masterghandalf

MG: And so, everyone, we’ve finally come to the end of volume two of Shandril’s Saga, Crown of Fire! As with the previous volume, before we get ready to move on to the final book, Hand of Fire, we have some last business to take care of. First off is an Afterword to the second edition, including both some commentary from Greenwood himself (which may shed some light on why he made some of the choices he did, albeit perhaps not in the way he intended) and a sort of “deleted scene” from Spellfire that’s supposed to patch a plot hole but, in my opinion, doesn’t do a very good job of it. We’ll start off with the Afterword itself, which I’ll be quoting in full interspersed with my own commentary in bold.

Ed’s (Elminster’s) Afterword

MG: …really, Greenwood? It’s kind of hard to take you seriously when you try to say that Elminster isn’t your author avatar when you go ahead and literally sign your own afterword this way. I mean, wow.

Hi. Yes, ‘tis the author: me. Ed. Ahem. The novel in your hands was first published years ago. It’s set in a younger, more carefree Realms preceding the Time of Troubles or Godswar – that grim time when gods walked Faerun and there was great upheaval in both the mortal Realms and the ranks of the divine alike.

MG: Okay, on the one hand, I know what Greenwood’s getting at here – this trilogy is indeed set before a lot of the major story arc events like the Time of Troubles, the Tuigan invasion, and the Return of the Archwizards (to say nothing of the Spellplague, though that one hadn’t happened yet at the time Greenwood would have been writing this afterword) that changed the setting dramatically and caused the overarching metaplot to take much darker turns. And I can certainly see why Greenwood himself might be nostalgic for that earlier time, considering it would’ve been closer to “his” Realms when it was just his private world to play around with rather than the most successful, and de facto default, Dungeons and Dragons setting. On the other hand, calling anything about this book “carefree” where it mostly consists of our heroine being constantly attacked by a seemingly inexhaustible parade of Zhents, and then turning around and counterattacking by slaughtering those same Zhents en masse is a little rich. Not the word I’d use…

The previous Shandril novel, Spellfire, glanced at what might happen if a popular dream became real: the yearning of many a young person to run away and taste glorious adventure.

MG: Yeah, Spellfire and about a bajillion other fantasy novels have dealt with that; seriously, ordinary (or seemingly ordinary) teen or young adult leaves home, gets caught up in adventure, and may or may not end up carrying the fate of the world on their shoulders is one of the most common high fantasy plotlines there is, and frankly, it’s been done a lot better, including elsewhere in the Realms.

To keep the naïve, relative weak heroine of Spellfire alive – and to thrust importance upon her, as well as explore the corrupting effects of power – I gave her spellfire…

MG: And this, I think, is very telling. Like I just said, sending an untried youth (or in some cases, such as The Hobbit, an untried adult) on adventure is one of the most common stock fantasy plots – and yet somehow most of those stories manage just fine without turning their main character into a human tactical nuke right off the bat (and even those protagonists who eventually get there usually have to go through some process to acquire that kind of power or get trained in it or something rather than just having it dropped in their lap before the book is a third of the way done). I’ve mentioned before, but I think Bilbo Baggins is a much better example of how to handle this, because while he, like Shandril, stumbles into a power fairly early in his story that elevates him from “the load” to “indispensable member of the company” it’s a very different kind of power – his ring of invisibility (or so he thought it was…) isn’t a gamebreaker by itself, it’s a power that requires cleverness and finesse to use properly, and fits with Bilbo’s prior characterization as someone who prefers to use words and/or guile to get out of his problems rather than violence. And even then, he still has to work through or think around obstacles; he can’t just blast them out of the way. Maybe if Greenwood hadn’t started throwing dracoliches at Shandril right off the bat, he wouldn’t have needed to make her so OP? Because there are any number of ways to make even a newbie protagonist useful or important that don’t involve turning them into a one-person-army right off the bat. Also, the bit about the “corrupting effects of power” is kind of ironic, considering that while we can definitely see said effects in Shandril’s character development over the course of Crown in particular, the narrative, once again, ends up rewarding her for her acts of mass slaughter by making her a full Harper rather than condemning it, which just makes it seem like Greenwood wasn’t willing to actually commit to that as a plot point.

…one of my old “bag of tricks” from a decade of D&D roleplaying in the “home” Realms campaign (wherein the Company of Crazed Venturers were extremely puzzled by a certain mysterious Masked Mage whom they met repeatedly in Undermountain, who otherwise ignored them, but seared their best spells and magical barriers to nothing with jets of all-consuming fire that erupted from his bare hands).

MG: …spellfire was originally a villainous power, then? That… honestly makes a lot of sense, since you can generally get away with making your villains much more OP than your heroes, since then your heroes have to struggle and all (a lesson that Greenwood seems to have forgotten between his time as a young DM and his time as a novelist, considering how badly the heroes in his fiction tend to outclass their villains). The Company of Crazed Venturers, by the way, were apparently another group of PCs from Greenwood’s old DMing days (like the Knights of Myth Drannor) and Undermountain, of course, is a vast complex of fortresses and dungeons located near (and partially beneath) Waterdeep and the home turf of one of Faerun’s more powerful baddies, Halaster Blackcloak (I’m not sure if the “Masked Mage” referenced here is meant to be Halaster himself, one of his various apprentices, or someone completely different who happened to be snooping around Undermountain too).

