Join me as I review The Oath and the Measure by Michael Williams, live! Share your thoughts on this fourth novel in the Meetings Sextet series, released on June 1, 1992 by TSR Inc. You can buy a copy here: https://amzn.to/3UDP8dN
About The Oath and the Measure
Secrets of the past.
Although Raistlin and Caramon urge him not to go, Sturm Brightblade attends an annual Solamnic ceremony that is interrupted by . . .
A stranger, taunting challenge. Clues from the past. Death.
Once he accepts a mysterious gauntlet, young Sturm must make a dangerous journey with some curious friends, rescue a fair if querulous maid, defeat a traitor knight, and learn the secret fate of his long-lost father. He must also learn the meaning of honor.
The fourth installment in the popular Meetings Sextet tells the story of Sturm Brightblade, the noble Solamnic Knight, in the years before Sturm joined up with the other companions of the best-selling Dragonlance series.
Review
Intro
Welcome to another DragonLance Saga review episode. It is Misham, Fleurgreen the 9th. My name is Adam and today I am going to give you my review of The Oath and the Measure by Michael Williams. I would like to take a moment and thank the DLSaga members, 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.
This story begins in much the same way as the film The Green Knight, where Sir Gawain had to go and fight the green knight after it interrupted Arthurs council. I don’t want to say it was a rip off of that tale, but it is awfully close to it. There are also some great shakespearean vibes when ghosts appear. But I would expect nothing less from Michael Williams, who also connects this tale to his two previous stories about Galen Pathwarden, who we know befriended Sturms grandfather.
The story begins at a Yule festival in the High Cleristt’s tower where Sturm made a pilgrimage to after his mother passed. There is a chapter where Caramon and Raistlin try to dissuade Sturm from going, but it clearly didn’t work. So he’s attending this festival and all the knights begin singing a song to Huma and the green Man, Lord Wilderness otherwise known as Vertumnus suddenly appears. But, he appears differently to each knight. Sturm sees him as the green man, with vegetation sprouting from his body. Vertumnus is mocking the knights and Sturm stands to confront him. The green man recognises Sturms’s surname and they begin to battle, with Sturm being cut in the shoulder. Then Sturm runs the green man through, and it dies, momentarily.
The green man rises and challenges Sturm to give a life for a life and face off against him in the spring in his Southern Darkwoods. By the Measure, Sturm is honor bound to go, even though he is not a knight. The whole scene before and after this challenge, which Sturm obviously accepts, is great! We get a bunch of lord knights bantering back and forth and truly get the vibe of how disconnected they each are, but still are structured by their order. I really enjoyed the back and forth, it reminded me of my military time.
So they train Sturm and he is even given his fathers shield, and they tell him stories of his father and grandfather. Supposedly his father Angriff made a deal to spare his soldiers lives by approaching a druid alone, but then he vanished. This is in direct conflict with every other story about Angriff Brightblade, so I think there is more to uncover here. But Sturm feels like it’s a mystery he can still uncover. Winter starts turning to spring and he sets off to the Southern Darkwoods and Vertumnus.
His travel leads him into fog and a dragon hunting him, a dragon that is not supposed to exist at this time by the way, but Vertumnus is magically turning the dragon away from Sturm. In the fog, Sturm gets lost and arrives at Castle di Caela, his grandfather’s castle, now run down and abandoned. He is locked in when he enters and trapped by none other than Lord Boniface Crownguard, Derek Crownguard’s uncle. Apparently the entire Crownguard family is filled with asses. He has something to do with Angriff’s disappearance, and he is trying to end the Brightblade line, but we don’t know the exact details just yet. It definitely seems like Vertumnus is going to tell Sturm, if he ever gets to him. He is trapped in the keep for a week, near starving to death.
Then the ghost of Sir Robert di Caela, his great grandfather appears and offers him two questions. The second leads him out of the castle, and he mounts his horse and sets off for the Southern Darkwoods, terrified he won’t make it in time. If he doesn’t appear at the precise location and at the precise time, he will start sprouting vegetation from his shoulder wound I believe. He realizes that one of his horses shoes was nearly removed, so he slows down and realizes someone is following him, trying to stop him from succeeding, but he doesn’t know who, even though we do.
He comes across a Kagonesti maiden playing the flute and sees a spider behind her. He rushes in to save her, but it turns out the spider is the transmogrified house royal elf of Silvanesti named Cyren. She was trying to remove the curse on this once in five year alignment of the moons and constellations. He stops the ritual unknowingly and she berates him saying she hasn’t decided if she’s going to kill him over it.
