Scream of Stone

Forgotten Realms: Watercourse #3

by Philip Athans

The finale of the acclaimed Watercourse Trilogy from The New York Times best-selling author Philip Athans!

When the true mission of the Thayan Enclave is revealed, the richest man in Innarlith decides he wants to be the most powerful too, a once promising young man is transformed into a twisted undead assassin, and a quiet genius finally makes his stand, the explosive fury of decades of boiling rage explodes from the heart of a city at war with itself.

Genres: Forgotten Realms, Fantasy, Fiction, Dungeons and Dragons, Epic, Ebooks

311 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

I 100% support AUTHORS AGAINST BOOK BANS
https://www.authorsagainstbookbans.com

I give every book 5 stars in protest against the concept of star ratings in general and the ever-unfolding algorithm dystopia!

Philip Athans, an anti-AI, anti-book bans liberal, is the founding partner of Athans & Associates Creative Consulting (www.athansassociates.com), and the New York Times best-selling author of Annihilation and more than a dozen other fantasy and horror books including The Best of Fantasy Authors Handbook Vol. I 2009-2013, The Guide to Writing Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Writing Monsters. Born in Rochester, New York he grew up in suburban Chicago, where he published the literary magazine Alternative Fiction & Poetry. His blog, Fantasy Author’s Handbook, is updated every Tuesday (https://fantasyhandbook.wordpress.com), less regularly on the FAH YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@FantasyAutho...), and you can follow him on Twitter @PhilAthans. He makes his home in the foothills of the Washington Cascades, east of Seattle.

Reviews

[The Shayne-Train · Rating 4 out of 5]

A super-awesome finish to a super-awesome series.

O! The things that happen to these characters you've grown to love and/or hate! Things definitely come to a head in this final installment of the trilogy. Tons of intrigue, not to mention damage, gets dumped on heads both deserving and un-.

This series has breathed new life into my love for Forgotten Realms. If THIS is the kind of fantasy they are putting out, I think I may go back and start reading the post-2000 stuff they've put out. Like, ALL the post 2000-stuff.

[Jukka Särkijärvi · Rating 1 out of 5]

And thus ends the trilogy.

I must confess, I almost gave Scream of Stone two stars. This is the one book in the series where characterization works and much like in the first, we see some humanity injected to the character of Ivar Devorast, this time through his conversations with Ransar Pristoleph (who, contrary to canon, is still not a chaotic evil devotee of Cyric). In some other book, with fewer pointless combat scenes, these might be interesting characters.

The problem is that none of the main characters are especially warlike or adventurous, being an architect and a thief-turned-politician, with the exception of the bugfuck insane Phyrea, which makes the Forgotten Realms' requisite one combat scene every fifteen pages (or however often it was) look off. There's one several pages long in this that serves absolutely no purpose other than to pad out the book.

Incidentally, I'm still pretty sure that "other book" is not The Fountainhead, upon which the Watercourse Trilogy is based, which has pointless pseudophilosophy in lieu of pointless fight scenes. The latter is at least not intellectually offensive.

Then there's the ending, which really annoyed me. It's a cop-out, a bait-and-switch. We were originally promised, finally, a Realms-Shaking Event that would, for once, be about creating something, not destroying it (c.f. Zhentil Keep, Myrkul, Bhaal, Bane, Sharksbane Wall, the whole of Spellplague, etc.). So, in the end, when the great Innarlan canal is almost ready to be opened and revolutionize trade from the Lake of Steam to the Inner Sea nations… Ivar Devorast blows it up in order to deny it to the enemy. And then, at the very end, we're told again that it might be rebuilt – but of course, the reader will never get to see the consequences. The next thing down the line for the Realms was the Spellplague, and little survived that.

But now that's done. Let's see if I can find something less bad for my next foray into tie-in fiction.

[Kagan Oztarakci · Rating 3 out of 5]

"It was a strange concept, the humans had, of considering themselves an individual among many, instead of one of many individuals."

"All three of them held up their hands in conciliatory gestures, calling for quiet even as their gloating smiles and limpid eyes soaked up the admiration of their peers like a spider draws the essential fluids from a doomed fly."

