Circle of Skulls Audiobook By James P. Davis cover art

Circle of Skulls

Forgotten Realms: Ed Greenwood Presents Waterdeep, Book 6

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Circle of Skulls

By: James P. Davis
Narrated by: James Patrick Cronin
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About this listen

Journey to the dark side of the City of Splendors.

Jinn is an angel trapped in mortal flesh, sent down from the heavens to fight, die, and be reincarnated endlessly in the war against evil. But over the years, revenge supplanted justice, and now he lives only to wreck vengeance - whatever the cost - on the dark angel of Asmodeus who killed his lover. A series of brutal occult murders, left like breadcrumbs for him to follow, lead Jinn straight to the dark angel - an invitation to a final battle for the soul of Waterdeep. But will he still be able to choose the path of justice when he is so close to his enemy, after lifetimes of failure?

Circle of Skulls is a dark fantasy of fallen angels, desperate rituals, and a mysterious series of occult murders. Set in the classic City of Splendors and presented by Forgotten Realms campaign setting creator and celebrated author Ed Greenwood, you don’t want to miss out on this exciting glimpse into what the latest edition of the Realms has to offer.

©2010 Wizards of the Coast LLC (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
Action & Adventure Epic Epic Fantasy Fantasy Fiction Young Adult Revenge
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Like the books...

I just couldn't get into the story due to the reader.
Lackluster at best. This was the first of the books I found issue with the performance.

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jpc

JPC mispronounces things all the time it's hard to listen to sometimes. overall story is entertaining thought.

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Paint-it-by-the-Numbers Fantasy

This book is sadly a very frustrating listen, which is especially disappointing as both its very first and very last chapters (prior to the epilogue) are quite good and manage to draw in the reader/listener rather well with their epic scope.
However, between these two points of the story, the book just kinda... tread water for hours-on-end.

The Paint-it-by-the-Numbers sort of storytelling "Circle of Skulls" employs is easily outlined as being an inherently bad thing, but it doesn't truly have to be, such storytelling is good for allowing a writer to put the focus of the story on other aspects, such as on character-studies or occasionally on things such as comedy. However, "Circle of Skulls" sadly doesn't do this either, indeed, for as otherworldly as the majority of the characters of the books are: including two angelic beings, a "goodly" undead, a hag, and more. The book doesn't actually seem to know of anything interesting to present the reader/listener with about these characters, and we are instead stuck with a protagonist who is trying to be a dark anti-hero, but doesn't do anything toward being such other than being disinterested in being heroic, and a female lead who does little else but complain about the protagonist's lack-of-heroics throughout the majority of the book, while simultaneously pretending the reason why she does so is mysterious and interesting (which they absolutely aren't; in fact, they might be some of THE most basic topes in fantasy, and thereby serving to make her even less interesting).

"Circle of Skulls" has many good ideas, but fails to deliver on a lot of them, resulting in many aspects of the book feeling little more than pointless, aspects that are presented as though they are meant to have great thematic importance. A particularly noteworthy aspect-of-failed-important being the elven female lead's status as a Warlock of Stars, something she specifically emphasizes and will correct other characters on getting wrong. However, in spite of this, this ends up having no impact on the story or her character what-so-ever, indeed it is closer to detracting from her character, as her dealing with powers of dark and madness goes against her motivation relating to moral good, love, and heroics.

A good part of the book is the character of the ultimate villain (not the circle of skulls itself, as they are shockingly enough also incredibly boring characters, and there being more of them doesn't help). The dark angel steals the show every time he appears within the story, but this is sadly a little too rarely, and even when he does appear Cronin sadly didn't do a particularly good job of narrating him.

I could keep going in detail about what does or doesn't work within "Circle of Skulls," but since I don't want this review to go on for too long, here are a few rapid-fire notes:

- The book contains a "Women in Refrigerators" trope, and the character in question never even appeared, she died off-screen after having been corrupted to evil in some way (I don't think we are ever told much of what she even truly did, other than choose evil?)
- Cronin has never been a great narrator, but this book definitively has him "phoning-in" his performance; basically every character has a terribly accent-choice, but the worst of all is without question a villainous wizard with a cowboy-accent.
- Much emphasis is put on the protagonist's sword. This build-up is delivered on at the end, but the ways in which it is spoken off almost never gives the reader/listener any indication that it truly is special; it is mentioned often, but almost never in an interesting, unique way. The book just repeats that it was stolen, most of the time.
- As alluded to earlier, the book has WAY too many villains; not because it is difficult to keep track of them all, but because it becomes hard to care about any of them, as they barely get a chance to truly come into their own as characters; this includes the dark angel as well, he only survives this issue due to how over-the-top his personality is structured.


Overall, "Circle of Skulls" is mostly just a massive waste of time that doesn't seem to know what to do with itself after its beginning. However, for anyone who does decide to go through the long, boring hours of this book, know that there is a fun, epic light at the end of the book's way-too-long tunnel (However, don't take that as it being worth it, it is not).

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