Join me as I review Dragon Day by Stan Brown, live! Share your thoughts on this sixth novel in The New Adventures series, and the second novel in the Dragon Quartet. You can pick up Dragon Day here: https://www.amazon.com/Dragon-Day-Dragonlance-Adventures-Vol/dp/0786936223
About Dragon Day
Things fall apart…
Shocked by the tragic outcome of the battle with Asvoria, the companions go their separate ways. Sindri enrolls in a legendary school of magic, while Catriona meets a dashing young cleric who helps her make peace with her failures.
But as Dragon Day draws near, peace gives way to new conflict. And this time, the two friends stand as enemies in a feud between the most powerful wizards and clerics in Solamnia. Spells fly. Loyalties shatter. All the while, someone is watching, preparing for the final battle that could bring doom to them all.
Dragon Day continues a new series of Dragonlance adventures written specifically for readers ages 10 and up. The series features a new group of young companions who band together for friendship and excitement during the golden age of the Dragonlance world.
Review
Intro
Welcome to another DragonLance Saga review episode. It is Palast, Gildember the 24th, my name is Adam and today I am going to give you my Spoiler review of Dragon Day by Stan Brown. 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 begin this story with a young man named Adyn who is being bullied by three brothers and their father from the town of Tidesafe. Apparently it’s a town full of god hating magic users. They all claim that the moons never deserted them in the Cataclysm, and this boy, Adyn, is a cleric of Paladine. They believe Paladine is the worst of all the gods and that if he ever existed he is a horrible god, so they must destroy his worshiper. This is a strange notion in a post War of the Lance era, but okay… So they run him out of town, and chase him up the coast, as he evades them.
Then we cut to Davyn and Catriona arguing. They are upset that they lost against Asvoria and as far as they know, Elidore is dead and Nearra is lost. They have no idea what to do, except deliver Elidores possessions to his parents in Southern Ergoth. How did they get the possessions you ask? Well, a simple redaction of the end of the last book, that’s how. They apparently stripped his corpse of everything, before Maddoc told them to get out, and teleported Elidore and himself away. Whatever, it’s a small redaction, except that this author is reinforcing the whole, Sindri has no magic narrative also. We did see him perform magic a couple books back, but okay… So they are all fighting and actually start to hate each other. They arrive at a coastal town to book passage to Southern Ergoth, and Davyn sets it up so Cat and Sindri go, but he leaves a goodbye letter instead of joining them.
The sea is raging in a storm, Sindri is blown off deck, and falls through a magical portal into Raistlin’s Tower of High Sorcery in Palanthus! He finds himself in Raistlins seeing pool room with his creations all around him, and Raistlin actually confronts Sindri, asking him how he got here. Then we cut to Catriona who jumps overboard to save Sindri, even though she can’t see him. She naturally gets knocked unconscious and nearly drowns, but washes back up onto shore in front of Adyn. He says she must have been saved by the gods, and once again we see that there are zero consequences for any action no matter how stupid. These ‘heroes’ never get seriously wounded or die, no matter what. I am not wishing for them to die, but if you are hours offshore, in a storm, underwater, unconscious, and survive….well lets just say, I call bullshit. Adyn is still evading the townspeople and takes them both into a cave so he can pray and regain his healing spells. At least he follows Krynns magical logic. So that’s new.
Adyn woke the next morning and as he was gathering firewood he was discovered and accosted by the Bursar family of brothers and father again! They beat him to the ground as Catriona woke up, and she attacked them, killing two and the others ran off. Adyn immediately became infatuated with her, and as he had to travel to Palanthas to be ordained a priest of Paladine officially, he bugged Cat to protect him along the way. She ultimately relented after an argument. They spoke of honor and sacrifice and how the loss of a friend may affect you later in life with time and perspective. They brought up Sturm Brightblade and Laurana Kanan as examples. It changes cat’s perspective on losing Sindri, Elidore and Davyn, and they march past the High Clerist;s tower toward Palanthas.
Sindri was immediately imprisoned by Raistlin, who interrogated him about how he got into the scrying pool. Sindri said he cast a spell to get there, but that didn’t happen in the novel, so I am fully confused as to whether Sindri does or does not have magic at this point. Raistline conducts some test on him and says he has latent talent that needs to be directed and after Sindri has a meltdown about everyone telling him he can’t be a wizard. With Raistlin knowing exactly what it means to be looked down upon and laughed at, he ends up helping Sindri, by enrolling him in a wizards academy in Palanthas. Sindri joins a troupe of students who clearly don’t want a kender as a part of their group, just as much as the instructors don’t want him there, but they fear Raistlin more, so they put up with him.
Sindri actually adapts well to the school. Raistlin threatened him to forget his Kender ways and focus on his studies or else, and Sindri to his credit is. The other members of his troup tell him about Dragon Day, which was a coronation ceremony in Palanthas since Vinas Solamnus’ time, but the priests abandoned it when the cataclysm struck. So the wizards picked it up for the town’s morale. Now that the gods have returned, the clerics want to take it over again. The students want Sindri to sneak into the temple and take the circlet of Paladine to stop the priests from reclaiming what is now their holiday.