[Jesse · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another good one by Athans.
I felt that the plot had circled around quite a bit by the time I got to this book, so the fact that the plot moved along slowly again was not as detering for this tome.

We see the ransar Pristoleph being slowly dethroned by the red wizard, Marek. Devorest continues to plug away at his canal, with more and more problems thrown into his path by the nobles of Innarlith. Eventually, while Devorest and Pristoleph are on vacation (seriously, they go on vacation for a few months...that's part of the story) Merak has some of his senator cronies open a portal in the path of the canal, making it obsolete.

While this is going on, we see the newly zombified Willem running about the city, pretending to be a senator. This was an aspect of the book that I never quite understood. Athans builds this bizzare character, and starts to have him behave in a very atypical way. So, as the reader, we think this is going to be his plot twist; a zombie/ghoul senator that thinks he's still alive. A bit silly, but I can get behind the creativity involved. But instead of pushing that envelope, we just see Willem slowly decline into what we already knew he was. And it just seems like it was page filling (don't get me wrong, Athens does a great job of describing the zombie's comffusiion and the horrific acts that he performs in vivid detail. It's good.)

There is less pages dedicated to the heroin of these books, though she is still wandering about being verbally tortured by the ghosts that haunt her.

In the end, Devorest blows up the canal and Pristoleph burns the city. However, both of these destructive acts work out for them in the end, as Pristoleph is able to recease the throne and kick Merak to the curb. Devorest keeps his pact with the Nagas and can start rebuilding the canal....so we're where we started two books ago. But I can't say that it wasn't entertaining.

[J.C. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Overall disappointing. Some Worthwhile Parts

I read both Whisper of Waves and Lies of Light the days they came out. I was originally very excited about this trilogy because of the mentioned "world shattering" event (completion of the canal) and thought this would be a very interesting trilogy because the "world shattering" event was not a huge war or the magical artifact changing the world; but rather a politically motivated, blood and sweat event.

This being the final series in the Watercourse Trilogy I was expecting great things from this book. I really enjoyed the first book and somewhat disappointed in the second book. The chapters are extremely short and the storyline jumps all over the place. Not only this, but the books span several years and unless you are very knowledgeable about the Faerun calendar system or pay close attention the months and dates at the beginning of every chapter it can be difficult to follow how much time has passed between chapters. This book did a better job of verbally explaining how long someone had been in jail or exiled compared to the book's predecessors; but, it was still slightly difficult to gauge the time. There is a helpful calendar explanation as an appendix, and this would have been more helpful in the first two books, as well.

The one shining part of this trilogy was one of the main characters: Ivar Devorast. I thought he was an intriguing character and I thoroughly enjoyed his attitude and demeanor. Some of the other characters I could have done without as their story lines were hardly engaging and I didn't care what really happened to them.

Overall, a very disappointing trilogy with so much potential. I would only recommend this book to those that have already read the first two books in the Watercourse Trilogy and die-hard Forgotten Realms fans.

J.Stoner

[Jeremy Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

Scream of Stone is the third and final book in the Watercourse trilogy written by Philip Athans. The story revolves around a group of unique individuals in the city of Innarlith and how their lives and ambitions are all intertwined. The main storyline is about a man named Ivar Devorast and his pursuit of building a canal to connect the Nagaflow river and the Lake of Steam. Ivar’s canal building is met with opposition and there are many attempts to kill him as he is working. Almost all of the murder attempts are initiated from a greedy and evil Thayan by the name of Marek Rymut. As the story progresses the main focus shifts from Devorast to the genasi Pristoleph who is a senator of Innarlith and is making a play to be the ransar. Pristoleph intertwines his fate with Ivar Devorast and by doing this he causes the ire of the red wizard Marek. Without divulging any spoilers about the end of the book, I can say that the trilogy ends with several surprises, multiple conflicts, and quite a few fight sequences.

Check out my complete review at my website
[http://www.thefantasyreview.com/2007/...]

[William · Rating 3 out of 5]

As I said in my review of the previous two books in this trilogy, you should read these for completeness sake, if you're a fan of Forgotten Realms novels and/or the FR AD&D setting. Obviously they're reasonably entertaining in my view, or I would not have finished the trilogy. Are they the most enjoyable Forgotten Realms novels I've read? No.