Customer Reviews

The Dragons' Return (Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved)

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I really enjoyed this collection of short stories. The Diamond Throne setting is compelling, and the authors are well-known to readers of Forgotten Realms ad Dragonlance.

I had no knowledge of Arcana Evolved when I started this book, so all the various dragon sub-races were a mystery at first. But for the most part they, and the re-visioned classic races are adequately explained. Kobolds are budded-off "children" of mojh, for example. Still, they could have done better for readers unfamiliar with the RPG setting. I still have no idea what a sibeccai looks like.

The story of Nithogar the dragon makes for nice bookends to the anthology. Monte Cook's story at the end was the best, in my opinion.

A number of the stories in this collection were well written and all of them had interesting plots. My personal favorites were "Envoy" by Jeff Grubb, "The Land is in Our Blood" by Stan!, and "Essence of the Dragon" by Will McDermott.

These stories stood out because of the lessons they illustrated and their interesting characters.

One of the strengths of this anthology is it provided a somewhate different view of dragons than is typical of most fantasy and D&D-related novels.

The tales in this anthology were a fun mixture of action, adventure, and magic and many had interesting themes and lessons to think about.

If you are a fan of Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved RPG (or any other RPG for that matter) or are just looking for a fun set of tales you might want to pick up this collection.