The Splendour Falls (A Changeling: The Dreaming Anthology) [Paperback]

Erin Kelly (Contributor), Stewart Wieck (Contributor)

Product Details

• Paperback: 378 pages
• Publisher: White Wolf Publishing (December 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565048636
• ISBN-13: 978-1565048638
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,399,808 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars There's some wheat in all that chaff., August 21, 2006

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Gen Falel "Gen" (Hawaii) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Splendour Falls (A Changeling: The Dreaming Anthology) (Paperback)

Novels based on movies, comics, video games and role-playing games are often below par, and when I choose to read one of these books I take that into account.

Alas, most of the short stories in this book were worse than I expected. "Show, don't tell" is a common axiom for writers, but most of these authors instead spent their time in exposition and overuse and overdefinition of game terms and concepts, to the injury and death of the story.

I turn to the last page of the book even now and find "Slowly, he realized his punishment would be to live with his sins" -- a particularly low point in the collection, but there were many almost as bad.

That said, there were a few gems in here. Of the twenty-two stories in here, perhaps four were genuinely good (4 stars), ten were fair (2.5 to 3 stars) and only four or five were truly horrendous. With competent editing, many of them have a lot of promise, and I got the feeling that the authors were constrained to follow certain guidelines in their story that might be behind the overuse and overexplanation of game-specific terms, concepts, and plot points.

I'll keep the book, but I probably won't do more than skim it again (though I may look up other books from some of the authors in here.) If you want skilfully written stories about Fae concepts and fell consequences, either read the stories in the Changeling game books themselves (or possibly one of the other works of Changeling fiction out there--I haven't tried them yet) or pick up any novel by De Lint.