Another book finished, so on with the review. Queen Of The Depths by Richard Lee Byers is a Forgotten Realms novel, and the fourth book in a quartet called The Priests. Each book in the small series focuses on a servant of one of the worlds many gods, in this case the deity venerated is Umberleee, the savage, capricious goddess of the seas, who is more feared than venerated. Dubbed The Bitch Queen by those who dwell above the waves, this stories central character is Tu'ala'keth, a shalarin priestess. The shalarin being a race of undersea dwellers, looking much like humans but much more slender, and with webbed feet and hands, as well as crest running down their back.
Tu'ala'keth is a priestess with a problem, no-one is visiting her temple, the offerings draped on the altars are all old, the shalarin people's faith having drifted to other deities of the oceans, most of whom are far less cruel than Umberlee. To compound the problem, the shalarin (and the rest of the ndersea races), are faced with a monstrous threat, a large force of draconic creatures driven mad by The Rage, an affliction which affects dragonkind every now and then, causing them to group together and attack everything in their path (think Football Hooligans on a drunken rampage and you get the general idea).
So she sets out into the wider ocean, away from her temple, to try and hear the call of her goddess, wanting to know her will. It is there that she encounters Anton Marivaldi, drifting on flotsam and close to death. She rescues him after watching him fight off an octopus, a sacred animal of her faith, convinced that he has been sent to aid her. After explaining that he is a spy for the government of a nation called Turmish, and has been tasked with finding a secret base of the villainous Cult of the Dragon, a group of madmen convinced that undead dragons will rule the world someday, and who are working to make it sooner rather than later.
Seeing that the Cult would have information on the raging dragons and how to stop them, and realising that if she can stop the tide of dragons, then the people will have to worship her goddess again, Tu'ala'keth teams up with Anton to find and stop the Cult. The pair bicker over many things, but especially over her unwavering belief that everything is Umberlee's will. As Anton is not a worshipper of the savage goddess himself (he venerates the Red Knight, a goddess of strategy and tactics), the pair are often at odds over this. But they do work well together regardless.
The book is written by the same author who is writing the Year of Rogue Dragons trilogy for the Forgotten Realms, and has written this book as a nice way of showing what else is going on in the world in that year, aside from what the main characters of his trilogy are going through. It is a very well written book, and it gets a solid 5/5 from me. I'd enjoy seeing more books set against the backdrop of that years terrible events, like this one is. For my part as my current D&D campaign is set at around this time (the characters having already seen one group of dragons raging, and currently in a city under attack by another large force of dragons doing the same), this book is a godsend of ideas for running some adventures amidst the Pirate Isles, where the book is set in and around (and where the party would be passing by soon enough anyway).
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