reading: the avatar series, bks. 3&4

[sword_logic]

nope, not that avatar. this is AD&D2 lore. this is 80s fantasy novels. this is late-80s franchise tie-in fantasy novels.

the verdict? waterdeep was kinda meh, had some great character moments. prince of lies was such an unbelievable delight, i don't even know where to start.

shadowdale, tantras, and waterdeep comprise the original trilogy, all released in 1989 (oof!), with prince of lies and crucible: the trial of cyric the mad coming in '93 and '98, respectively. tl;dr for why i picked these up: cyric is directly responsible for the world-breaking event that sparks my campaign, and he's also my cleric's deity in the campaign i play in — these books are cyric's backstory. the events of this series directly impact the events of the campaign i DM; i got most of the lore scraps i needed from the cursèd wiki and built a story that more or less stands on its own without breaking faerun lore, but the more i dug into this the more i wanted the non-wiki version of events, and here we are.

so i went into this mostly spoiled already; however, the forgotten realms wiki is kind of a total mess when it comes to summarizing the events of these books, so i had the general idea, but the nuance was absolutely not there, lol. in any case: i decided to start with waterdeep since just about every review i read of shadowdale and tantras pretty much said in no uncertain terms that they were terribly written and that waterdeep did a decent job summarizing events.

what i was expecting (and got): cardboardy prose, repeated epithets ("the fighter," "the magic-user," "the cleric," the - wait for it - "hawk-nosed thief" ...lmao.), pretty engaging plot

what i was not expecting (and got anyways): some really fascinating intra-party tensions, shockingly insightful treatment of the female character, equally shockingly insightful discussion of the all-brawn-no-brains fighter, some decent humor, pretty interesting descriptions of magic/spellcasting

since the game i'm playing right now is waterdeep: dragon heist (merging our way into dungeon of the mad mage), it was really neat to see placed i've "been" in waterdeep! and familiar names, too, in spite of the ~140 years between the events of these books (1358 DR) and the campaign (1492 DR). i think the biggest surprise/delight was that the Big Four - adon, kelemvor, cyric, and midnight - really came off as being in an incredibly messy and poorly communicated poly relationship, lol. that's where all the really interesting party conflicts were; midnight and kelemvor were the "couple," and there was actually no weird jealousy subplots involving adon or cyric, but midnight and kel butted heads over legitimate issues so often, and kel and adon squabbled SO often, and midnight believed in cyric so strongly even though he'd betrayed them quite obviously at the end of the previous book, and adon and midnight sought a lot of comfort in each other... big poly vibes. it was a riot. all in all, waterdeep was a pretty entertaining read that gave some personality to lore i already knew.

prince of lies, by contrast, gave me an incredibly engaging plot full of twists and turns and plotting™ that kept me on my toes even though i knew the major plot twist, and it gave me... cyric. clever, manipulative, delusional, utterly narcissistic, the-handsome-jack-of-the-forgotten-realms cyric.

i can't talk about cyric without addressing the way the entire pantheon was framed, which is to say, holy shit this was one of the most interesting portrayals of a pantheon i've seen in a long time. at the end of waterdeep, the overlord-god ao decreed that every god's power would be directly linked to the amount (and passion) of followers they have, therefore making the gods depend entirely on people rather than disregard the material plane entirely and play politics in the astral sea (which is what led to the whole backdrop of the first 3 books). this is also the point where cyric and midnight became gods themselves - one evil god to take over the portfolios of the 3 that had been killed by the party, and one good god to take over the portfolio of mystra, goddess of magic, who'd been killed by another god. in prince of lies, midnight/mystra's entire storyline - the entirety of how she pushes back against cyric's machinations - is snarled up completely by the other gods' refusal (and inability) to see a different, larger perspective, and from their insistence on clinging to The Balance and using all kinds of recursive justifications to instead pin the blame on mystra for trying to alter the balance by opposing cyric. these quotes in particular summed things up really well:

Ao offered a final warning, full of dark portents: It is your responsibility to stand against Cyric—just as it is his to destroy you if you fail. Such is the way of the Balance.

