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dantastic's review
3.0
Poor Krynnish farmer Telden Moore has a space ship crash land in his field. The dying captain gives him a magical cloak and soon every miscreant in Wildspace is on the trail of Telden and his cloak. Will Telden's life ever be the same?
Even though I played a fair amount of D&D when I was a lad, I was never compelled to read any of the related novels. Fifteen years later, I was in a haze of nostalgia when I decided to give the Cloakmaster cycle a try. While I wasn't wowed, I was quite entertained.
Sure, the plot isn't overly unique. Hell, the summary above looks like the origin of the Hal Jordan version of Green Lantern. Still, it was a fun read. You've got hippo-headed mercenaries, octopus-faced aliens, mysterious blue-skinned merchants, sailing ships that ply the spaceways, and, in later books, Giant Space Hamsters. The Spelljammer itself, a manta-ray shaped ship with a city on it's back, remains the goal of the series throughout.
Without giving too much away, Telden does a lot of running and getting betrayed on his quest for the Spelljammer, exposing the reader to the wonders of Wildspace (and hopefully enticing him to buy the Spelljammer boxed sets. Those TSR guys were sneaky.)
Any flaws? Sure. The writing. Each of the six books is written by someone else and the quality varies. This is one of the better ones. Also, the plot is pretty linear and predictable. Still, for gaming fiction, it's not bad. By the end, Telden is in space and firmly entrenched in his quest.
Not a bad read but you probably should already be a Spelljammer fan before reading it.
Even though I played a fair amount of D&D when I was a lad, I was never compelled to read any of the related novels. Fifteen years later, I was in a haze of nostalgia when I decided to give the Cloakmaster cycle a try. While I wasn't wowed, I was quite entertained.
Sure, the plot isn't overly unique. Hell, the summary above looks like the origin of the Hal Jordan version of Green Lantern. Still, it was a fun read. You've got hippo-headed mercenaries, octopus-faced aliens, mysterious blue-skinned merchants, sailing ships that ply the spaceways, and, in later books, Giant Space Hamsters. The Spelljammer itself, a manta-ray shaped ship with a city on it's back, remains the goal of the series throughout.
Without giving too much away, Telden does a lot of running and getting betrayed on his quest for the Spelljammer, exposing the reader to the wonders of Wildspace (and hopefully enticing him to buy the Spelljammer boxed sets. Those TSR guys were sneaky.)
Any flaws? Sure. The writing. Each of the six books is written by someone else and the quality varies. This is one of the better ones. Also, the plot is pretty linear and predictable. Still, for gaming fiction, it's not bad. By the end, Telden is in space and firmly entrenched in his quest.
Not a bad read but you probably should already be a Spelljammer fan before reading it.
saintdoormatius's review
3.0
The first three-fourths of this book are only two stars worthy. It's kind of a mess and somewhat uninteresting. The ending of the book really picks up the pace and clearly sets up the rest of the books in the series, hence the three stars. TL:DR: it's a slog, but ends in a way that wants you to pick up the next book.
dozens's review
1.0
Okay so this space ship crash lands on a farmer's house and ruins all his melons and he gets a magic cloak that doesn't do anything, so then the farmer and his new friend, a giant gun-toting space hippopotamus-man, are on the run from these fascist space spider-eels who want the do-nothing cloak and who have giant insect-ape slave/servants who sometimes carry them around like Oscar the Grouch and Bruno the Binman, and so Farmer and Hippo keep running and get the help of some crazy tiny scientists who live in a hollowed out volcano who build a new space ship out of spare parts, and they all run away into outer space.
Pros:
- fun, light, easy fantasy romp
- I wanted to read something in the spelljammer setting, and this was unarguably that
- The gnomes were funny
Cons:
- My copy had typos and grammatical errors, which was distracting.
- Tropey and predictable. Shallow, one-dimensional characters
- The cloak itself is a super lame plot device. The fate of the multiverse depends on it! But it literally does nothing. We should have been given some kind of a taste or a hint at its powers, assuming it has any.
- I wanted some outer space stuff, and didn't get any until the epilogue
- The entire sea-faring bit was.. very D&D campaigny: "Here's a tangential side quest so you can level up a little bit before the next big encounter."
Overall, very entertaining, but pretty poorly written and executed.
Pros:
- fun, light, easy fantasy romp
- I wanted to read something in the spelljammer setting, and this was unarguably that
- The gnomes were funny
Cons:
- My copy had typos and grammatical errors, which was distracting.
- Tropey and predictable. Shallow, one-dimensional characters
- The cloak itself is a super lame plot device. The fate of the multiverse depends on it! But it literally does nothing. We should have been given some kind of a taste or a hint at its powers, assuming it has any.
- I wanted some outer space stuff, and didn't get any until the epilogue
- The entire sea-faring bit was.. very D&D campaigny: "Here's a tangential side quest so you can level up a little bit before the next big encounter."
Overall, very entertaining, but pretty poorly written and executed.
apostrophen's review
2.0
This was the only book in the cloakmaster cycle that I read, and it wasn't that good. I loved "Spelljammer" as a D&D player, and I loved "Dragonlance," as a world and book series, but man, it just didn't mix well.
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