The Verdant Passage (Dark Sun World: Prism Pentad, Book 1) Mass Market Paperback – January 1, 1991

Troy Denning was one of the primary game designer for Dungeons & Dragons’ Dark Sun setting, so it is no surprise he got tapped to pen the first Dark Sun novel. Dark Sun is one of D&D’s more vivid settings—with arresting artwork by Brom—and it bears scant resemblance with its sun-blasted landscape, bizarre monsters, psionics, and environment-destroying magic to the watered-down Tolkien pastiches of Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms. But it does fit squarely with D&D’s roots.Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom books and Jack Vance’s Dying Earth are most frequently cited as primary inspirations for Dark Sun. In his famous list of inspirations for D&D as a whole, Appendix N, Gary Gygax lists explicitly lists both. And another work explicitly listed on Appendix N was likely a major inspiration for Dark Sun: Hiero’s Journey by Sterling Lanier. Hiero’s Journey is set in our own post-apocalyptic future, not a secondary world, but it includes many elements in Dark Sun. First and foremost is the prominent role of psionics (although present in the Barsoom books, but to a much smaller degree). The works are dystopian and post-apocalyptic. Each features inventive, bizarre monsters. They share a certain environmentalist moral. The four leg of the stool holding Dark Sun is Brom’s artwork, which gives the dark fantasy world its own distinctive feel.The Verdent Passage centers around four main characters living in Tyr, a city state ruled by an immortal sorcerer-king Kalak. Tithian is a High Templar, serving Kalak and charged both with completing his massive ziggurat (generations in the making) and the gladiatorial games that will mark its completion. Rikus is slave to Tithian, gladiator, and Mul (a dwarf-human hybrid), who is focused on winning the ziggurat games to win his own freedom. Sadira is a half-elven sorceress and member of the Veiled Alliance, who is undercover as one of Tithian’s slave. Agis of Asticles is an enlightened aristocrat, psionist, and member of the ineffectual senate. Together (in the loosest sense of the word) the four will challenge Kalak’s rule.The Verdant Passage suffers from the usual bugs of a D&D tie-in novel, and it isn’t as good as Denning’s Twilight Giants trilogy, but it is an enjoyable read. There is too much “our elves are different,” too much time spent describing city features and monsters in great detail for the DM’s benefit, monsters so distinct as to be hard for Denning to describe and the reader to picture. But the gaj really is a cool monster, and the setting really is a highlight.The Verdant Passage stands alone well but is part of a 5-book series. I don’t know if I will continue on with it. It is central to the story of Dark Sun, which unfortunately makes it hard to read anything about the setting without spoiling the book.

This book is very well-written and free of a lot of the issues that generally come with authors in the fantasy genre.In my own personal view, I didn't think the story was that novel or interesting. It's your basic Big Evil Bad Guy with Big Evil Plan is opposed by Group of Fairly Decent People climaxing in the Big Battle. The one thing I did like is the political facet, but not too much is made of that. The characters who have roles that operate at the political level rather quickly just get caught up in being "party members." It would have been more interesting to me to see how resistance could have continued at a political level -along with- the more traditional sword and sorcery stuff. Few books really do that (it's generally one or the other).Also, you should know I really didn't know much about the Dark Sun world. If I really enjoyed the world before coming to this book, I might have appreciated the story more.In sum, it's not a bad book, especially in a genre that is absolutely littered with bad books. I just didn't get very caught up in the story.

The Verdant Passage, by Troy Denning, pulls us into a fantasy setting, where the world has been damaged by the heavy use of magic, where metal is rare and where slavery is the norm. The King Tyr, plotting to become a dragon, must be stopped at all costs. So it is up to a slaveholding noble, a half-slave magic using girl and a man-dwarf gladiator to start the revolution. This may not seem that interesting, but the blend of cultures, from the greedy elves to the hairless dwarves, from the great ziggurat to the desolate sand wastes, really hooked me. The author does everything to bring out a different flavor to the setting. He refuses to give us the same old same old. I suggest at LEAST picking up the first book to check it out. I was first exposed to the Dark Sun books when I got the third book in this series and totally enjoyed it.

One of the hottest books I’ve read - literally! Introduced me to the world of Athas way back in junior high... I was totally taken away by this series. I believe my favorite was “The Amber Enchantress” - featuring a sorceress who drew powers directly from the environment around her, placing her hand on the hot sands. I loved that!Troy Denning also wrote another great desert-themed adventure titled “The Parched Sea,” featured in the TSR “Harper’s” series I believe which was also really really good. The lead in that book “Ruha” was a really great female lead.Highly recommended.

Pretty interesting, and I'm following up with the series because of it. Compared to some other DnD books I've read, it's relatively gritty and depressing, which is great. The story was very interesting and unconventional, but the author at times was redundant with his vocabulary which was only slightly noticeable. Would recommend to an open minded and imaginative reader interested in Dark Sun, but not the average reader looking for a polished and typical read. Much of the content would only really appeal to somebody who can imagine such extraordinary things. After reading it, I can say the author is obviously quite the thinker.