The Kagonesti’s name is Mara, and they quickly become traveling companions as she leverages the Measure and Honor to make Sturm deliver her to Silvanost. Knowing that he has plans in the Southern Darkwood, Mara insists on going with him, and then they will go to Silvanost. I am just imagining a really young Sturm Brightblade. He just traveled a week from the High Clerist’s Tower, and has seen nothing but trouble, and now he is forced to escort an elf to Silvanost if he survives… he’s a child, and they are acting like he’s the Sturm of Winter’s Night. Sturm has to agree, and they travel as the weather turns to rain.
They hide in a cave when Mara notes that someone is following them. Sturm goes out to find out who it is and it turns out to be the Tower’s gardener, Jack Derry, who is clearly something more. They fight till Sturm realizes who he is after being bested, and they all go to the cave which is under watch by Lord Boniface. Jack says he knows a smith in a Lemish town just before the forest, as Sturm wants to mend his sword. Jack tells him the sword looks like it was intentionally fractured to break, and fits in with the other mishaps that now Sturm calls off as coincidence. But he was insisting they were traps just hours before to Mara, so why the sudden dim wittedness?
Jack insists they go to an easier ford of the Vingaard River and as they are crossing, they are ambushed by mercenaries. They get to the other side and Jack is kicking ass, calling Sturm Jack, and insisting they run away. This fools the brigands into thinking Jack is actually Sturm, and lets them go. Sturm, Mara and the spider finally arrive at the town only to be greeted, then imprisoned. The druid of the town, Ragnell is the one who led the attacks on the nearby Solamnic castles and won! But they clearly won because they were allowed to through the Solamnics infighting.
We actually learn that Boniface Crownguard is the reason Brightblade Castle fell. The reinforcements were ambushed at his behest, in order to kill the Brightblades’. It all goes back to a duel between Angriff Brightblade and Boniface Crownguard where Angrif won even after Boniface tried to leverage the Measure to make him lose. He was embarrassed and turned to treachery. This is such a great way of highlighting how the Knights got to where they are in Winter’s Night. They actively worked against each other for power and fame. There is also something that I think needs addressing. The author has already mentioned Goldmoon as a seer who gave Mara the flute and taught her music. Why bring Goldmoon into it at all? If she was a prophet, why was she stoned when Riverwind wanted to marry her and her father was unable to make the Blue Crystal Staff do anything. If she was a prophet, her father would know it and her tribe wouldn’t have turned from the gods… Why bring her up at all, and why would Sturm not know the name years later when he found them outside Solace. It’s not a common name….
They also brought in the Uth Matar’s, saying they were a dying and dead family, meaning they all were gone by the time Kitiara goes looking for them. But it’s mentioned in another book that she found her people and they didn’t want anything to do with her or her father’s legacy. If they were all gone, how did she find them? There is simply no reason to insist on these connections. It doesn’t add to the story, it only takes away from it. The world is much larger than the Heroes of the Lance. I wish the authors would recognise that fact. So imprisoned, Sturm is visited by the Druid of the town, and gives him a vision of Solamnic Knights capturing Goblin children, tying them up and leading them to a couple knights who slaughter them after burning their village down. This is used as an example of why the Lemish citizens don’t trust the Solamnics, and I get it. I wouldn’t like them either. Politics are so regional that they often become brainwashed ideas rather than valid perspectives on life.
So Mara has the sword mended by the blacksmith before she is arrested, and the blacksmith makes a remark about this wonderful blade being asked to be fractured by a Solamnic, we know as Boniface, and that he refused, but then he mentions offhand about two swords, this one and a Brightblade. Is he referencing The Brightblade? Again, why drop that line in without any payoff? Are we to believe he fashioned or worked on a blade a thousand years or more old? It gets a bit frustrating. So Mara and Sturm breakout with the help of the spider, and they go to the blacksmith. They see him talking to Jack, and Sturm jumps through a window and confronts him. Jack is pleased to see him, but Sturm is angry as no one seemed to know his name as he was led to believe.
Jack leads them to the Southern Darkwoods and they pass a treant which is described as a giant, not a treant, and it’s on a massive horse. Jack hears the search party looking for the escaped prisoners and when he leaves, the treant looks to Sturm and raises its club. I don’t recall any of this from my first reading of it, but I am as frustrated with it, as I am enjoying it. I find myself wishing the editor was more insistent on having a canon for the novels, they would be so much better with it.
