The Gates of Night (The Dreaming Dark #3, Eberron) by Keith Baker review

    THE GATES OF NIGHT is the third and final book of The Dreaming Dark Trilogy by Keith Baker. I’ve always felt the Eberron books were underrated examples of Dungeons and Dragons fiction, getting lost in the shuffle of so many other campaigns when WOTC was re-orientating its business model. I’m still waiting for the big Baldur’s Gate style RPG (or even a Rogue Trader style) video game RPG with all the airships it deserves. In this case, this is the conclusion of the adventures of Daine, Pierce, and Lei. For now.

    The premise is that our heroes were left in a really bad spot at the end of The Shattered Land. They were trapped in an ancient giant’s research facility, surrounded by fire-worshiping drow, the enemy had gotten away with a priceless artifact, and some murderous warforged wanted to talk with Pierce about his loyalty to the meatbags in the group. Without spoiling too much, they manage to find a way out but that just dumps them in the feywild.

    The Feywild and D&D have a long history but Eberron had its own version long before it became a major part of the main setting. In Eberron, it is called Thelanis and it is the Plane of Stories where humanity’s collective imagination deals with archetypes from its cultures. This has an extra humorous effect on our heroes as Daine never grew up with any fairy tales, Pierce has no childhood, and Xu comes from a wildly different cultural background than the other heroes.

    Thelanis is fully realized in this book and our heroes struggle to deal with its obscure rules as well as dream-like logic. At one point, they find themselves bargaining for a night at an inn to recover their strength where the innkeep wants one of their voices rather than any payment in coin. Just how bad an idea it is to bargain with the fae is realized with the fact that the inn’s fire is warmed with human bones.

    I really enjoy the new character of Xu and it’s easy to see her as a replacement for Jode’s character in an ongoing D&D campaign. The drow in Eberron are wildly different from the ones over in the Forgotten Realms and she plays the role of the outsider in the party. I also liked the fact that despite the feywild being European coded, she’s far more savvy about its nature than Lei who considers herself an expert.

    Much like The Shattered Land, The Gates of Night is depicted like a D&D campaign that consists of a lot of encounters before getting into the central plot. In this case, it is a road trip where our heroes just desperately want to get home. A goal that is interrupted by the inconvenient fact that they have to save the world from the Dreaming Dark. I was actually surprised at how quickly the stakes escalated as I’d been enjoying the street level adventures our heroes had been engaged in until this point.

    The ending was a bit frustrating, though, because the book ends on a cliffhanger that is only loosely picked up in The Son of Khyber in another series by Keith Baker. The story is not lacking for climaxes or dramatic revelations, though. Keith Baker has said that he’ll never reveal the true cause of the Mourning but this book shows numerous secrets of House Cannith as well as the fact that, whatever the Mourning was, some people saw it coming.

    In conclusion, The Gates of Night is a fantastic story conclusion that shows Thelanis in all its surreal glory. The character interaction is top notch and I’m disappointed we’ll probably never get a novel with the cast of characters. Keith Baker did a lot to make it one of my favorite Dungeons and Dragons series in a short amount of time. If you are looking for a fun read to introduce you to the Eberron setting then The Dreaming Dark trilogy is easily the best place to start.

Available here