The Prism Pentad

Aftre re-reading the Spelljammer novels last year, I decided this year to re-read the first series of Dark Sun novels, "The Prism Pentad". I first read these when they were published, so it had been about a quarter of a century, with my memory of them being that they were pretty good but pretty tough to get through. I had also of the opinion that publishing them was a big mistake, but I'll get to that...

I re-read the novels across the space of five months. My intention had, of course, to spend about a week reading each novel, allowing me to fit them easily in my "60 books" pattern. However, I found that this rate was over-ambitious. In general, the books took me about 10 days each to wade through. My assessment of them being a bit of a slog was basically spot-on. I also found that they haven't aged terribly well - it's fair to say that Troy Denning's writing has improved very significantly since then!

Unfortunately, I'm still of the opinion that these novels probably should not have been published.

The problem is this: TSR published their exciting new Dark Sun campaign setting - a new banner setting for the AD&D game. There was great fanfare surrounding the setting, and especially the (very good) boxed set that introduced the setting.

They then published the Prism Pentad that, in the very first novel, upends one of the key pillars of the game. Suddenly the core starting area was changed almost beyond recognition! Further novels in the series led to further massive changes, such that by the end pretty much everything that made up the setting was different. (Not necessarily worse, but different.)

TSR did eventually publish a revised version of the setting, but if really didn't get anything like the same push, or the same traction, and Dark Sun basically died a death until the 4e reboot. (There was a semi-reboot in 3e, in Dragon and Dungeon magazines, but given the scope of the setting this wasn't the support it really needed. And there was also a fan-led effect that did rather better, but again was limited to people who were already familiar with the setting.)

When WotC revived the setting for 4e, they did what I felt was the right thing - they reset the setting to what is probably the most interesting instant in it's history (that is, just after Tyr becomes the free city), and basically ignored everything that didn't fit their revised vision. I do feel they made another mistake by over-explaining everything. (They saidthat it was a setting where the Primordials won the great war at the dawn of time. That's absolutely fine, but we don't need to know that. And, actually it undercuts one of the major themes of the setting - that it has been ruined by uncontrolled abuse of magic.)

My overall opinion of "The Prism Pentad" is quite negative after the re-read - they're okay examples of "game fiction" (which is hardly a genre noted for excellence), but they're not great reads in their own right. And as tie-in fiction for the setting, I'm afraid they're mostly counter-productive. The very first novel is probably worthwhile as a lead-in to the 4e campaign setting (which IMO is probably be best version of that setting), but even that is not essential... and the DM may well prefer to come up with his own backstory anyway.