The end of this novel is anything but satisfying. We are presented with a notion at the beginning that this will require Sturm to give a life for the life taken, and the suggestion we are presented with is that through a test to save Sturm’s life he must choose the Solamnic Knight path or become a nature knight and stay with Lord Wilderness. We clearly know the choice, so the assumption is that the life is his sacrifice in Winter’s Knight. This actually takes the weight out of that moment, as he is fulfilling a bargain with Lord Wilderness in his death, rather than a heroic act of sacrifice for his friends and the knighthood itself. It’s one of a few moments that make this novel turn sour for me.
The tenant dismounts his steed and fights Sturm, nearly killing him. Lord Wilderness, and his two dryads appear and take him to Lady Hollis, also known as the druidess Ragnell who happens to be Vertumnus’ wife, and parents of Jack Derby. So the whole imprisonment bit was pointless, and the line that she killed the knights was a lie. Everything that is presented in this novel as a fact, is ripped from underneath you and a new perspective is given, and it’s never better than the original. It forces you to ask, what is the actual point of this novel? Is it to show that Sturm will die by his Order? We know that already. Is it to show the Knights are suffocated by their rigid following of the measure, we already knew that too. So what is the message here?
Mara is approached by the dying spider, her lover turned spider, but he reveals he was always a spider, and an enchanter turned him into an elf to lure Mara to him, which backfired. So again, the rug is pulled out from underneath us and the spider dies, then Mara just stays and hangs out with Lord Wilderness. Her whole quest and life goals up to this point are just forgotten and she moves on. What?! Sturm never hears from her again, even though he was honor bound to escort her to Silvanost, and oh, by the way, it changes from Silvanesti to Qualinesti and back again. They aren’t even consistent with which elven nation she is returning to.
So Sturm is taken for healing to the woman who imprisoned him for no reason, and she heals him, and it gives him visions. He sees his own death, Raistlin kills Caramon in his Test of High Sorcery, and I’m wondering why are we relying on other stories and novels to make this one interesting? Sturm is asked to make his choice of being a hedge knight or a Solamnic Knight and he chooses the measure. Then Lord Wilderness vanishes, Sturm wakes in the forest alone, wanders to the town of Dun Ringhill where he was imprisoned, looking for the smith to take him to Lord Wilderness, not realizing that he already met him and he’s returning to the location he fled from a little bit ago. It makes zero sense.
Sturm finds Lord Wilderness in the smithy and they eat and Lord Wilderness tells him that he was once a knight with Lord Boniface and when Boniface hired the mercenaries to kill the Solamnic reinforcements for Angrif Brightblade, he blamed it on Vertumnus. So he left and became Lord Wilderness. He tells Sturm Boniface is the traitor like Jack Derby did, like Sturm already knows, and he still refuses to believe it for a moment. Meanwhile Boniface hiers’ Kapak and Bozak draconians to assassinate Sturm if Sturm tries to return to the High Clerists Tower. Yea, draconians, which are not supposed to be known about in this time frame, that Sturm is shocked to see in Autumn Twilight. The timeline inconsistencies are infuriating.
So Sturm, now good with Lord Wilderness, returns to the High Clerists Tower to get revenge on Boniface, and is attacked by the draconians. Lord Wilderness helps him through magic and Sturm kills the leader and some of the Bozaks. Then returns to the tower. He stands before the high council and tells them all that transpired, and Boniface challenges him to a fight over the accusations, per the measure. Boniface is the best living swordsman and easily beats Sturm, leaving the issue resolved with Boniface innocent and Sturm returns to Solace.
Then Gunthar arrives in Solace to tell that Lord Wilderness returned the next Yule and tricked Boniface into a duel where he defeated him, and Boniface admitted to treachery and was hanged. The end. So Sturm being present in the whole sordid tale was meaningless. There was no reason for him to be involved in anything at all, and I am left with loving the first two thirds of this novel and being utterly confused and disappointed in the last third.
I don’t know why the author made these choices, but what can ya do? I would recommend this to anyone who loves the Solamnic Knights as it portrays them as they are in my mind, flawed and fun. But if you want to gain insight into Sturm, you will not find it here.
Outro
And that’s it for my review of The Oath and the Measure by Michael Williams. What did you think of Sturm seeking his father and learning nothing, only to try again in a couple months with Kitiara? Do you like how Lord Wilderness was portrayed and his story? And finally, is there any way to get a satisfying story about Sturm before Winter’s Night? Feel free to email me at info@dlsaga.com or leave a comment below.
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