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A review by odin45mp
Dragons of Deceit by Tracy Hickman, Margaret Weis
3.0
Three stars. Average. It has some problems in pacing and character development, and needed a little more editing. In my heart, this is a four star book. We'll see if I revise upwards or downwards after the completion of the trilogy.
My first new Dragonlance in 20 years (I haven't gotten around to reading the War of Lost Souls yet.) A return to Krynn, home of much of my teenage years, and my first non-Tolkien foray into adult fantasy. A return by the authors that birthed the world and gave it to me and millions of other teenagers.
And... it's okay. I loved the first part of the book, where we laid a background story for the protagonist around events from the original War of the Lance. The second part was fun. The third part where we are ripping the fabric of the world apart to kick off another adventure... I wish we could find a way to have adventures in this world without returning to the same 9 heroes, and in this case,
The book could have used a little bit of editing to pare down some of the repetitive text to make sure that readers new and old know about the orders of wizards, about how much honor means to the Solamnics, about how playful and inquisitive kender are. The first few times I was happy, it made me feel at home. Then we had the same information conveyed in almost the exact same way a hundred pages later. Almost like as things got moved around as they moved from rough draft to final edit, things got introduced in different places and the duplication didn't get caught.
But for my frustration at the climactic twist here in book one, and the repetition, I love this book because it is coming home again, in a very real way, for me and so many others.
My first new Dragonlance in 20 years (I haven't gotten around to reading the War of Lost Souls yet.) A return to Krynn, home of much of my teenage years, and my first non-Tolkien foray into adult fantasy. A return by the authors that birthed the world and gave it to me and millions of other teenagers.
And... it's okay. I loved the first part of the book, where we laid a background story for the protagonist around events from the original War of the Lance. The second part was fun. The third part where we are ripping the fabric of the world apart to kick off another adventure... I wish we could find a way to have adventures in this world without returning to the same 9 heroes, and in this case,
Spoiler
ripping Raistlin and Sturm's souls out of the afterlife and throwing them back 300 years, meaning not only are they not a rest, they might alter the course of history that earned them that rest in the first place! Okay, okay, we know they'll get back to the afterlife, the question is how. But STILL! I both want wider and more diverse stories, and I feel like they've earned their rest and we are committing some sacralige by disturbing it. Even if disturb it is EXACTLY what a kender would do.Spoiler
The book could have used a little bit of editing to pare down some of the repetitive text to make sure that readers new and old know about the orders of wizards, about how much honor means to the Solamnics, about how playful and inquisitive kender are. The first few times I was happy, it made me feel at home. Then we had the same information conveyed in almost the exact same way a hundred pages later. Almost like as things got moved around as they moved from rough draft to final edit, things got introduced in different places and the duplication didn't get caught.
But for my frustration at the climactic twist here in book one, and the repetition, I love this book because it is coming home again, in a very real way, for me and so many others.