Spellfire, of course, is dangerously unbalancing to the wrong sort of roleplaying campaign. In the fictional Toril spun into colorful life by scores of busy authors writing Realms novels, Shandril is the equivalent of a roving archer whose bow shoots endless line of sight nuclear bombs.

MG: …well, damn, you can’t really put it better than that. Which still makes me wonder why Greenwood, understanding this, thought giving this power to his protagonist was a smart move.

Inevitably all sorts of “power groups” (clandestine and “official” organizations, priesthoods, local petty rulers and the agents of mighty kingdoms) swiftly become very interested in seizing, controlling, influencing or “steering” this source of spellfire – and Crown of Fire picks up right where Spellfire left off, exploring the reactions of various Powers That Be to the sudden emergence of dangerous power in the hands of a young, inexperienced female.

MG: And all of these “power groups” seem to have more-or-less the same approach – toss lots of mooks, mixed with the occasional more dangerous adversary, at Shandril, and then sit back and watch her incinerate them all in droves while none of them, ranging from the humblest Zhentilar conscript up to the mighty Shargrailar, actually accomplish anything lasting (even Thraun causing Shandril to miscarry doesn’t really feel consequential, as I’ll address in a bit). How exciting. And am I the only one who thinks that last sentence is a little… off? Not only does it make it sound like the important thing about Shandril having spellfire is her gender, but the description of her in this context as a “female” rather than “girl” or “young woman” is just… kind of icky.

It should be obvious that Elminster and The Simbul are (in addition to the hundreds of other matters they’re juggling) wrestling with various Malaugrym and powerful Zhentarim to keep Narm and Shandril alive during both novels – and the one to come, too, Hand of Fire.

MG: Not really, no? Or if it was supposed to be, you really didn’t show it? Elminster maybe – he scared Amarune out of pursuing her revenge in Spellfire, but she was planning on targeting Gorstag and Lureene (the ones who actually killed her daughter) not Shandril. This book, he took down Manshoon, but considering how incompetent Manshoon was written during Crown that doesn’t feel all that impressive (and it was a temporary fix, anyway) and he fought Thraun, but didn’t defeat him and didn’t even know about him until it was almost too late. He then sat the rest of the book out. As for the Malaugrym – rather than going after Magusta himself, he sent Torm and Rathan to do it, even though they had no idea what they were doing. Good job! As for the Simbul – seriously? She spent the last few chapters of Spellfire screwing Elminster and barely even came up in this book; I’d figured she’d flown back off to Aglarond and was back to happily blowing up Red Wizards (which is a safe bet as to what she’s doing most of the time, tbh). I certainly never got the impression she was actively looking out for Shandril in any way! You know, between this afterword and Spellfire’s foreword, I just get the impression Greenwood isn’t very good at conveying things he thought he was conveying.

However, many readers have asked why the Knights of Myth Drannor “abandoned” Shandril and Narm near the end of Spellfire, so here’s a long-lost “missing scene” to explain why:

MG: I thought explaining that was what the Malaugrym subplot was for (which it utterly failed at)? And I’ve got to wonder – even if Torm and Rathan had been there, what does Greenwood think they could’ve done against Shargrailar, anyway? While they’re among Greenwood’s favorites and thus have plot armor, in a rational world he’d have ripped them to pieces in about five seconds and moved on to Shandril without pausing. As for whether the deleted scene provides adequate explanation, let’s take a look at it, shall we? I’ll mostly summarize this one, since there’s not actually a lot of substance to it, but quote a bit where necessary:

So, we open the “missing scene” with Lord Mourngrym of Shadowdale, who’s busy filling out paperwork and answering letters and getting tired of it; finally, he storms out only to be confronted by his wife Shaerl, who demands to know where he’s going. Shaerl admonishes Mourngrym for expecting courtiers to change just for him, and I have to wonder, what courtiers? Mourngrym is, essentially, a country nobleman ruling over a mid-sized town (Shadowdale) and its environs, allied with the other Dales but free from any overarching rule, whether local or foreign. So, who are these courtiers who are writing to him, anyway? From what we saw in Spellfire, pretty much anyone can walk up to him with their problems, and Shadowdale doesn’t really have “courtiers” because it’s not a big and important enough court – are these lords from other Dales? Official missives from Cormyr or Sembia or somewhere, what? Anyway, Shaerl flirts with her husband a bit and then draws her dagger and offers to spar with him (Mourngrym and Shaerl, canonically, were adventurers before getting married and taking over the lordship of Shadowdale; he’s a fighter, she’s a rogue). We spend a bit on that, and it’s actually fairly cute, and then, ugh, Torm and Rathan come in (through the window, because why not?) with Torm lightly ribbing them and observing that this is why he never plans to get married. Oh, and Torm asks for wine, to Mourngrym’s dismay because a council of war among the Knights of Myth Drannor was apt to empty entire casks of the Tower’s wine-cellars in one go. Uh, Mourngrym, you’re the lord around here and, more to the point, it’s your house – I’m pretty sure it’s in your rights to tell a bunch of ragtag adventurers to knock it off and not drink all of your wine. And a “council of war,” really? You’re not even at war with anyone! But the scene ends as Mourngrym, in resignation, calls on his guards to haul up a cask, or two. Or perhaps three…

