Join me as I review Beyond the Moons by David Cook, live! Share your thoughts on this first novel in The Cloakmaster Cycle, a Spelljammer/Dragonlance crossover series. You can pick up Beyond the Moons here: https://amzn.to/3og415x
About Beyond the Moons
Little did Teldin Moore know there was life beyond Krynn’s moons–until a crashed spelljamming ship demolished his farm and changed his life. With a dying alien’s magical cloak and cryptic words, Teldin quickly discovers that he’s a popular fellow with killers and cutthroats.
Review
Intro
Welcome to another DragonLance Saga episode. It is Bakukal, Deepkolt the 4th, my name is Adam and today I am going to give you my Spoiler review of Beyond the Moons. I will be spoiling the story, so if you don’t want to know it, stop watching now! I would like to take a moment and thank the members of this YouTube channel, and invite you to consider becoming a member by visiting the link in the description below. You can even pick up Dragonlance gaming materials using my affiliate link. This is my perspective only, and if you have any thoughts or disagree with mine, I invite you to share them in YouTube chat.
We open with the spaceship Penumbra under attack. Captain Hemar orders the ship to land on the nearby planet of Krynn, and it crashlands in Teldin Moore’s field. Teldin is a farmer who served as a Mule Skinner in the War of the Lance, burying the dead after the battle of the High Clerist’s Tower and the Siege of Kalaman. He returned to his father and grandfather’s homestead in Estwilde for the quiet and simplicity of farm life. His elderly neighbor Liam Shal had just helped him work his melon field when they spotted something in the sky. Liam heads home, and a little while later a spaceship crashes into Teldin’s home, decimating the field in the process.
A female comes stumbling out of the crash and after learning that none of the crew survived gave Teldin her cloak, saying to keep it away from the Neogi, and to deliver it to the Creators. She immediately dies. Teldin could only understand her after she cast a spell on him. The ship began to go up in flames as a large giff named Trooper Gomja, a soldier assigned to the ship exited and saw Teldin hovering over his dead captain. Fearing the worst he accused him of murder and tries to shoot him with his flint-lock pistol. The pistol blows up in his face, and he passes out.
Teldin hog tied him and dragged him to safety, along with Captain Hemar’s corpse. He went into the wreck, searching for more survivors, but everyone had died. Liam comes running back after seeing the flames and as Gomja wakes, he seems to be peaceful after everything is explained to him. Teldin shares that he was a soldier as well, and Gomja now defers to him as a leader. The Giff seem to be similar to Minotaurs in their sense of honor, and their word. They look similar to hippo’s in the head rather than bulls. Liam once again returns home after Gomja buries his dead. They sleep and then the Neogi appear. Teldin and Gomja hide from them, and the Neogi leave to the nearby farms. The neogi are ravagers of worlds and leave no survivors, enjoying in consuming their kills fresh.
Fearful for Liam, Teldin takes Gomja to his farm only to find Liam, his wife, two children and even the farm animals murdered. They see no signs of the Neogi, who were searching for survivors from the wreckage. Presumably for the cloak. Feeling guilty, Teldin buries the family of his friend and they return to his ruined farm. There they rest, scavenge the ship, finding two more pistols in a chest and star charts for navigating the void. Apparently there are many spheres in space which contain stars, moons and worlds. It sounds like a reference to galaxies or solar systems to me, but I am not versed in Spelljammer vernacular yet.
Teldin decides to travel to his cousin Maldart Trandallic in Kalaman for help to rebuild his farm, and Gomja follows him, with nowhere else to go. The cloak is unable to be removed and even shrinks to collar size in water. It is clearly magical in some way. On the road to Kalaman they come across a farmer on a wagon with his son, traveling to Kalaman, and they pay for a ride and some of his oranges. He play’s off Gomja’s appearance as torture from the Highlords, much like draconians. It’s interesting getting the average person’s view on space and Krynn. Teldin doesn’t even know anything about the planet except the continent he is on being called Ansalon, and why would he, he’s a farmer with no real education. It’s refreshing to see the ignorant reality of characters.
They arrive in Kalaman only to find that his cousin no longer lives there. Not knowing what to do they end up in an inn and are approached by an old militia buddy of Teldin’s, Vandoorm. He is hiring mercenaries to travel to Palanthas. As Teldin still needs money to rebuild his farm, and with no other prospects, he agrees to meet him in the morning to ride. Teldin is constantly trying to abandon Gomja and I don’t understand why. He’s also an ass hole to him most of the time. If it’s a way of us being annoyed at the protagonist, job well done. Otherwise, it’s baffling. They Ride to Palanthas and as they are traveling down the canyon from the High Clerist’s Tower, they make camp. Gomja wakes Teldin as Vandoorm and his officer leave. They follow behind to discover they want the Giff dead and Teldin taken alive. A draconian is spotted by Vandoorm but they let it flee in the night.
The two leave and hear more voices that turn out to be the Draconians led by Trammaz, an aurak. It believes Teldin is a baaz draconian, I think because of the cloak, and orders them to lie in ambush for, themselves! Their scout hears Vandoorm ordering the humans captured for money, and wants in on the action. Vandoorm’s mercenaries ride around the bend after realizing Teldin and Gomja are gone and see Teldin standing amidst the draconians. They all attacked each other and Teldin tried to back into the bushes. He is stopped and Gomja opens fire with his pistols. Vandoorm admits to being paid to take the cloak, and wanted to take it from Teldin alive, but with no other choice, tried to have him killed. The pistols allowed them to take two of the mercenaries’ horses and scatter the rest, fleeing the battle.
