Redemption

Dragonlance: Dhamon Saga #3

by Jean Rabe

The third and final title in the Dhamon Saga.. This title ties up the story of a character first introduced in popular Dragonlance saga author Jean Rabe's Dragons of a New Age trilogy.

Genres: Dragonlance, Fantasy, Dungeons and Dragons, Fiction, High Fantasy, Adventure, Science Fiction Fantasy

384 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

When I am not writing, I toss tennis balls to my cadre of dogs. My house is filled with books and dogs, you can smell both when you walk in the front door. It's a good smell.

I have 36 published novels and am currently writing in the mystery genre. My latest mystery, The Dead of Winter, was a finalist for the Claymore Award and is the first in the Piper Blackwell series.

I live in a tiny town in the middle of Illinois that has a Dollar General, a pizza place with exceedingly slow service, a veterinarian (good thing, eh?), and train tracks...lots of train tracks.

Reviews

[Jenny · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm disappointed that this book never picked up like the others did. Well, it picked up within the last 30 pages, which doesn't count. All good books should have more excitement as they move towards the resolution, but throughout this novel, I couldn't get myself interested. Rabe needed more editing to weed out scenes that are completely unnecessary, which would tighten the action and make it more gripping.
As the end to another series, I enjoyed how everything wraps up. I really like Ragh, the draconian who befriends Dhamon. He's probably my favorite character. And I love Dhamon's fate--again, Rabe's creativity is her greatest strength as a writer.
In thinking about her series, I actually feel bad for what happened to her. I read that Weiss and Hickman passed the torch to Rabe when Weiss found out she was ill and thought she was dying. However, Weiss got better, and she and Hickman took back over the Dragonlance main series. So, I think what happened is that Rabe had the chance to do her own thing with Krynn, which she did in the Dragons of a New Age trilogy, a series that had a broad scope as well as focusing on specific characters, like the original Saga. However, in the Dhamon Saga, Weiss and Hickman had already reclaimed their world, and I felt like this series focuses too much on a narrow plot line and doesn't resolve any issues in the broader world. Which isn't Rabe's fault, and that's what I'm realizing. At this point, she could only focus on her characters and not make any broader changes because...War of Souls. That must be so tough as a writer, and I think, in that way, Rabe handled this whole thing really well. Weiss and Hickman had to play off her changes from Dragons of a New Age, which is great, but then, Rabe was given free reign only with Dhamon and her other characters, which meant she couldn't use Palin, Goldmoon, or any of the others who played important roles in her first DL trilogy.
I only mention the above because it does come into play when reading the Dhamon Saga. I could tell there was a switch in Rabe's writing, and focusing on one character decreases the immediacy of the events and their impact. Usually, in DL, at least the books I've read, single books are for characters' backstories, not entire series, but Dhamon gets a whole trilogy to himself, and it feels too drawn out.
That being said, I'm glad that my next DL reads will be Weiss and Hickman again with the War of Souls, but I'm also glad that there's one more Dhamon book, The Lake of Death, which supposedly wraps up his story. As usual with these later books, I can only recommend them to DL fans. Again, go easy on Rabe, who did the best she could. Her writing isn't the strongest, but she is so creative and does things with Krynn that no other writer of DL books has that I've read. She uses different types of characters, races other than the major ones, and allows for redemption for characters that are usually evil in DL, no matter what. Her magic is really interesting, and she veers off to include stories about overlooked types in the DL world. For that, I appreciate her stories MORE than Weiss and Hickman's.

[Becky · Rating 1 out of 5]

I felt a kinship with Dhamon Grimwulf because I too felt like I was being transformed into a mindless hellspawn while reading this.

You know something's up with the book when the most memorable part of a book filled with dragons and monsters is the part where the author pulls a No Homo on Dhamon and Maldred by having Dhamon say "as much as one man can love another, Mal, I loved you" while reiterating that he means that in the brother-y way. Cowards.

There is no sense of accomplishment when finally finishing the Dhamon Saga after first reading Downfall several years ago and thinking "That was a mostly bland book with some cool elements in it". I was stubborn and decided to see the entire story through to the end and now, as I stand at the finish line, I feel nothing. Betrayal tricked me into thinking that the book series would gradually get better by being an alright fantasy romp but now what sits before me is the worst Dragonlance trilogy I have ever read.

This is apparently not the fault of the author. Jean Rabe had the Dragonlance reins pulled very tightly after the trilogy that started with The Dawning of a New Age and she could no longer influence the Dragonlance setting as much as she could. However, knowing some of the elements that made the book bad doesn't lessen the sting of the final product.

The best words I can use to describe Redemption are "bad wish fulfillment". This feels like a weird complaint - after all, pretty much ALL fantasy novels show a little bit of fun wish fulfillment from the author as they write about the story they wish to tell - but this book goes from "here's a cool thing" to "here's my really awesome and handsome OC who is badass and neat" real fast.