We then cut to later, where we can place this scene as taking place shortly after Shandril and Narm left Shadowdale, since Sharantyr, who’s here now, reminds everyone of how she raked them over the coals for kicking the two out, though she acknowledges they don’t have the resources to both protect Shadowdale and Shandril at the same time (the nine hells you don’t; you’ve got Elminster, and he’s worth at least an army, maybe two – maybe you should try and pull him out of bed with the Simbul and see if he’ll earn his keep a bit?). We then learn that all the Knights, plus Mourngrym, Storm, Lhaeo and Elminster himself are here, and apparently their meeting room is official Elminster’s bedroom in the Tower, though he hardly ever uses it (I mean, he’s got a tower of his own literally just down the road, so I’m not quite sure why he even needs a designated bedroom at Mourngrym’s). Oh, and Sharantyr’s described in the narration as the lady ranger, which felt like it’s worth noting. Florin agrees that Sharantyr’s probably right, though he’s not happy about it (he also calls her Shar, which I maintain is still not a name you want to be throwing around lightly). Lhaeo then pipes up that Alaundo's prophecies, though often cryptic, always come true, and repeats the prophecy he found from the last book about spellfire as a sword to cleave shadow and evil and master art. Which is accompanied, he reminds us, by verses about war among wizards, magic running wild, and the gods being cast down to Toril (all of which is about the Time of Troubles, as I’m pretty sure any Realms fan could tell you, and thus irrelevant to this trilogy, but Lhaeo thinks it’s all connected). Lanseril the druid comments that he’s afraid this will happen whether they do anything about it or not (and I mean, he’s not wrong – the Time of Troubles is just around the corner and nobody in this room, even Elminster, is going to be in a position to stop it, but it’s still not relevant to these books). Elminster himself then telekinetically summons a tankard over and pats himself on the back a bit about all the people he and the Knights have saved over the years, including Shandril and Narm (which I’m sure will be a great comfort to them with Shargrailar bearing down on them now…) and then he and Storm both agree that they are beset at present with matters even weightier than spellfire – though what those matters are isn’t specified – and Storm says they’ve already met Delg and set him on his way and he should have caught up with Shandril and Narm by now. Which leads Torm to laugh about how Delg will prevail against all enemies that attack them from below the knees! Asshole. Faerunian dwarves (like most fantasy dwarves – I’ve noted before that dwarves seem by far the most standardized and least likely for the individual writer to “customize” of all the “stock” fantasy nonhuman races) are proud warrior race guys well known for their skill in battle and as an experienced adventurer Torm ought to well know that. Delg’s track record… isn’t great, but his being a dwarf (or just short in general) has nothing to do with it, and it just seems like Torm’s being a racist jackass for no reason. Illistyl, at least, kicks him under the table and tells him off, and then Florin gets up and says that their plan has to be to protect Shadowdale and Myth Drannor first. Storm and Elminster can do what they can for Shandril and Narm, and the Knights will try to keep the Cult, the Zhents, and other malefactors busy and off their tail (great job, guys!). Torm yawns exaggeratedly, Elminster and Storm teleport out, Torm and Rathan get into a fight under the table while Shaerl and Mourngrym roll their eyes at them, and the scene ends there.

MG: Well, you know what? I can see why that scene was deleted. It told us nothing we couldn’t already guess, and basically made it look like Elminster and the Knights just decided to keep doing all the things they usually do, and vaguely hope that would work out for Shandril and Narm. And, as we can see from Crown of Fire proper… it really didn’t (especially the part about keeping the Zhents busy, which was clearly a dismal failure). Anyway, with the missing scene over we cut back to Greenwood’s commentary!

Shandril’s adventures continue in a new novel, Hand of Fire, but I hope it’s many years before fans of the Realms tire of exploring the rich, unfolding history of the world that began in my head decades ago and has become the collaborative creation of many gamers, writers, game designers and readers who love the Realms as much as I do.

MG: Okay… I this case, I can’t begrudge Greenwood the sentiment. On the other hand, it’s a bit ironic to have him talking about Faerun’s “rich unfolding history” when, just like Spellfire, Crown of Fire made almost no use of the extremely detailed worldbuilding and lore Greenwood himself created… but more on that in a minute.

When day draws down and it’s time to trade tales over a leaping fire, I hope you’ll always feel welcome in the Forgotten Realms. We’ve glory here to show you, and tales of lost treasures, princes in armor, jaws in the lurking dark and mysteries of missing kings. Dragons dancing in the sky, and wizards blasting the towers of castles into thunderous falling ruin… tales of love and betrayal, gallant heroics and sly intrigues. As Alaundo the Seer once said, “Turn the pages, do. We write upon them for thee.” – Ed Greenwood, 2002

MG: And I must say, you can indeed find all of that and more across the many, many stories that have been told in the Realms over the decades. Sadly, with the exception of towers getting blasted, almost none of it’s in Shandril’s Saga. And I do want to say – Faerun as a published setting has existed since the eighties and through to the present day – almost forty years now! In that time, it’s become the de facto default D&D setting, and across all the media it’s existed in has built up a large, devoted fanbase and been very important to very many people. Though Dragonlance was my introduction to D&D based fiction and remains closest to my heart of the various official settings, the Realms were a very big part of my life in junior high and high school and even though my tastes in fantasy literature have evolved considerably since then, I nonetheless retain a lot of affection for them. So, Ed Greenwood, for creating that setting and introducing it to the world, I can genuinely say I’m grateful. But dammit, I really, really wish you’d developed some restraint about… various things… and overall were a better novelist and storyteller.

