Join me as I review The Eve of the Maelstrom by Jean Rabe, live! Share your thoughts on this third and final volume in the Dragonlance: Dragons of a New Age series released on February 24, 1998 by Wizards of the Coast. You can buy a copy here: https://amzn.to/3F8pBB4
About The Eve of the Maelstrom
In an age of tyranny, one evil rises above all others.The Summer of Chaos swept its devastation across the world of Krynn. In its wake, foul dragon overlords of immeasurable power conquered Ansalon and remade the lands in their own image. But Malystryx, the greatest and most evil of all the dragons, is no longer content with ruling her domain. She wants to ascend to godhood, and only one band of stalwart heroes stands in her way.
Review
Welcome to another DragonLance Saga review episode. It is Kirinor, Brookgreen the 15th. My name is Adam and today I am going to give you my Spoiler review of The Eve of the Maelstrom by Jean Rabe. 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 links. 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 are immediately given the answer to the question about Takhisis’ return. It turns out Frost was talking about Malys’ intention of using ancient artifacts to elevate her to godhood through their destruction and magical release. This makes as much sense as Skie destroying the artifacts to return magic to Krynn in order to leave for The Grey and collect Kitiara’s soul, so I am down. Now that we know what Malys’ plans are, we pick up with Skie headed to his lair with the artifacts, Huma’s Dragonlance and Goldmoons holy medallion of Faith. It is strange that just holding the lance causes him harm. It seems it should require piercing to hurt him, but again, I accept it. The heroes are all collecting themselves after Palin saved them with his illusion from Skie, and they now only have the artifact The Fist of Eli, and the promise of Dalamar’s ring from the Master of the Tower.
They decide to travel to hunt down Dhaman Grimwulf and take his glaive which is clearly an artifact, then travel to collect the Crown from Dimernost, if they can find it. So Palin takes some of the heroes with him to the Tower of Wayreth to research Dhaman’s Glaive and the Dimernesti Crown. The Shadow Sorcerer is pretty insistent about them dealing with the Shadow Dragon that is killing the evil dragons and absorbing their power, but no one else seems to be as concerned. Knowing who the Shadow Sorcerer is, I wonder if Jean Rabe knew who it would end up being as she was writing this trilogy. Dhaman is being controlled by Malys and enters Sable’s land where he finds and kills some of her spawn, then as she comes to kill Dhaman, Malys speaks through Dhaman and gains safe passage. He is traveling to ogre ruins in Blode.
The heroes travel through the swamp and come across some Bakali who are transorting elves for Sable. It turns out if the Spawn are not created by humans, they end up as abominations and Sable likes them that way. The heroes rescue the elves who know the way to the ruins in Blode where Dhaman is headed. The sorcerers in the Tower of Wayreth are scrying his location and updating the heroes as they travel. Dhaman ends up being met by some Knights of Takhisis and forced to kill some Solamnic Knights, but the Shadow Dragon attacks before he can kill the final Knight. The Shadow dragon murders all the Knights of Takhisis, leaving only one, the commander Jalan to tell the story. This is all after the Shadow Dragon kills Ferno, Malys’ lieutenant red dragon. It was a pretty underwhelming fight as the Shadow Dragon seems really overpowered with its breath weapon, not even an adult Red Dragon can stand up to it.
Naturally Malys is infuriated and leaves Dhaman to look for Ferno. Dhaman then tells the remaining Solamnic Knight to flee, and wanders off to hide from the Dark Knights. We return to the tower where Ulin is taking Sunrise the gold dragon presumably to the Dragon Isles to talk with and train with the other good dragons, and Blister and Usha ask Palin to send them to the other Heroes in Blode. Usha has a flashback early on about her time with the Qualinesti elves when Palin collected the Fist of Eli, and they suggest that there is more to her history and the Fist of Eli than anyone knows about thus far. I honestly don’t recall if it is ever clarified, so I look forward to rediscovering it if there is an explanation. Also, the Master of the Tower believes Dhaman’s Glaive is an artifact called Reorx’s Grin, it is so ancient that it was lost during the All Saints War. That was prehistory!
Goldmoon is approached by Riverwinds spirit and told to return to the living and she argues and fights back, but we know she ultimately will return at some point. Dhaman goes into the mountains to hide and is caught by the Shadow Dragon who realizes he is under the control of Malys. They fight, but Dhaman is subdued and the Shadow Dragon breaks the scale that is giving Malys power over Dhaman. Gilthanas and Silvara arrive to collect Dhaman for judgment, but Silvara and the Shadow Dragon work together to remove the scales influence from Dhaman all together. Dhaman then leaves with Gilthanas and Silvara to find the others. They are all scouring the mountains to find Dhaman and come across an army of Red Dragon Spawn seemingly searching for Ferno’s remains or Dhaman. They get backed into a cave and use magic to seal them inside. They begin exploring the cave and Jasper falls through to a lower cavern, hurting himself. He has lost confidence in himself since Goldmoon’s death and is unable to heal himself. Groller is looking for him and falls as well. We then get a wonderful flashback of Groller in his home with his wife. He was attacked by a Green Dragon and a yellow eyed gnome granted his wish to shut out the screams of the dying. Then Fury the wolf showed up, leading us to believe Fury is not just a wolf.
Groller is ultimately healed by Jasper who rediscovers his ability with the help of Goldmoon’s spirit? Did she come back already? Did we miss it? Who knows. This book feels so rushed and has so much to wrap up as the final book in the trilogy that I can’t help but feel like there should be one more book in the series. In any case, the heroes regroup and are saved by Silvara. They are approached by Palin scrying and Gilthanas and Silvara need to search Khur for potential places Takhisis might return to, and so they drop off the heroes at a harbor town and head out. The heroes discover the area has been taken over by Knights of Takhisis looking for them, and since they need to travel to Dimernesti to get the crown artifact, they need a ship.