Sindri ended up stealing food for his troupe that night rather than the circlet of Paladine, but when we returned to his room, the Temple of Paladine was in an uproar, as someone had stolen the circlet! The peers that were bullying Sindri said it was him and when they looked at Sindris bed, the Circlet was on it. Catriona and Adyn arrived in Palanthas in the morning and were directed to the newly built Temple of Paladine as the acolytes were freaking out about the theft. Elistan approached the group and spoke with Adyn about whether they needed the circlet for the ceremony or not. Elistan offered Catriona a room for as long as she was in town. Sindri arrived to return the circlet he did not steal, and Trysdan an acolyte blamed him for the theft. Catriona and Sindri were hugging because they thought each other was dead, and Cat defended Sindri to the temple. Elistan left after falling really sick, and the acolytes all began verbally assaulting Sindri who blew up at them and cat. Then the apprentices arrived from the mage school and started a standoff with the acolytes of the temple.
Adyn eventually stopped the fight before it went to blows, and his peers told him the only way to save the celebration was to collect an artifact from a ruined and sunken temple of the Dragon. The artifact will nullify any arcane magic in a radius, and Cat and Adyn agree to collect it. The only problem is that the temple is haunted. They arrive in the temple and find the medallion, but it is pinned down by rubble. As they are trying to figure out how to rescue it without damaging it, spirits appear, ready to attack.
Raistlin enters Maddoc’s room in the tower, he had been staying there after returning with the Aegis, trying to put it back together. Raistlin tells him that after he assembled it, the truly difficult task lies ahead of him, but vanishes before Maddoc can figure out what he means. Maddoc is bothered that he has to kowtow to Raistlin, but acknowledges that he is more powerful and the Master of the Tower, so he relents. I love that we get to see familiar characters and locations finally, but I am still bothered by the whole Sindri casting random magic without knowledge or training. Hopefully it clarifies everything eventually, after all, there are only two more books in this quartet. There is still no word of Elidore, even though the last book mentioned Maddoc rescued him, and we have yet to hear from Davyn who abandoned Cat and Sindri at the docks.
The spirits in the sunken temple attack Cat and she tries to save Adyn by throwing him out of the temple area. She is beaten down by the ghosts and Adyn returns with his holy medallion and turns the spirits away in the name of Paladine. They leave with the symbol, and Cat realizes that she has trust issues in other people’s abilities. She decides to work at correcting it. Meanwhile Sindris classmates tell him about a cursed idol in a sea cave that could be helpful if the mages try to take the holiday. Sindri finds the idea interesting and travels to find the cave. He finds it and it is inhabited by a giant octopus. He distracts the octopus and steals the idol.
On Dragon Day the two idols in close proximity unleash a discord demon that makes all the clerics attack all the mages and vice versa. It seems only Sindri can see the demon and learns that the only way to banish it is to learn its name. He takes the idol to Cat who attacks him. Sindri rips off her symbol and breaks it, now Catriona can see the idol for what iit is. She calls out the demon’s name, which disappears like Beetlejuice, and she stabs the idol, breaking it. Everyone stops and the crowd believes they just watched a play. Catriona and Sindri lecture everyone on mistakes, forgiveness and friendship, and the crowd cheers.
Maddoc is attempting to reunite the disparate pieces of the Aegis and should have succeeded but it isn’t working. Raistlin entered and lectured him about balance. How the Aegis had broken the balance manifested in the split of the companions. At the moment a discord demon was picking up that imbalance to bring the scales back to level.
Catriona and Sindri decide to leave Palanthas and the clerics push her to say goodbye to Elistan. He is with the head of the mage school and Sindri is awarded the best new student award and Cat is rewarded with a message from Gunthar Uth Wistan to forgive all past misdeeds based on Elistan’s words, and she is invited to rejoin the Knights of the Rose. They both say they made prior commitments to friends, and cannot stay, so they leave to find Davyn again. Maddoc is at the bottom of the stairs and tells them he rested a few days and found his way out of the tomb. He does not mention Elidore at all, letting them believe he is still dead. They all leave to find Davyn.
This book had some positive moments but being the sixth novel in an eight novel series, it is too little too late. There is still wibbly wobbly magic use, and a complete disregard for the other members of the group, namely Nearra, Davyn and Elidore. I have ordered the next book in the series because I am a masochist apparently, but I wouldn’t recommend this book or this quartet thus far, to anyone.
Outro
And that’s it for my review of Dragon Day by Stan Brown. What do you think about the sixth of The New Adventures novels? Did you have a favorite part of the novel? You can email me at info@dlsaga.com or comment below.
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This channel is all about celebrating the wonderful world of the Dragonlance Saga, and I hope you will join me in the celebration. Thank you for watching, this has been Adam with DragonLance Saga and until next time Slàinte mhath (slan-ge-var).
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