In any case, with the Afterword out of the way, it’s time to move on to my final thoughts on Crown of Fire!

Final Thoughts

So, for my final thoughts for Crown of Fire, I’m going to follow essentially the same format as I did for Spellfire, broken down into specific sections that cover some key points. Some of them will be shorter (in particular the characters section, since we already know these people this time around) but I’ll have a lot to say on some points, so let’s strap in!

Characters

Shandril Shessair: Last book, I commented that Shandril unfortunately ended up with very little personality beyond “generic fantasy protagonist”; I also observed that while she was a badly written character, she wasn’t a bad person. Unfortunately, both of these change in Crown of Fire, and not for the better. For the first half of the book, she doesn’t get much development as she spends the whole thing on the run, but in the back half after Delg’s death she pretty much snaps, and decides the best thing to do to avenge him is go on a giant murder spree. And she does. And characters who are supposed to be voices of reason (including but not limited to Mirt, Tessaril, Storm and Elminster) all end up supporting and enabling her in doing so. Initially I toyed with the idea of keeping track of Shandril’s kill count over the course of the book, but there’s just so damn many that it quickly became impossible – definitely in the hundreds, possibly into the thousands, especially taking collateral damage into account. And by the time she reaches the Citadel of the Raven, she’s literally gotten to the point of killing people for things that entirely unrelated people did (seriously, no matter what you think of the Zhents, they don’t deserve to die for crimes committed by the Cult!). And now Greenwood says that one of his intended themes for this trilogy was to explore the corruption of power, and Shandril’s descent into mass-murder would seem like just that – except that everyone, and by extension the narrative itself, approves of her actions by the end, so it just seems like Greenwood is saying “mas murder is cool, actually, so long as it’s committed against people you don’t like.” Which is just… eesh.

Narm Tamaraith: Narm, unfortunately, is mostly a nonentity in this book. His sole purpose seems to be to follow Shandril around and support her, without any actual characterization of his own. He does get a potentially bit of interesting development near the end, when he’s told he may have to be the one to kill Shandril should she be corrupted completely by her power… but with Greenwood’s conclusion that murderous rampages are actually fine, that never amounts to anything. In fact, a quick kindle search confirms that Narm’s name is actually mentioned considerably less in the book than the next person on our list…

Mirt the Moneylender: Mirt, Mirt, Mirt. What is there to say about Mirt? I can tell what Greenwood was going for with Mirt – the grizzled old adventurer who takes the new kids under his wing, who looks and acts like he’s gone badly to seed but can prove he’s still got it when it counts. Unfortunately… it doesn’t’ come off that way. For one, if you’re familiar with Mirt’s backstory from other sources, you know that this is the same guy who married his adopted daughter which I’m never letting go because it’s gross and wrong and hangs over everything he does – especially considering that Mirt’s sex life keeps coming up in the story anyway, including a remarkable tendency to run across his old flames and the fact that occasionally he’ll flirt with or ogle, for some godsforsaken reason, the much younger, very much not interested, and already attached Shandril. Beyond that, with a couple of exceptions, despite his ostensible wisdom and experience Mirt is often useless at best and an active drag at worst. His plans are terrible (and actually get Delg killed), he’s got a seemingly bottomless stash of magic items but rarely uses them properly (the Leiran priest disguises are bafflingly misused), he doesn’t provide much help in fights and his advice ranges from basic platitudes to actively toxic encouragements to ruthless violence. He does manage to destroy the spell engine, but even that really comes out of nowhere. But he’s Greenwood’s other author avatar (and iirc the very first character he created for the Realms) and thus gets to come out of everything smelling like roses despite having done nothing whatsoever to earn it.

Delg: I’ll freely admit I don’t like Delg, but I’ve kind of got to feel sorry for him a bit, too. He’s supposed to be the grizzled veteran adventurer watching out for Shandril and Narm, but then Mirt shows up and muscles in on his territory, leaving him nothing left to do but die for everyone else’s angst. And considering what a big deal his reintroduction at the end of last book was treated as, it’s incredibly anticlimactic. Now, while alive he’s got a lot of the same problems as Mirt, in terms of not contributing much and actively encouraging Shandril and Narm to be brutal and ruthless, but honestly, I’d still take him over the Moneylender. But his death also lacks impact because we barely know him – he’s mostly a generic dwarf, and even the revelation of his clan and Harper affiliation only comes after his death. Ultimately, Delg just feels like a character who got wasted because another version Greenwood liked better came along.