I mean, I can't really find any other words to describe the part of the book where we see Dhamon's newborn son and he has all of Dhamon's physical traits but with a bonus birthmark shaped like a dragon scale. Or the part of the book where everyone looks at Dhamon's dragon form and calls it beautiful, because his curse made him a gorgeous unique dragon with the traits of multiple species. Or the part of the book where Dhamon uses the power of Facts and Logic to explain to the person who betrayed him why the plan he had for several years was a bad one, and his response was "you're right, I was desperate".

Turns out I really don't think Dhamon Grimwulf is that compelling of a character, and this trilogy building up to this book, where he passes on his Grimwulf genes conveniently right before he turns into a powerful, awesome, cool-looking dragon, feels pretty embarrassing.

Speaking of embarrassing, Fiona's role in this story. Wow. It's a good thing I don't have much attachment to both Rig and Fiona in this book since I barely read any of Jean Rabe's Dragonlance books previous to this, but the way Fiona is written and used in this story is a master class in just how badly you can demolish a character. After witnessing the death of her fiance in the previous book, Fiona becomes The Crazy One of the group and the story makes sure that you know that this woman, now acid-scarred and "will never be beautiful again", is Insane and Wacky and Unhinged with the unexplained mental illness. It sucks and, dare I say it, honestly kinda offensive that the two main female characters in this book are "The Womb That Ejects Dhamon's Baby Out Into The World" and "She Went Insane Because Her Boyfriend Died and Also She's Ugly Now".

As for the plot, it follows the theme of the rest of the book in that it's also bad. Dhamon and his friends try to escape by wandering the countryside and Fiona is cuh-razy. Then they fall into the sea and run into some spooky random encounters, including a ghost that eats memories and forces Dhamon to relive one of his strongest memories. Then the Chaos Dragon has them under his clutches and orders Dhamon to kill Sable, the other important dragon in this book. Dhamon says "Screw this!" and decides to fight the Chaos Dragon instead. Meanwhile, Fiona is still cuh-razy omg look at how NUTTY she is and there's a hobgoblin army section for no reason! We spin our wheels a bit and see Dhamon's baby and then Dhamon Animorphs into a dragon and has a mind palace battle with the Chaos Dragon. The Chaos Dragon dies, Fiona dies, and Nura Bint-Drax escapes so that we have a sequel hook. Roll Credits.

I just flat out stopped caring around the midway point. There isn't even a silly pulp fiction fantasy adventure joy to be had from this.

The one saving grace? Ragh. Ragh may stay.

PROS:
*Ragh cements his role as the best character in the entire trilogy.
*The book eventually ends.
*Rikali is barely in the book and Valthek (aka the guy that only exists to insure that Dhamon's kid doesn't grow up without a dad) doesn't even get any lines, which is a blessing.
*The creepy town with the mind-wiped inhabitants and the chaos wights are all pretty cool ideas, even if the wights are used as a copout in one part of the book.

CONS:
*This book has the absolute gall to have a ghost eat Ragh's main motivation for wanting to kill Nura Bint-Drax out of his head by having Ragh's memories get sucked out of his head off-screen. It's meant to be a way to drive tension but instead does the exact opposite and deflates it.
*Rikali gets several lines in this book and, once again, nothing kills her.
*The way this book treats Fiona.
*The way this book treats that manticore at the start of the adventure.
*Maldred has all the convictions of a wet paper bag and constantly ping-pongs between plans in a way that feels sloppy.
*The Chaos Dragon just isn't that compelling of a villain and his final showdown with Dhamon basically involves a Battle of Wills within these two dragons' minds while the other characters make sure to stab the Chaos Dragon on occasion in order to distract him.
*The way Dhamon transforms into a dragon is super comical. Since his weird scale curse just involved growing scales until the very last act of this book, the Chaos Dragon has to cast a spell and make his tiny little human body just start ballooning in size until he becomes dragon-shaped. There was no possible way to make this cool. Dhamon should've popped like a grape in a microwave.
*The hobgoblin war section. Christ almighty I was so bored with this section.

[Komble III · Rating 3 out of 5]

როგორც იქნა დამთავრდა დამონ გრიმვულფის ტანჯვის, წამების, წუწუნის და ტირილის კვირეული და შემდგომი ივენთები უკვე ვაისის და ჰიკმანის წიგნებში მოხდება

საერთო ჯამში ტრილოგია იყო კატასტროფა, თავისუფლად შეიძლებოდა ერთ წიგნში ამ ყველაფრის დაწერა. ამით მოვარხერხებდით და არ მივიღებდით მთავარი პერსონაჟისგან ემორადიაციულ დასხივებას, რომელიც იზომება ელრიკ მელნიბონელის შკალით და ამ შემთხვევაში 7 ბალის ტოლი იყო 10-დან

ეტყობა სერიას რომ ჯეინ რეიბმა ყველანაირად სცადა "ქაოსის ომსა" და "მოკვდავთა ერას" შორის არსებული ნაპრალი ამოევსო და ის გაუკრვეველი ნაწილები აეხსნა რაც მოკვდავთა ერაში მოხდება. რბილად რომ ვთქვათ ცუდად გამოუვიდა.