They arrive in Palanthas and head to the Library to speak to Astinus. They worm their way in with a book from the Penumbra, and Astinus tells them that his knowledge ends with Krynn, but that Spelljammers have traveled to Mount Nevermind before. They decide to find a way to Sancrist Isle, but on the way out find Vandoom waiting for them. They sneak out the back and try to book passage on an elven ship.
Unable to get passage, Teldin drops to the ground depressed, and defeated. People start tossing coins at him as if he were a beggar. He gets up, yelling at the Palanthians and sees that he is being watched by Vandoorm’s men. He loses them in the side streets, and follows them after hours of searching to their lair, where Vandoorm is talking with the Neogi. The Neogi and Umberhulk slaves kill them all after finding out where Sancrist Isle and Mount Nevermind is, a note the spys took from overhearing Teldin. Teldin is terrified and grabs Gomja and stows away on the elven ship, the Silver Spray. They are discovered and allowed to stay aboard due to old elven custom and are put to work. The first mate Cwelanas hates’ Teldin initially until they are raided and barely escape alive from a minotaur pirate ship. She goes overboard and is rescued by Teldin. Then she learns to like him and even kisses him, asking for him to look for their ship when he is done with the gnomes. I saw the romance coming a mile away but I enjoyed it nonetheless. They play the difference in behavior and customs between the races wonderfully and the interactions between them are natural and welcomed. Most stories like this melt away the differences for the sake of the greater story but David Cook is doing a brilliant job of keeping it all grounded.
He arrives at Mount Nevermind and is stunned at the chaos. He is taken for inspection on how to get the cloak off, and after a day, and the suggestion of removing his head, he cancels the whole idea, and looks for Gomja who was seeking a Spelljammer craft. The Gnomes had built a ship called the Unquenchable and Teldin says he will part with Gomja and stay here as he leaves for his people. He promotes him to sergeant, so he can command himself, and they prepare for the flight. They waske in the early morning to the gnomes in a panic, because they are under attack!
The Gnomes are frantically debating strategies and tactics as Gomja and Teldin decide to split up, Gomja goes to the main chamber where the spider Spelljammer ship of the neogi has entered Mount Nevermind, and Teldin goes to block the stairway down into the volcano. The lake is partially purged by the gnomes and water comes rushing down to Teldin, washing him nearly off the level he is on, until he grabs a rope from a pulley system that yanks him up to the top level. He lands and violently crashes, passing out. Teldin wakes being carried by an umberhulk, the neogi’s slaves, to the neogi’s ship. He is hurt and as he is being held too tightly to escape, he resigns himself to his fate. He overhears arguments between the captain, Overmaster and his captor M’phei, about either killing him or keeping him as a slave after they get the cloak from him. They don’t know it can turn into a collar apparently. Teldin is put into a torture room and worked on for what seems to be hours or days. It’s difficult to tell as he keeps passing out from the excruciating pain. He is constantly asked for the cloak, and he refuses to give it to them. He overheard them say that with it, they could subjugate whole worlds, and he has seen enough death already due to the cloak. No matter what, he will not give it up.
Eventually he wakes and surprisingly the door is open so he walks out to see the neogi arguing again, they resolve to throw him into the pit with Yrthni-ma’adi, the great old master. This is a mother type of neoki that is massive and bloated with neogi larvae. They put him on a tiny pedestal above the pit and he falls in, weakened from the torture. He runs from the creature and it slams into the walls in a frenzy to eat him. He notices a crack, and grabs a pole, skewering the creature. It opens its bloated belly and larvae fall out of it, as it flops around the arena. It eventually does enough damage to break a wall and Teldin escapes through it. The neogi and Umberhulk eventually find him and as they are about to attack, Gomja and a gnome platoon come in and destroy the umber hulk. The Overmaster attacks Teldin, biting his arm, but Teldin eventually kills him. With the immediate battle won, the gnomes are finally turning the tide of the battle under Gomja’s leadership. They strip the neogi’s ship of its engine and place it in The Unquenchable. Just as they finish, another neogi ship appears above them, just waiting there for more reinforcements before attacking in full force. Something the Gnomes will not be able to handle. Teldin decides to forsake his life on Krynn for the sake of Krynn and leave with Gomja to the stars, hopefully to discover how to get the cloak off. The neogi ship starts to fire on the Unquenchable and they take off to lead the neogi off the planet. They get caught by the ship and battle till it is free. Gomja takes a platoon of Gnomes to invade the neogi ship and says a final goodbye to Teldin. This is a tough moment. Gomja is going off possibly for good and they have become genuine friends through all this. It hit me emotionally to see them split after going through so much together and seeing their relationship grow. Teldin takes the ship with the gnomes into space and the neogi ship crashes into Mount Nevermind. And the novel ends.
We don’t know the purpose of the cloak. How we’ll ever find it out. If Gomja survived the crash, or anything else. All we know is that the next novel will take us to the Forgotten Realms. I really enjoyed this novel, primarily because it was a dragonlance grounded story with a few spelljammer influences, not the other way around. I am not sure I will be reading more, though I did order the second book. I am pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this novel, and I look forward to reading more from the author.
I would highly recommend anyone that wants a new-ish take on Dragonlance, and certainly anyone who likes Spelljammer.
Outro
And that’s it for my review of Beyond the Moons by David Cook. As a crossover novel, did it feel sufficiently Spelljammer and Dragonlance? Do you like Dragonlance crossover stories? Do you enjoy the reviews I am putting out there? Feel free to email me at info@dlsaga.com or comment below.
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