Elminster and Storm: Elminster’s role in this book is much smaller than the last, thank the gods (and in the next, it will be smaller still). But he still manages to be annoying. After dispatching Torm and Rathan to hunt down the Malaugrym (a task for which they are entirely unqualified, mind) he spends much of the book wandering around in the wilderness, talking about much more interesting things that are happening elsewhere but we won’t get to see or dropping foreshadowing that won’t end up going anywhere. The fight with Manshoon only goes to show how much Elminster outmatches him and deals Manshoon’s villain cred a blow it’ll never really recover from, and then the fight with Thraun takes him out of the story altogether (aside from the epilogue, which mostly serves to underscore what a creeper he can be). Storm… is mostly there to be Elminster’s sidekick and doesn’t have much to do but listen to him and get dragged into helping him in fights, though I do think this book makes me a bit more sympathetic with her for having to put up with Elminster day in and day out.

Tessaril: Tessaril is another wasted character, IMO. She seems cool when she’s introduced – a capable, competent, level-headed noble and wizard. Sadly, she pretty much just ends up as a walking plot device to enable Shandril to get to the Citadel of the Raven to start her murdering, and her existence serves to highlight the biggest plot hole in this entire trilogy. But more on that a bit later.

The Knights of Myth Drannor: Of the Knights, only Torm and Rathan play major roles in this book; unfortunately, Torm was already established last time as the worst of the bunch, and Rathan quickly joins him there this time around. They have two big problems. The first is their Malaugrym-hunting subplot, which meanders in and out of the story and ultimately fizzles without adding anything worthwhile. The second is that Greenwood was clearly going for a “cheerful swashbuckler” type characterization for them but overshot it badly and ended up in “bloodthirsty maniac” territory instead. Sure, they may not have the sheer destructive power of Shandril, but that doesn’t make the utter glee they take in slaughtering the Zhentilar they run across any less disturbing.

The Pleasure-Queens: Okay, on the one hand, Belarla and Oelaerone seem like pretty decent sorts, for Harpers, and “glamorous courtesan-spy” is an archetype that long precedes Greenwood, but still – I’m almost entirely sure the only reason they get added to the cast in the last few chapters is for sex appeal. Aside from helping Mirt and Shandril out of a tight spot (which is immediately undone when Shandril wants to go back to the Citadel) they add very little to the plot, and I absolutely can’t tell one from the other. But hey, at least they’re hot, right?

The Villains: Unlike Spellfire, which had a bunch of largely unrelated villains, Crown of Fire is much more focused on a single villainous faction – the Zhentarim. And while we spend much of the book with Shandril slaughtering her way through interchangeable hordes of Zhents, I’d say we really have four main villains for the book – Manshoon, Fzoul, Gathlarue, and Illiph Thraun. Starting with Gathlarue, she’s a pretty generic evil wizard whose most notable attribute is the way Greenwood lingers on overly sexualized descriptions of her and her relationship with her apprentices; plot wise, her only real role ends up being to kill Delg and die herself. Thraun is perhaps the most effective villain not only in the book, but maybe the entire trilogy- he nearly kills Shandril, and does cause her to miscarry, and perhaps most impressively actually wounds Elminster enough to take him out of the plot for the remainder of the book! Alas, he has no personality beyond “wants spellfire,” and despite being hyped up like an end boss, he gets taken care of around the two-thirds mark, leaving Shandril to rather anticlimactically fight less dangerous villains. Manshoon, as I’ve said before, is probably the closest thing the trilogy has to an overarching big bad, being the string puller behind much of the opposition Shandril will face in all three books. Unfortunately, his supposed Machiavellian genius is nowhere to be found here, as he constantly makes plans to fight Shandril and then discards them in favor of something worse until he gets down to something as basic as “attack her head-on myself and hope for the best” and then that gets derailed when Elminster and Storm kick his ass, and he spends most of the rest of the book temporarily dead. If you want to know why some fans have trouble taking the Zhents and their leadership seriously as threats – I think this book (and this trilogy as a whole) is a big part of why. Fzoul, though a fairly minor character for most of the book, ends up becoming the main villain for the final third after Manshoon and Thraun are defeated. And his characterization is all over the damn place as Greenwood can’t seem to decide what to do with him, but he seems like he would’ve abandoned the chase for Shandril (or at least shifted it to a lower priority) until she forced his hand by attacking him. And of course, he ended up with a particularly nasty death scene, despite the fact that of all the major villains, he’d probably done the least on-page to earn it.

We also have some nonhuman baddies skulking around the edges of the plot. The Zhentil Keep beholders initially look like a villainous faction in their own right, allying with both Manshoo and Fzoul and then playing them off each other to advance their own goals – and then that fizzles out partway through the book, and they end up just being more mooks for Shandril to blast through. Magusta the Malaugrym appears throughout the book, being hunted by Torm and Rathan, but she does almost nothing until the very end (when she creepily turns into a bearskin rug and lets an unknowing Shandril wear her for some inexplicable reason) at which point her death just feels anticlimactic and her subplot irrelevant.