They find a boat to take to a ship in order to overtake it, and what follows is an insanely long and unrealistic battle where the heroes face off against multiple dozens of Dark Knights and defeat them, while burning ships that would give chase. Though the heroes seem to get defeated individually, they collectively still beat the odds and it is the first time I am actually unable to suspend my disbelief. They would be massacred! It is so unrealistic that they would ever make it out of this alive, let alone face Brine the dragon overlord and defeat her in the hundred pages left… We are presented with a scenario where the heroes steal a new ship, which all others are in flames, and Dhaman easily, at near death, kills two Dark Knights with a thrown dagger each, and the rest of the crew gives up.
Now they begin sailing to Dimernost, staying on the outer edges of the realm so Brynseldimer doesn’t kill them as he does to all ships that come into his territory. The near dead are all healed by Jasper Fireforge, and Usha with the aid of Jasper, recalls the secret of the Fist of Eli, and Jasper now wields the artifact. Meanwhile Feril dives into the sea and shape changes into an octopus then a fish and finds the sea elves city. She is met by a sea elf named Veylona, who is instrumental in helping her people understand that Feril is not evil and is a sorcerer elf. She is eventually taken to the Speaker of the Sea, Nuqala, as Feril tells her about everything that has been happening above the surface, and asks for the Crown of Tides. The Dimernesti have been using it to make sure Brine doesn’t destroy their nation, but she is willing to part with it IF Feril promises to kill Brine. She reluctantly agrees and on the way back to the ship, Brine sees and attacks her, then searches for the ship that she must have come in on.
As Brine attacks the ship, Dhaman and Groller dive overboard to attack the Dragon Overlord in the water. Dhaman is nearly killed, and With the Fist of Eli’s full power in the hands of Jasper, and the ship being steered into the dragon, they defeat Brine. Veylona rescued Feril and Dhaman, and once again there are no casualties facing off against a Dragon Overlord, and they didn’t even need to use the Crown of Tides. This is all way too convenient and easy. These Dragon Overlords are supposed to be immeasurable in power. Dragonlances barely affect them. Artifacts hurt but rarely do any permanent damage to them, yet these heroes never seem to lose at anything, and it only gets worse…
Palin is sent to Ariakan’s Rest where the Shadow Sorcerer is convinced Takhisis will reenter Krynn, as the mortals still think the Dragon Overlords are referring to the old goddess rather than an elevated Malys, and then the Shadow Sorcerer attacks Palin, revealing that she is in fact a spy for Malys and has been the whole time. This is at direct odds with the War of Souls trilogy and the reneged truth about the Shadow Sorcerer, but what can ya do, at the time it was written, the Shadow Sorcerer wasn’t Takhisis. As Palin defeats her, she disappears never to be seen in the novel again. Then we flash forward.
Everyone is outside the Dragon Overlords area in Khur where she will ascend to godhood. The heroes stuck on their broken ship were apparently rescued and slipped past the Dark Knights waiting on shore for them. All the Dragon Overlords and their Lieutenants are gathered with the Dark Knights and goblin, and ogre tribes who had zero effect on the story but were given full chapters in other books for no reason except to gather humans to make Spawn. None of them matter, as the heroes just waltz into the Dragons gathering and go toes with them all. The Overlords allow the mortals to attack them because they are beneath them in power, but then Frost leaves cause he was hurt too much, and then the good dragons with Solamnic Knights arrive and battle with…. Well it wasn’t clear, presumably the dark knights and other forces.
The story focuses on Malys ascending to godhood with an altar of magic items and artifacts and as she is ascending, Khellendros approaches and steals the power to open a portal to the Grey, taking a blue dragon for Kitiaras to inhabit. Before he leaves he gives Dhaman a Dragonlance who stabs Malys, then Khellendros smacks her which makes her fly off. Don’t worry, she’s not dead, just pissed off vowing revenge. Khellendros leaves Krynn but promises Palin and the heroes safety to leave, why? I have no idea. And the entire battle just stops as everyone just goes home, no harm no fowl. The only casualty was Jasper who fought with the resurrected Goldmoon who is now young again, way before Takhisis could have had the power to grant her her youth.
This was such a rushed novel that undermined the severity of the world and novels that preceded it. It ended in such a haphazard way so as to be comically stupid, and now I finally remember why everyone hated this trilogy of novels. Not for how it began, but for how it ended. We are left with the promise of Khellendros collecting Kitiara, reneged. The Shadow Sorcerer being a mortal female spy for Malys, reneged, Goldmoon returning in youth because she was destined to train others who would defeat the Overlords, reneged, Palin whose whole body is scarred and burned, reneged, Ulin traveling home with Sunrise the Dragon never to be seen or heard from again, and nothing actually changed in the world. Malys is still in control. The Dragon Overlords still dominate the land. Only one Overlord was killed but he was a loner uninvolved in the first place, and only Jasper suffered death for all of it.
If you can avoid this novel, I would highly recommend doing so. This was a joke of a story that had promise but was mishandled from the start. Blame TSR selling out to Wizards, blame Jean Rabe, blame Weis and Hickman for reneging everything, but don’t bother reading it..
Outro
And that’s it for my review of The Eve of the Maelstrom by Jean Rabe. Did you enjoy the re-introduction and end of so many familiar heroes? Is Dhaman and his Glaive too powerful? 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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