and

"The crux of the evidence against you is this: You have taken it upon yourself to punish Cyric, to thwart whatever plans he hatches to further strife and death in the world. In doing so, you've forgotten two important facts. First, it is Cyric's office to create such discord in the mortal realms. Second, it is not your office to prevent that discord. You are the Goddess of Magic, Lady Mystra, not the harbinger of peace of avenger of those done harm by Cyric's actions."

it's the (i'm showing my ass here) same kind of twisty, recursive, faux-self-empowering thinking as sword logic in destiny - and there were a few passages that echoed the books of sorrow nearly to the letter, about how the only triumph is existence, and if you are weak enough to be killed by your opponent then you don't deserve to live. it was so deeply fascinating to see this logic coming from the "good guys" in this book, especially since the other gods are painted as being extremely short-sighted by design.

mystra's perspective in contrast to the other gods' is different because she had been human quite recently, and she remembers that - and that's the root of cyric's manipulations as well. it's so very nastily human. ugh, there were so many little things in this book that the author brought together in a wonderful way, and so many minor characters that were utterly fantastic. the book dedicated a lot of time to cyric's perspective, so it ended up being a kind of "villain protagonist, hero antagonist" situation, but it never really let you feel too sorry for cyric, and not for long, either. the string of misfortunes that made up his life were all presented as poor (and/or deliberately malicious) choices he made, with very little room for "oh :( poor cyric :(" because it'd just be followed up with him doing something completely atrocious.

in the current d&d timeline (or, well, at the point the canon has developed to), cyric is known as the mad god, and d&d has historically not had a great relationship with "madness." in 5e, it's a condition that can be afflicted upon your character; there's a table to roll on for permanent and temporary madness, and almost everything on those tables is either a shitty stereotype or, like, straight-up just a symptom of mental illness. our grab bag here includes: OCD stereotype! alcohol abuse! paranoia! partial amnesia! tremors! partial blindness or deafness?? ??? it's a FUCKING MESS. anyways, what i'm getting to is that i knew that this book would end with cyric becoming mad (i.e., not just ~eViL~, but having an altered perception of reality), and i was bracing for... well, for the way 5e handles madness. instead, it circumvented that by presenting cyric's "madness" as a loss of control over the splinters of himself and his domains that, as a god, he must use to attend to the needs of his domains and his followers - an inability to parse and compartmentalize the voices of his followers, the callings of his domains (murder, strife, and intrigue), and the fragments of self he had split across the realms(s). i was expecting 5e-esque DSM V russian roulette, and instead i got a brain-breaking that actually felt rooted in magic and its side effects.

god, this was such a delight. the heroes were aptly heroic, and their struggles were wonderful — rinda was such a shocking, welcome surprise, and i loved gwydion immediately. his character arc in particular was incredibly, fantastically well done, and rinda was actually fleshed out for a minor female character in a 90s fantasy novel written by a man, which had been a pressing concern of mine upon starting these books. honestly, overall, the treatment of female characters was alright; there weren't many of them, there was some weird-but-typical-for-older-fantasy ~Bar Wench~ type drivel, and some super uncomfortable use of "the whore" as an epithet, but nothing anywhere near as bad as i'd expected. there were some other yikes things that had more to do with, well, the state of the forgotten realms' worldbuilding as of 1990-whatever (which isn't to say it's that much better now, tbf).

ALL IN ALL: i am fed. this was a wonderful meal. i have so much fuel for my terrible cleric now.

OH - OH RIGHT, I ALSO GOD TERRIBLE OLDER-FANTASY ARTWORK OUT OF THIS. oh my god. prince of lies had illustrations in it that were so fantastically, quintessentially Bad Fantasy Art that i nearly cried with joy. please explain to me how a character consistently described as lean or catlike ends up illustrated like this.

absolutely fantastic. truly wonderful. groundbreaking. clearly the twink thief god needs to look like he-man's boutta hit me with his cover of 4 non blondes' hit single what's up.

on a more serious note, though, the updated cover art for this book is really wonderful - it was done by brom.