Sarhthor: I’m giving Sarhthor his own section, both because he’s not ultimately a villain and because he’s got a lot of wasted potential. For most of the book, Sarhthor basically takes Sememmon’s usual role as the level-headed, practical voice of reason among the Zhentarim leadership – and then at the end we learn why Greenwood couldn’t just use Sememmon, as Sarhthor is revealed to be a secret Harper and sacrifices himself to save Shandril. There’s the potential for a really interesting arc here, I must say – a Harper spy who infiltrates the Zhentarim, “goes native” and becomes a Zhentarim for real and rises to a position of power, and then ultimately ends up forced to choose between allegiances and ultimately sacrifices himself to save someone else. Sadly, it’s barely foreshadowed and thus kind of comes out of left field, and his sacrifice is rather soured because of how it enables Shandril to rise to even greater heights of destructiveness. In short, I think Sarhthor is an interesting character in desperate need of a better author.

Setting

I commented last time that one of the worst, and most baffling, aspects of Spellfire was how little it made use of its setting – baffling because it was written as an introductory novel to the Realms, and because Greenwood is the setting’s creator, reportedly has boxes and boxes of worldbuilding notes piled up in his home and knows the setting better than probably anyone to this day. And yet you’d never know that from how underdeveloped the worldbuilding in Spellfire is. Crown of Fire changes the venue from the Dales to Cormyr (and, ultimately, to Zhentil Keep and its holdings) but still has the same problem. If anything, it’s even more galling here, because the Dales are pretty boring and generic at the best of times, while Cormyr and its surrounding countries are probably the second-most developed region in all of the Realms (the first being the Sword Coast, no contest). Much ink has been spilled over the years – a great deal of it by Greenwood himself – on Cormyr’s history, geography, culture, cities, royal family, major noble houses, it’s “frenemies” style relationship with neighboring Sembia, etc. So, what does Greenwood do with it? Keeps Shandril and company wandering around on the back roads and through the wilderness, of course, interacting with almost no one and nothing distinctively Cormyrean until they get to Eveningstar and Tessaril (and even there, it’s her skills as a wizard they need, not her royal connections or local leadership role). It’s just an inexplicable decision, especially when the alternatives, as I’ll discuss in a bit, are vastly more interesting! Zhentil Keep and the Citadel of the Raven, meanwhile, exist just as backdrops for Shandril’s fight scenes – and considering how incredibly destructive said fight scenes are, that’s not a good position to be in! Ironically, Greenwood once wrote an essay titled “Why I Sent Shandril Where in Faerun” (which may still be available on Candlekeep, at one time the ‘net’s preeminent Forgotten Realms community though it’s a bit of a ghost town these days) focusing chiefly on this book… even though in it, he actually sent her hardly anywhere actually worth going.

Plot

Plot-wise, I think Crown of Fire is both better and worse than Spellfire. Better, on the one hand, because it’s more tightly plotted. Spellfire meandered all over the place with no real through-line beyond “a girl named Shandril gets the power of, well, spellfire” but Crown of Fire is much more focused. It’s the story of the Zhentarim trying to capture or kill Shandril for her power, and Shandril in turn fighting back, and most of the story (with some exceptions) ties back into that. On the other hand, it’s also worse in some very important areas. For one, it’s mid-numbingly repetitive, with almost every other chapter seeming to involve a different Zhent or group of Zhents attacking Shandril and getting killed, only for the next group of Zhents to shown up shortly afterwards and meet the same fate. Since none of these people pose any real threat, with a couple of exceptions, it just becomes unbearably tedious very quickly. It’s not hard to see why Shandril would eventually snap, considering her author seems to have nothing better to do with her than shove her through an endless parade of violence. Speaking of, once we get to said snapping and Shandril becoming determined to take the fight to the Zhents, we get to the other big problem – and that is how utterly bloodthirsty Shandril ends up becoming, and how the narrative is implicitly (or, in some cases, explicitly) endorsing it. By the last third or so of the book, Shandril becomes absolutely convinced that in order to solve all her problems, she needs to slaughter as many Zhentarim and Zhentilar as possible. And she does. She kills and kills and kills. Now, last book Greenwood commented on wanting to humanize his villainous mooks; he didn’t manage it there, but here he actually does humanize a lot of the minor Zhents enough to make Shandril killing them all the more disturbing. Worse is how utterly pointless it is. Shandril wands to avenge Delg? She did that – Gathlarue and her apprentices are dead. But she still wants to kill more Zhents. She wants to get the Zhents off her back? She (temporarily) kills Manshoon, who’s the one holding their leashes (and Fzoul, at least initially, seems like he was willing to let her be). But she still wants to kill more Zhents. She wants to avenge her unborn child? She killed Thraun, who she didn’t even know was connected to the Zhentarim (technically he was, but had broken free of them by the time he attacked her and was operating on his own, and she didn’t know any of that), but she still wants to kill more Zhents. She wants to avenge the Bright Spear? They were killed by agents of the Cult, who not only aren’t Zhents but are actively enemies of the Zhentarim… but she ignores that, and still wants to kill more Zhents. And you get the picture. Shandril’s solution to everything ends up being “kill Zhents,” regardless of whether that’s relevant – and everyone else enables her. Not that the Zhents are helping, since they’ve suddenly decided to act like an evil empire with inexhaustible resources rather than an ambitious city-state closely tied to a criminal syndicate (to make a real-life ancient world comparison, Zhentil Keep is much closer in terms of resources to somewhere like Sparta than somewhere like Rome), and just keep throwing troops and wizards at Shandril in the desperate hope this time will be different, instead of actually using the guile, influence and magic they’re more known for. Making it worse is that we never really get much of the Zhents’ usual activities that don’t involve Shandril-hunting – stuff like military expansionism, slave trading, espionage, shady mercantile deals and the like, all in service of the goals of empire building and getting a monopoly on all trade in central Faerun get mentioned but we don’t see them, so we’re never really sold on the idea that the Zhents are bad guys who have to be stopped for the greater good, rather than just the minions of one wizard with a grudge.