უკეთესი მომავლის იმედით გემშვიდობებით :)

[Kevin Potter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Once again, this book is a stronger entry than the last, though still not Rabe's best.

I liked Raag's character in this one, and I have to admit, I really love the ending of this one. A bit predictable, perhaps, but still a wonderful way to end the trilogy.

[Fco. Salvador · Rating 1 out of 5]

En este libro se confirma que Rabe no sabía hacia dónde iba su trilogía, centrada en llevar al personaje principal, ese Dhamon que quiere ser un héroe torturado, a diferentes partes de Ansalon (el mundo de Dragonlance) sin mucho motivo.
Al mismo tiempo, es el libro en el que, un poco tarde, el lector tal vez podría llegar a entender a ese 'héroe caído', gracias al afán de comprobar que su hijo (y la madre a la que no hizo otra cosa que utilizar e ignorar) va a estar bien cuando él muera. Pero este afán le llega repentinamente al comienzo de la novela, sin que exista nada que provoque su cambio de actitud.
Y para lo poco que me ha gustado la trilogía, creo que ya he escrito mucho.

[Christina Stind · Rating 4 out of 5]

As Dhamon tries to right the wrongs he has done, he constantly fights against the strange scales that are taken over his body - and threatening to consume his soul.
Friends return and are lost, and in the end - nothing will ever be the same. Jean Rabe pulls it all together in this conclusion to the Dhamon saga and through the action-packed pages she weaves a tale I for one haven't read before and brings something new and exciting to the Dragonlance fiction.

[Lana · Rating 4 out of 5]

the final in the dhamon saga trilogy, love the way it ends but I am still not so keen on the way jean rabe tackles this wonderful saga, maybe its cause for me dragon lance is Margaret Weis!! I find that the characters in this trilogy where a bit childish apart from the snake woman/child who was most unsettling, nura bint drax!!! I am sure we will see this monster again in other books!

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Review of the Dhamon Saga.

It was a surreal reading experience. I read The New Age trilogy by Jean Rabe 25 years ago and, while it's not a scratch on the main Weis and Hickman Dragonlance books, Rabe's post-Chaos Hellscape of monolithic, megalomaniac dragons taking over the world remained jammed in my imagination. Her characters gnawed at my memory and it always irritated me that I never discovered what happened to Dhamon and co. after the events of that trilogy. So reading this series, three books that focuses on the fate of Dhamon Grimwolf, was one of strange necessity, of filling in the blanks in an incomplete childhood memory. I couldn't find them in print and, reading them online, it was painfully obvious why that was so. The Dhamon Saga is neither a keeper nor for the uninitiated. I can't imagine a casual fantasy fan enjoying these books overtly if they hadn't read the first three and invested in Dhamon's character. Certainly the first book, Downfall, in particular, is a clumsy book, full of awkward prose and irritating characters. It leads heavily on overlong, boring actions scenes and the shock factor of finding a Dhamon transformed from hero into dastardly thief, without morals or conscience. But I read on. It niggled at me, the need to follow the story through to the end. As usual with reading, my patient was rewarded with a trilogy that grows and improves with the telling.

Rabe makes the decision to put the spotlight almost entirely on Dhamon. Rig and Fiona appear, especially in the first book, but all of the other characters are absent - their fates will remain always and annoyingly unknown. You can see the logic though - The New Age trilogy serves the purpose of moving the Dragonlance world on and has a huge cast of characters. Here, Rabe picks her favourite and dives deep into his troubled world. I appreciate the idea of a disillusioned hero convinced that these impossibly violent creatures can not be defeated by mortal deeds. Bereft of love and hope, Dhamon turns to crime and is obsessed with removing the curse of the dragon scale in his thigh. He has thrown in his lot with a band of crooks - Rikali, his lover, Fetch, a kobold wannabe wizard, and Maldred, his new best buddy. Together they team up with Fiona and Rig to investigate some mysterious creatures in ogre land and the events landslide through a series of twists, turns and betrayals until we are wrapped up with evil nagas in the ever-expanding swamp landscape of the black dragon, Sable.

