Clan Novel Saga, Volume 4: End Games

Vampire: The Masquerade: Clan Novel Saga #4

by Stewart Wieck, Gherbod Fleming, Eric Griffin

The Vampire clan Novel series broke all records for World of Darkness fiction when, throughout 1999 and 2000, it told an epic story through cross-cutting novels and carefully time-stamped chapters. Now, the entire epic is represented in four beautitul trade-format volumes. The Clan Novel Saga reorganizes the chapters from all 13 novels (and the Clan Novel Anthology) in strict chronological order, showing the progress of the epic night by night and even minute by minute. This final volume covers the events from late September of 1999 until the end of the saga: The vampires of the Sabbat close in around Baltimore, where the besieged members of the Camarilla search for the traitor in their midst. The Assamites, purging within and without, move against the dread Cardinal Moncada. And all the while, the Eye of Hazimel continues its deadly journey toward Gehenna.

Genres: Fantasy, World Of Darkness, Horror, Fiction, Vampires, Gaming

592 pages, Paperback

First published May 10, 2004

Reviews

[fasz · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's good. It neatly ties up the threads that need tying up, the pacing is good, the inscrutable stuff from the Malkavs and Tremere is kept to a minimum. My only problem comes from the epilogues, which sour the whole thing a little.

As this was written as 13 separate books originally, it has 13 epilogues or so. And they are not made the same. Ramona gets a normal one, though I have no clue who the Dreamstalkers are, then you get Lucita, who I didn't care much during the books, and she suffers and struggles so long in the epilogue over the most banal shit it's terrible. Then you get stuff like Pieterzoon and Vykos advancing the future plot like crazy. It was a tonal whirlwind.

[Max Z · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ahem. I'm a slow reader. I received the promotional first tome of the saga back in 2011 on DriveThruRPG, as my email logs show. Then I bought the rest of them on a sale in 2014. And it took me more than three years to read through the four tomes. Finally, it's over and it's been amazing. I don't think a single author could've achieved something like that - the amount of characters and different perspectives all surrounding the huge Camarilla vs Sabbat war event is astonishing. The additional work that was put into the shuffling of thirteen or so separate narratives in chronological order must have been tremendous but it has given much additional value to the saga. You never get tired with any one view on the events (and honestly, all clans are very one-sided and stuck up in their views of the reality), the resulting mix always feels refreshing and interesting to read. Bravo, team WoD!

[Ulrika Stonegate · Rating 4 out of 5]

The anthology is a concept. Parts work, like the Brujah-Ventrue storyline, the Gangrel-Setite sequence as well as the Lasombra-Assamite. I could have done without the epilogue. It dealt with a different series and, though it included some of the same characters, really there was so much missing, it didn't really fit the storyline.

[Robin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great series. Especially if you ever followed the rpg from White Wolf

[T Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Review forthcoming)