When it comes to scenes of vastly powerful heroes tearing through armies of mooks, I have a couple of examples I’d like to compare to Shandril’s incredibly destructive battle at the Citadel of the Raven. The first is from the first season finale of Avatar: The Last Airbender. The Fire Nation is engaged in a battle trying to conquer the Northern Water Tribe; Fire Nation Admiral Zhao has just killed the mortal form of the Moon Spirit, one of the Water Tribe’s deities. Aang, the Avatar, gets possessed by the Moon Spirit’s mate, the Ocean Spirit, manifests as a giant water elemental creature and proceeds to utterly wreck the Fire Nation armada singlehandedly, forcing them to retreat (and the Ocean Spirit, we eventually learn, drags Zhao himself off to a fate worse than death). The difference here is that Aang X the Ocean Spirit is taking on a military force actively engaged in aggression and conquest; he’s not slaughtering his way through the Fire Nation capital heedless of collateral damage or something like that. Once the armada turns tail and retreats, he stops. And it can’t be ignored that Zhao kicked that particular hornet’s nest first (and even then, Aang – normally a pacifist – continues to have nightmares about the event, implicitly for some time). The events and framing are completely different, which make it possible to cheer Aang while being horrified at Shandril. A closer example would be in the second Mistborn novel, The Well of Ascension, where Vin attacks Lord Cett’s keep and slaughters her way through a small army of his guards to get to him. But again, the framing is very different. The whole thing is framed as Vin walking dangerously close to a line; indeed, she was actively manipulated into it by a villain who is trying to push her over the edge and has fed her false information that Cett was behind an assassination attempt on Vin’s lover. Once Vin realizes Cett wasn’t responsible, and all the killing was for nothing, she’s nauseated with herself and realizes just how far she went (and, indeed, explicitly never kills like that again for the rest of the series), and even at her worst only kills soldiers that were part of a hostile military force (Cett was still an enemy, even if he wasn’t responsible for what she thought he was), she doesn’t slaughter her way through a city full of civilians, nor does the narrative reward her for doing so (the attack on Cett actually has bad consequences, in fact). Again, the framing and point of the scene is completely different. (And yes, I know Shandril’s not depicted as deliberately targeting civilians, but well, she was the one who deliberately took the fight to the middle of a major city, showed no restraint in terms of blasting everything in sight, including bringing down some pretty big buildings, and targeted people who, from what we see, weren’t engaging her first or were about too; she wasn’t exactly trying to rein in collateral damage here).

Part of what makes it so bad is the sheer level of power disparity here; Shandril is massively overpowered for the threats she’s facing this book, and eventually it just gets hard to cheer when she mows down the hundredth Zhentilar soldier who never had a prayer of hurting her in the first place and was only there because his callous superiors had no problem tossing him into the Shandril-shaped meat grinder (made worse by the fact that the Zhentilar canonically do use conscripts, so not only did these guys not sign up for this, they may not have ever “signed up” at all…) It’s not quite as bad in the early chapters, when Greenwood himself seems to be taking an unwholesome glee in Zhent deaths, but Shandril is just defending herself… but in the later chapters, when she attacks the Citadel of the Raven (twice!), it’s Shandril herself who’s become the aggressor (and by the very last chapter, she’s essentially become something out of a horror movie, wading through Zhents and slaughtering them effortlessly while tanking everything they can throw at her). Comparing the climaxes of Spellfire and Crown of Fire is illustrative here. The first book ended by pitting Shandril against Shargrailar, who may have come out of nowhere but was, at least on paper, a fittingly powerful opponent for her. In Crown… Manshoon and Thraun (whose own spellfire abilities make him one of the only villains who can genuinely face Shandril on her own level) are both dealt with before the book is two thirds done, and the final boss is… Fzoul, who’s weaker than either of them (yes, the spell engine raises his threat level, but it’s disposed of rather quickly). And then once he’s gone, Shandril proceeds to spend half a chapter tearing through people who are no match for her, mostly because she can. It’s just… the definition of overkill, both literally and figuratively.

