Grace
In the end, this book is on the negative, rather than positive side of the grading scale. It lacks an understanding by the author of military tactics in some parts, shows a great deal of it in others, and is consistently inconsistent. Jaymes is too much of what the author apparently believes to be the right “image†a man should have; that is, a guy in a position of authority with no respect for it, who’s ready to do what’s necessary even if it’s not exactly nice. Of course, the fact that the book does little to offer an explanation of what happened previously doesn’t help my image of the character or the events. Its probably best to avoid this book.
Final Grade: C-
