Pages of Pain

This has to be one of the best books I've read in recent memory. Even without a typical plot, the book continually drives the reader onward. I longed for satisfactory chapter endings where I could put the book down for awhile, but they were few and far between. Too often, I found myself unable to stop and forced onto the next chapter. The reader goes through several levels of revelations, even as the characters themselves do. While some of the characters seem one-dimensional superficially, if that is the case, why does your heart tug so when the full trajedy of this book is visited upon them? The treatment of the Lady of Pain herself is wonderful. She is the darkest side of the city of Sigil personified, and she forms the entire emotional tone of the novel. As the very embodiment of suffering and pain, we expect to find the evil delight that fills her, but has ever such a loathsome villain raised such empathy? Gollumn was surely deserving of pity, but not the Lady of Pain who revels in her cruelty, who believes it an actual necessity. Yet her longing, as is that of every character in this novel, is palpable and undeniably human. This is primarily an emotional maze the characters find themselves lost in, and those seeking a hack n slash adventure should look elsewhere, but those who remember that it's role-playing and not roll-playing, should definitely check this out.

I think that if one simply removed the planescape logo and offered this as the Modern Theseus, it would have been more widely read. This is an amazing book. I wouldn't go so far as to call it a classic, but rather a modern myth for modern times. The story's narration was excellent, and the ending wasn't necessarily shocking and instead more akin to a tragedy in which you know what will happen but are enthralled anyway.

This is an amazing book by an amazing author. It is the story of a lost man who has forgotten his past, his love, his name--everything but a mission to seek the the most powerful Lady of Pain, ruler of Sigil, in hopes of regaining his loss. This book delves deep--the imagery created, metaphoric usage, and eloquent, poetic manipulation of wordage is nothing short of amzaing. This is by far the single best book I have ever read--Troy Denning is a god. I recommend it to anyone and everyone, but especially to those TSR lovers out there.

Like Shakespeare, Mr. Denning's strength is equally "howhe says it" as "what he says". His descriptions aredone in ways that make you see, hear, taste, smell and feel what he wants to tell you. His writing style does justice to a Greek/Roman hero and Greater Devil alike. Troy is a master of panipulating the level of tension; you have to keep reading because something suddenly dawns on you and you wonder if Troy was thinking about that too. And he was always thinking about that too. The author is obviously a very intelligent individual. Kharfud, the Tanar'ri, had the patient, intelligent, pure evil that I would expect. Normally, I cannot read more than 20-30 pages at a sitting, but I ended up finishing pages of pain in 2 days. I couldn't put it down. Self discovery is FUNDAMENTAL to the theme of the book. The best book I have read in a long time, fantasy or not.

Finally, a text longer than a paragraph giving us fellow gamers a taste of what the Lady Of Pain is really like. Her thoughts are laid out, and one finally learns of her origin. The best part of the book, though, is the justicfication of why pain is so integral to the multiverse. The book's story is original, written in a way, that it in itself actually ties in with a emotionaly painful paradox. This book is a must read...