Books 'n Stuff

The Dragonlance franchise, created by Margaret Weiss & Tracy Hickman, is comprised of gaming modules, some older pc games, and a long series of books. The series began in 1984 with a trilogy of books known as the Chronicles trilogy. It was followed by the Legends trilogy which is generally considered the better of the two.

The two trilogies were after this expanded into a larger franchise written by various other authors such as Douglas Niles and Richard A. Knaak.

Weis & Hickman wrote the occasional short story or novella for the series, but were generally absent after the two trilogies were completed.

The series was fairly popular in its day, and I was a passionate devotee in my teenage  years. I begged, borrowed, bought when I could, but mostly shoplifted every single book in the series that I could find. I'm not terribly proud of that, but hey its in the past.

Gradually I came to realize that the two trilogies, the entire basis for the whole series, were just a cut above the stuff written by the other authors. I began to get a little bored with the series.

In 1995 TSR (the original publishing company; defunct) announced Dragons of Summer Flame, the fourth book in the Chronicles trilogy to be written by Weis & Hickman (yes I know, trilogy = 3 but they added a 4th anyway)  I viewed it as a good series endcap.

According to Wikipedia, Weis & Hickman's relationship with TSR was somewhat strained and they intended it to be the series' end. I read the book, put it on my shelf and was content to be done with the whole franchise.

So I was surprised when yet another Dragonlance book was announced (I've never read any of the new ones since then) and somewhat irritated that they had ruined the ending I had waited for.

Wizards of the Coast, (the company that owns and produces Magic: The Gathering) had bought TSR and attempted to jumpstart the series after repairing the relationship with Weis & Hickman.

Anyway, fastforward to October of last year. After a longer than I cared for stay I was moving out of my parent's house. In preparation I was rooting around in their garage looking boxes of stuff that had been deposited there the previous year. In an old abandoned box I found a copy of Dragons of Winter Night and Summer Flame.

So last week I went to B&N and picked up copies of the books I'm missing and for sentimentality I'm gonna read them again and review. I will likely re-read the Legends trilogy as well and skip the rest.

So far I'm liking it. I'm not having a hard time seeing why I liked these books though they are a little melodramatic and the writing takes a little bit to get on its feet. Its fairly clear that during the beginning of the first book, that they were still getting the hang of world building, but its still fun reading. I will be reviewing these as a trilogy not individually.