Just a quick informal post, and we’ll be back with a review by Deb, tomorrow.
Classic Reread – Dragonlance Volume 1, Dragons of Autumn Twilight
I’ve finished the first volume of the Dragonlance Chronicles: Dragons of Autumn Twilight, as I do my reread of a fantasy classic.
In this first volume, there is more wonder packed into the opening 200 pages than you see in an entire ten-volume set of other fantasy series. Seriously. Along their way, the companions see miraculous healing, stars missing from the sky, dragonmen, spectral warriors, centaurs, a unicorn, a flight of pegasai, the ruin of a city that had fallen down a cliff, a goddess encounter, and finally, a dragon.
The strength that the authors had was making the characters very engaging. Only Riverwind is difficult to like, and even he grows on you over time. On the other hand, the inconsistencies can be annoying, especially when you consider that this is a reissued volume, where those errors ought to have been caught and corrected. Therefore, sometimes it mentions a knight of solomnia, and other times it’s a Knight of Solomnia. They can’t seem to decide whether it is a Dragon Highmaster or a Dragon Highlord, or the city of Qualinost or Qualinesti. Or maybe the city of Qualinost is in the nation of Qualinesti. It’s hard to tell.
The book is divided in two, which may safely be identified as Adventure 1 and Adventure 2. Adventure 1 is neatly tied to Adventure 2, but still, you can tell these adventures came from gaming modules. Or maybe they developed both at the same time. I just wonder how playable the modules are, because so much of what gets the companions through is sheer luck.
Fizban is still my favorite. And Tasslehoff.
Sometimes the timing seems off. Rocks spend a lot of time falling before they finally reach the ground, and there was so much cutting from one group to another that it seemed to take a long time for events to play out, even though it reads very quickly.
I won’t dive straight into the next book, Dragons of Winter Night. Instead, I’ll read that book Tor sent me not long ago, The Last Page by Anthony Huso. Plus books I have on my nook. I’ll get into Winter Night sometime in the months ahead.
Guest Posts
I hope you are enjoying all the guests I have had lately. A few weeks ago, I extended an invitation to Carina Press authors whose books seemed to be a good fit for this blog, and I had a good response. I am happily booked for the next few weeks, and I have guests lined up as far out as February.
Buy Links!
I have buy links for THE SEVENFOLD SPELL! I continue to feel lucky with my reviews. Also this week, THE SEVENFOLD SPELL is on the current NetGalley Buzz page. Here are some buy links:
- Carina Press (PDF, ePub)
- Amazon (Kindle) I also have an Amazon Author Page!
It’s available at lots of other places as well, but to be completely honest, these are the only places where I have my affiliates set up at present. Greedy me! The Carina link should be good for the UK as well as the United States and maybe other countries as well–just try it! If you have a Kindle in the UK, the page is up, but there is no buy button yet. If you need MobiPocket, try your favorite ebook store.
Whew. That’s all the formats I can think of right now.
Tune in tomorrow to read Deb’s take on a different fairy tale retelling!
I didn’t like the Dragonlance modules as well as the books, I’m afraid. Part of the problem was that the people I was playing with wanted to follow the books more closely than I did. Also, the module writers reset the characters with each module, decreeing how much experience they’d gained, and which items they’d found and lost, never mind what actually happened while playing thru the last module. That made it feel like it didn’t matter what we did. {wry smile}
Anne Elizabeth Baldwin
Oh, we would have totally ignored that rule. I met Tracy Hickman at a convention once, and he said that to have fun was the first and most important rule.
One thing I remember is that certain characters remained in the DM’s control until a certain point. For example, Goldmoon would not have been available as a player character until after the encounter with the dragon. That made it seem way to scripted for me.
We never actually played the modules. But the maps were cool.
If the DM who wanted to do these modules had been looser about letting us keep our characters the way they were, things might have gone better. However, he didn’t, and we expressed preferences for other modules until he got the message and dropped Dragonlance. {lop-sided smile}
The characters not always being available was another annoying thing. I loved to play clerics, and I couldn’t at first. {lop-sided smile}
Yes, I’ll agree that the maps were pretty cool. So were some of the races. I liked botht he Kender and the gnomes, tho we only saw the latter in the books. {Smile}
Anne Elizabeth Baldwin
Ditto on the clerics, although as I got older, fighters and thieves became my favorite classes. Spells were too much of a hassle!
I didn’t mind the spells. Our group normally wanted the same few healing and detection spells time after time. If someone thought of something else, we’d look it up. Then I’d usually sleep and pray for it specially. {Smile}
Anne Elizabeth Baldwin
I can’t stand football Cheap Lorazepam
>:-]
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