Around the end of Downfall, I started to enjoy the ride. Rabe does create a very tactile and disturbing swamp setting, and she is very good a evil twists of the tale. There is no let up for the characters, no repose or relief for Dhamon, no reconciliation with Rig and Fiona. The book ends with ties severed and the naga, Nura, set up as the main protagonist. In book two, Betrayal, Dhamon and Rig set off alone to find a cure for the scale but the curse is relentless and Dhamon's body is becoming more and more draconian. She has Dhamon perform a few heartless acts to make sure our sympathy for him is shattered before, bravely, trying to build it back in the second half of the trilogy. The second book is particularly violent and gory - there are, like in Rabe's other Dragonlance books, too many impossibly deadly injuries and, on top of that, plenty of insect bites, poisons and other woes to deal with. Some of the bloody battle scenes go on forever and, while evocative of the style of the story, I don't feel they are Rabe's strength. She is good at secrets so it is with relief that we arrive at the end of Betrayal and the titular act begins to finally unravel the point of Dhamon's seemingly endless descent. I was into the story by that point but that highlights the series' weakness - it takes far too long to get to the moment when you are truly invested. Too many of the events are throwaway and irrelevant to the character's progression.

Still, it's set up for a dramatic conclusion. Book three, Redemption, might not actually redeem Dhamon, but it did at least redeem my reasons for reading it after all this time. The reappearance of the Shadow Dragon and the pleasure of some explanations regarding the cursed scale come as a huge relief. The creature makes for an intriguing antagonist and you begin, a little, to root for Dhamon in his despair and his desperation. Poor Fiona's madness symbolises the utter horror of the situation they are in, while Maldred's helplessness and his strange loyalty to Dhamon also redeems his dubious and flaky character. Ragd, a draconian who has also betrayed Dhamon, develops his own version of loyalty and friendship and it all spirals towards a messy, frantic and slightly insane conclusion. Dhamon transforms inexorably and the reader is offered neither true redemption nor closure. Indeed, there is actually another continuation of the story, something that deeply irritated me because I'll probably be forced to read it! Overall, the series is just about fun to read. It has a very different tone from the Dragonlance saga's main books - grim and dirty, pulp and action-packed, full of ogres and monsters rather than elves and dwarves, the epic strains of fantasy history absent and in its place a disturbing, violent progression of madness, revenge and endurance. At times, for both reader and for Dhamon, this trilogy is rather painful. Still, I'm glad I finally found out the awful fate that awaited him.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this book was a little drawn out. but it was still a pretty good book with a great ending.

[Tina · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is the best of the trilogy. With the first one I was reading it to get through it (as I couldn’t remember why I’d like it as a teenager but knew there had to be a reason) and the second was more engaging (because of Ragh), but this one I was actually into.

This was definitely because of Dhamon’s redemption arc. I’m not entirely sure what causes him to start caring about people again, but when he starts fighting for others, not just himself, the story becomes a lot more worthwhile on an empathetic level. Because he cares, we care (or at least we don’t hate him anymore).

The story moves quickly but, like the other books, Rabe is great at these extended scenes that are basically side-quests. In this novel, they were a lot of fun. The goblin army part was amusing and what happened to Dhamon in the end regarding the scale was more interesting than I expected.

Ragh is pretty much a main character in this book, which was nice because he’s still my boy. He’s not very deep, but he’s interesting. And the Draconians are my favourite.

I’m still at odds with Fiona’s madness and death because it’s such a cliche and dated way to approach mental illness. I understand it has plot relevance in a few places, and it’s not like these books are intended as psychological analysis, but I wasn’t very fond of the depiction. Fiona never gets interesting, unfortunately.

Maldred fades into the background in this novel and I felt like he was only included for one purpose (that felt a little flimsy anyway) and because he had been there since the beginning.

But, the novel is a fun, quick, easy-to-digest ride with some interesting creatures and settings.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid conclusion to a solid trilogy. I had fun with this trilogy. It's not Weiss and Hickman but it was fun. If you have read the first two the third is much the same style. Magic, monsters, adventure, battle, we see questions answered and loose ends tied up. Would recommend.

[J.C. Cauthon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe it was because I jumped into this series with the last book (I am bad about doing that), but I was just not impressed.

I really did not enjoy the way Rabe handles this story, and though the ending "worked," it was not the ending I was expecting to come from all the previous build-up.

Also, I know I am not the intended audience for this novel (it is preteen/teen--I'm middle-aged mom), but the characters all came across as overly-childish and pretty to me.

All-in-all, it was an okay read for me. It gave me my daily dose of word-intake, but I could have spent my afternoon reading something better.

[Starsreader · Rating 2 out of 5]

The overarching setting is great, the characters are great, but the story has drifted into the unbelievable in this book. The adventures are still strung along like a pearl necklace, only with less connection to each other than even in volume two and the conclusion makes me wonder how that ought to be possible (the size difference alone is unreal - and, yes I know, this is a fantasy story...). Still a good read, but not what I had hoped for as the conclusion of this series.

[Corey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not the ending I expected. Not to say that it was a bad ending, just not what I had expected.