I read this series when I was a teenager and now mid thirties want to relieve this great adventure. Besides the LOTR trilogy and of course the Hobbit this adventure by denning is the most thrilling I have ever read. Only con to this version is I'm not sure the process of conversion from physical to digital but there are a lot of grammatical errors in this version which I bet greatly were not in paperback. Sometimes simple Things like "and" instead of "the" or "salira" instead of "sadira" but sometimes not simple things like "rain" instead of "ram" so by the end of the sentence your left thinking that makes no sense. All in all I absolutely love the story and characters, will buy the rest of the series and give it the max 5 well deserved stars

This is the first ever Darksun novel and it brings with it one of the most unique dungeons and dragons settings ever.Background Arakis is a desert world for the most part because magic needs a life force to be used. Generally they use it from the plants which is why you see mostly desert.Slavery is extremely common as are the Sorceror Kings who have magic and are the strongest of the strong.Magic is twofold. Magic of the mind or psionics is a strong part of this world. Then there is the traditional magic however it is more linked to life then other settings.The story was great and I love the idea of magic and psionics as a great combination for a world.This story starts with Rikus and Neeva who are slaves of the High Templar Tithian. Along with there two friends I think you would say. One a dwarf and the other a halfling.Anezka is a halfling who is so wild that people have no clue what she would do. Her ruthless behaviour shows so much about her.Rikus to me isn't the strongest lead character. He does have a great role to play in this story. His love could either break the rebellion of the veiled alliance or help to save it.Ktandeo was one of my favourite characters but inknew he was never meant to be main. His magic was strong as was his opinions and ethics. He trained one of my favourite mages ever.Sadira a strong mage who sees black and white and doesn't realize that doing everything to win isn't going to help the cause of the Veiled Alliance.Agis is probably the best of them while he is a psionic he also is a councilor and while he does have his flaws overall he is a good man who cares about people including his slaves.This is a great first book and while it is a reread for me it felt like I was putting myself back to high school when I was reading this series regularly.

Pra quem gosta de fantasia um prato cheio.... Pra quem gosta de D&D melhor ainda... Se for fan de Dark Sun.... Vai querer jogar uma aventura na hora!

Strong start but seemed very rushed trough the end, coud have been better developed, many oportunities to further describe Athas.

Viele Rollenspieler dürften wissen: Romane, die zu bekannten Rollenspielsettings erscheinen, gehören vielfach nicht unbedingt zur Creme der Fantasy-Literatur… und das war in den 80ern und 90ern noch schlimmer, wenn es auch natürlich bemerkenswerte Ausnahmen gab, spontan fallen mir als positives Beispiel Stackpoles „Dark Conspiracy“ Romane ein.Ein weiteres positives Beispiel ist für mich Troy Dennings THE VERDANT PASSAGE, welches den Auftakt zur „Prism Pentad“ Reihe bildet.Das Buch hat zwei Vorteile – zunächst einmal ist es schlichtweg gut und dynamisch geschrieben. Es liest sich kurzweilig und bietet eigentlich genau das, was man sich als Auftakt einer Romanreihe vorstellt, welche auf der harten und brutalen Welt von Athas spielt.Das bringt uns direkt zu Vorteil zwei: Athas, die in „AD & D Dark Sun“ vorgestellte Welt, ist ein tolles Setting, und Troy Denning versteht es meiner Meinung nach ausgezeichnet, die Stimmung dieses Hintergrundes in den Roman einfließen zu lassen. Das Leben auf Athas ist nicht nur hart, sondern der gesamte Hintergrund bildet eine Fantasywelt, in welcher viele für Fantasywelten gültige Axiome komplett auf den Kopf gestellt wurden und mit vielen Klischees intelligent gebrochen wurde. Als „Dark Sun“ Anfang der 90er erschien war es äußerst bemerkenswert und mutig, und auch heutzutage, fast 30 (!) Jahre nach seiner Premiere, finde ich es immer noch sehr beeindruckend.Insofern: wer Lust hat, eine stark geschriebene Geschichte zu lesen, welche auf der erbarmungslosen und schlichtweg originellen Welt von Athas spielt (und diesem Umstand auch wirklich Rechnung trägt!) ist mit THE VERDANT PASSAGE gut beraten. Auch über 25 Jahren nach seiner Premiere liest sich dieser Roman noch wirklich gut!

Excellent series of books. A grim world that is very well thought out and presented is the setting for this series. With the release of Dungeons and Dragons 5e this setting is getting a well deserved resurgence, and these books will too. Even if you don't play D and D they are well written. Beware though, the bad guys really are bad and the good guys are not always what you think.