The City of Towers

Eberron: Dreaming Dark, Book 1

By: Keith Baker

Narrated by: Alex Hyde-White

The City of Towers launches a brand new novel line set in the world of Eberron, Wizards of the Coast’s newest D&D campaign setting.

Author Keith Baker’s proposal for the exciting world of Eberron was chosen from 11,000 submissions, and he is the co-author of the Eberron Campaign Setting, the RPG product that launched the setting. The Eberron world will continue to grow through new roleplaying game products, novels, miniatures, and electronic games.

©2005 Wizards of the Coast LLC (P)2012 Audible, Inc.

Great Campaign Setting Reference

While working perfectly well as a primer for understanding the D&D campaign setting of the world of Eberron with some compelling characters, the story reads like a transcript of a table game, and the narrator slips frequently trying to maintain his cast of voices. Still, if you want to know about Eberron, the exposition, even when handled in as clunky a manner as written here, provides no better understanding of the unique, compelling, and magical world of Eberron. definitely a series worth spending the time on despite its many shortcomings as a literary work.

Great introduction to the world of Eberron

Baker’s description of the city of Sharn and the appendix may be worth the price alone. But I found the characters interesting and unique to Eberron. Worth a listen.

A New World, a Pleasant Surprise!

This book definitely came as a pleasant surprise. Being new to the world of Eberron, I was delighted to discover a world setting for which I had been searching for a long time, one that combines fantasy and sci fi in such a way that opens up huge possibilities for storytelling and worldbuilding. And the setting for this particular tale is even more enthralling - a massive vertical city built upon impossibly tall towers, each housing its own kind of culture from the tops to the depths.

But all that aside, I was surprised at the quality of the writing from Keith Baker. He definitely brings the world and the character to life in just the right way. That, and the performance of the narrator, made the dialogue sound witty and natural, and the characters burst with life. Also the nature of the story as kind of a detective-type story and not an epic world-shattering event felt very refreshing.

Another thing that I like about Eberron is the integration of the races. In this world, the traditional evil races such as goblins, orcs, and even medusa are not simply enemies that pop out to try and kill the characters. These races exist in their own pocket of Sharn, with their own societies, and their own rules. Traveling there does not necessarily battle has to occur - although racial tensions still make such an encounter likely. But when battle does occur, it's just as likely to be between a human and dwarf, or some other race. That kind of leveling of the playing field also makes Eberron feel refreshing and interesting.

I enjoyed this one a lot, and hope to check out the other two books in the series and maybe other books by Keith Baker.

Great introduction to an amazing setting and worl

I've been playing D&D for over 20 years. I really enjoyed this story and the performance!

Thin story stretched too far, narration issues

Interesting world. But the story feels stretched very thin. That and the narrator pausing, I'm assuming because he either lost his place or had to turn a page, and his inconsistent pronunciation of names and places....it was kind of a slog to get through unfortunately.