Why one should NOT magic

All right, it’s been a while since I last read the books so my memory might be a little rusty, but here it goes, in no particular order:

  1. Sadira’s sun wizardry. In book 3 Kaidar (shadow giant) specifically states that what she gained is less than what the champions gained (or states something to that effect, anyway.) Obviously, you would never know it with how the SK’s are portrayed or their abilities in the novel (none of them have sun wizardry or indestructible skin, for example).

  2. The heads of Sacha and Wyan. Are they alive? Undead? No one knows. Undead are discussed in the books, but the heads are never identified as such. What powers do they have? In book 2 they either use dragon magic, or aid Tithian, an apprentice wizard and psionicist, in doing so, but such an incredible display is never repeated. In the prologue of book 3, they appear to summon psionic power to fight Nok before Tithian waves them off. In later books, they just kind of bite a lot and then unceremoniously get torn apart.

  3. Speaking of Nok, what’s up with him? He’s a psionicist, but beyond that is he a druid, a wizard, or even both? A close reading makes it actually seem like he’s a wizard, and, even more bizarrely, can drain animal life, but Troy Denning, and the rest of cannon, made halfling anti-magic, so IDK. Furthermore, who is he really? He’s a big big mystery in books 1 and 3, but his character is pretty much the definition of a setup with no payoff, and that’s before we get into things like him talking from a defiled plant after he died.

  4. The giants in book 4. The book has a confusing and complicated pile of lore around them that might mean all athasian giants evolved from dwarves, or might mean nothing at all, and that’s before we get into things like the Dark Lens maybe granting intelligence to a species or being required to create beast head giants. Oh, and just in general, the books confirm that dwarves once had beards, but now can’t grow them, with no explanation given.

  5. Speaking of giants, what is up with shadow giants and the black? actually, I could go on all day about that one, but let’s just say there’s a lot about them and where they live that feels made up on the spot and wildly inconsistent.

  6. A minor one. Is resurrection possible in Dark Sun lore, according to the Prism Pentad? No one knows. It gets brought up at least twice, once by Tithian in the Obsidian Oracle, asking it Rajaat can grant that power, to which he gets a non committal response, and in book 5, when Sadira thinks about the wraiths storing their life force in gems, and wonders if that means they could be resurrected.

  7. Save the biggest for last. How in the world was Rajaat capable of performing what we saw at the end of prism pentad 5? He’s been trapped in a perfect seal for 10,000 years and he suddenly has the power to move and change the color of the sun, and create life, water, and clouds across a city half the size of the tablelands without blinking? This feels like it should have been a big freaking deal, but the novel just mentions that he has “changed”, and that’s it. What is he, and how was this guy ever defeated?

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