Flight of the Dying Sun

Flight of the Dying Sun by Rich Wulf is the second book in the Heirs of Ash trilogy. The first book is Voyage of the Mourning Dawn, this third book which be published in late 2007 will be titled Rise of the Seventh Moon. Back when I reviewed the first book, Voyage of the Morning Dawn, I was very high on the book and the series. Contrary to past Eberron books, Mr. Wulf did not shove the technology aspect of the world down the reader's throat. It was just a part of the story. I also raved about the quality of the characters, in that they all seemed unique and different from the plethora of clichéd characters that permeate the fantasy genre right now.

With all that said, if I didn't know any better I would say this novel was written by a show more different author. Almost all the things I really enjoyed from the first book seemed to be missing in action from this book. This novel had no where near the same flow as the first book did.

The actual plot carries over from the first book with the main characters are searching for the Legacy, as well as trying to fend off repeated attacks from Marth. As with the first book, the overall plot stays rather linear. This is not a novel that has a very intricate plot filled with subtleties. The plot, while solid, is pretty much a point A to point B type of plot line. The few sub-plots that are present in this book are mostly regarding characters backstories and the reasons they made the choices to be where they are. In terms of the plot from the first book, to the plot of this book, this book seems rather stale and `been there, done that before' type of thinking. I don't want to come across as hating the plot, and maybe I had too high of expectations based on my thoughts of the first book. This is a decent book, but no where near the level of the first book.

The characters in this book are largely the same characters that were in the first book. Based on that, I expected more character development, since the characters have already been established. On this note, I was again disappointed. There was some character development with the character Tristam, but no where near what I was expecting. Also, the dialog that I really liked in the first book, meaning every character had their own way of talking, was mostly absent in this book. It seemed that every character talked the same way and the little intricacies that I enjoyed before were simply not there. It seems that Mr. Wulf focused mostly on the plot in this book and let character development slide into the background a little. Yet, this is not the type of plot that can carry shallow characters, which is how the characters came across in this book.

There were also a couple of instances in the book where Mr. Wulf seemed to want to do several things in developing the plot and instead of focusing on one of those ideas he tried to do pieces of each. This resulted in the book feeling choppy and disjointed.

While I really wanted to enjoy this book, based on the first book. I simple am apathetic to it overall. Fans of the Eberron world, more importantly, people who have read the first book, should probably read this. If for no better reason than to see how the story progresses and to get ready for the third book. People looking to get into the world of Eberron may want to look somewhere else first before embarking on this novel. Again, this is not a bad novel, but there was so much more that could have happened within it's pages. show less