Despite the book overall being tighter, there are still some plot points that just don’t go anywhere. Shandril’s pregnancy remains terribly handled. It comes up a handful of times before Shandril miscarries, which takes an event that should be horrifying and just makes it seem random, like an excuse for cheap angst. And then Shandril suddenly getting pregnant again at the end just feels like the consequences of even that have been erased. Tessaril’s existence highlights one of the fundamental plot holes of the whole trilogy – she can teleport Shandril hundreds of miles to Zhentil Keep, but for some reason can’t teleport her hundreds of miles to Silverymoon? Despite the fact that teleportation magic exists, and Shandril herself makes use of it, she still has to walk across half a continent to Silverymoon just because? Excuse me? How does that make sense? And then there’s the Malaugrym plotline, which is once again irrelevant and adds nothing to anything. Finally, the book itself, so far as the trilogy, is concerned, moves the overall plot forward very little. We open Crown of Fire with Shandril trying to reach Silverymoon while being pursued by Zhentarim under orders from Manshoon – and we’ll begin Hand of Fire with Shandril still trying to reach Silverymoon, still pursued by Zhentarim under orders from Manshoon. The only thing all of this fighting and suffering will have accomplished is getting Shandril a bit further through Cormyr and killing Delg. Isn’t that just wonderful?

What Would I Do Differently?

Reading this book, I’m reminded of a quote I read recently from an author I follow, talking about how she likes to write extremely powerful characters – and then create conflict for them by taking them out of their comfort zone putting them in situations those powers just can’t solve, forcing them to think and act outside of their usual boxes. That reminds me of how I’d go about rewriting Crown of Fire. The most obvious thing I’d do is actually use the setting of Cormyr for something. After the initial skirmishes with the Zhentilar, I’d have some of the Purple Dragon knights and/or War Wizards bring Shandril and company to Suzail, for their protection (and to protect the people of Cormyr from them, as well…) where she would get drawn into courtly intrigues. Because every major noble would want to try and recruit her to get access to her power for themselves, while the shark pool that is Cormyrean politics isn’t something Shandril can just blast her way out of (not without starting an international incident, anyway). As for the Zhents, I’d have them be more sneaky, not invading Cormyr with their Zhentilar and wizards (which was a stupid plan to begin with; sending troops into a hostile country when you don’t want to start an actual war with them generally is) but instead pulling strings in the political arena to get at Shandril. I’d also play up their factionalism – have Manshoon want to kill Shandril because he blames her for the Shadowsil’s death, while Fzoul wants to recruit her instead, both to tweak Manshoon’s nose and because bringing someone so powerful to the service of Bane is another feather in his cap. And of course, the Zhentarim have a stake in wanting to destabilize Cormyr, a major obstacle for their ambitions, which lets us be reminded that this is an actual evil organization with goals beyond trying to kill our protagonists for personal reasons. However this ended up being resolved, it would surely be with a lot less blood on Shandril’s hands… and, for that matter, best of all, there’s no need for Mirt in this version of the story.

Conclusion

Before we go, I’ve got one last observation to make. Generally speaking, “young woman from a humble background, acquires or discovers some great power within herself, does battle with evil forces and finds her place in the world among people who love and care for her” is one of my favorite character archetypes – but even before she goes full-on murder happy, Shandril largely leaves me cold. I’d like to talk a bit about why. The thing that jumps out at me the most across both of our books so far (and which will be continuing into the third) is how Shandril is never really allowed to enjoy her powers. For most of the trilogy, spellfire is a burden to her, the source of all her problems, and when she does cut loose with her powers, all she does is kill and wreak destruction (yes, she can heal too, but that’s mostly an afterthought). The overall implication is that spellfire is dangerous and terrible, and leaves devastation in its wake wherever its wielder goes. Shandril certainly never gets, if you’ll pardon a Disney reference, a “Let it Go” type moment when she can just revel in her abilities and be. To make another Mistborn reference, in contrast one of my favorite parts of those books is the sheer joy Vin takes in being an allomancer and using her powers – it’s not just about fighting for her, it’s a whole way of interacting with the world that gives her some of the first control over her own life she’s ever known. Shandril has nothing like that. All spellfire brings her, it seems, is a choice of “kill Zhents” or “be killed by Zhents.” It’s especially galling because lots of Greenwood’s other characters are also completely overpowered (Elminster and the Simbul both come to mind) but their powers don’t feel like a curse or burden in the same way. And Hand of Fire will absolutely carry on this depiction onward, and I’ll have more to say about it then.

Going in, I felt that Crown of Fire was probably the strongest book in the trilogy, as low a bar as that is to clear. Do I think that now? …yes and no. On the one hand, as I mentioned previously it actually does know what its core narrative is and tells a story with a clear beginning and end, unlike the meandering Spellfire. On the other hand, doing a closer reading for the sporking really hit home just how awful some parts of it are. The first half of the book, as mentioned previously, just gets dull, as Greenwood can’t seem to think of anything to do with Shandril beyond throwing Zhents at her. And the second half… dear gods, the bloodlust is strong in this one. Honestly, part of me feels that if I had to do an elevator pitch of Crown of Fire it would be “this is the story of how an innocent girl becomes a mass murderer.” And Mirt, of course, makes everything he's involved in noticeably worse just by his presence. So, is it better or worse? I guess it depends on your point of view and what parts you choose to emphasize. But either way, it’s not actually good. On the other hand, now that we’re done with Crown we can officially move on to Hand of Fire and I have to say, regardless of how you rank the first two books, when it comes to the trilogy overall… Hand is the worst. Easily. And it really hits home just how badly Elminster, the Sisters, the Knights, and the Harpers in general have bungled this whole mess. For those who’ve followed this sporking so far, I do appreciate it, and I look forward to seeing you there! Let’s get this done!