My favorite series of books as a youth belonged to Dragonlance. The Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting that spawned numerous novels was a world I enjoyed inhabiting. I didn’t fall into Dragonlance until I was in middle school and my very first book in the long-running series was Dragons of Summer Flame by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. If you know anything about Dragonlance then you know that’s a really odd place to start. I ended up there because I needed a novel to read for school and my best friend had just finished reading it so he let me borrow it. A dragon composed of molten lava on the cover while a knight in clad in black armor challenged it certainly looked interesting enough so I jumped in and enjoyed. Sure, I was confused by some aspects of the story and I had to piece things together either on my own or by peppering my buddy with questions.
And I had to do that because Dragons of Summer Flame is basically the seventh novel in the series, though someone just looking at the various titles would think it was the fourth. That’s because the first book, Dragons of Autumn Twilight, continued through to …Spring Dawning which concluded the first story and gave way to the Twins trilogy. And those are just the books written by the chief architects of Dragonlance, Weis and Hickman. Numerous other authors contributed to Dragonlance and I would go on to read some of them, but mostly stuck with the original authors. I would end up reading the main series almost backwards as after Summer Flame I went to Time of the Twins. It would be years before I finally read the original trilogy. I would also read the first fifth age trilogy by Jean Rabe and Weis and Hickman returned with the War of Souls which I read as well as The Dark Disciple and the Forgotten Chronicles. Until now, the last Dragonlance book I read was Dragons of the Hourglass Mage released in 2009.
Like a lot of things, I’ve lost touch with a franchise I once adored. Some of that was due to the dreadful animated movie released based on Dragons of Autumn Twilight. It did not spawn a franchise. I thought the franchise was dead as Wizards of the Coast seemed to favor other settings, namely Forgotten Realms, and I had heard rumblings of legal entanglements where Dragonlance was concerned. I basically found out recently that those issues had been resolved and Weis and Hickman have returned for what I suppose is assumed to be their final Dragonlance trilogy which they have dubbed Dragonlance Destinies. It worked out rather well for me as I had two books to catch up on with the third set to release in August. It’s like a no wait cheat code!
Dragonlance novels are basically intended for those in their teens. I do not go into this first book expecting something more than that. I don’t know if the authors reject that assumption or not, but it is how they read. Dragonlance is anchored by a handful of well-developed characters dropped into a fantasy world that’s fairly idealized and often cliched. It’s not a harsh or realistically portrayed environment, or rather, as realistic as fantasy can be. There’s no mention of chamber pots or flesh rot. The government operates as it should, for the most part, and there are pretty clear lines of good and evil. The main character in this new trilogy is literally named after the word destiny so there’s often a lack of subtlety. The setting appealed to me as a kid because, well, dragons! They’re D&D dragons so they’re magical beasts of various colors that can communicate as well as humans, if not better. There are gods who play a huge role in the machinations of the mortals that dwell on the world of Krynn with most getting directly involved in the plots. In other words, this is definitely not A Song of Ice and Fire, the most recent fantasy setting I immersed myself in.
The Destinies trilogy begins with Dragons of Deceit. It’s an interesting place to start as it’s set during the War of the Lance. Destina Rosethorn is a young woman of noble birth. Her father is a Knight of Solamnia and a minor character from the Dragonlance Chronicles books. He’s mostly known for dying in the battle at the High Clerist Tower which also claimed the life of Sturm Brightblade. We begin just before that and then move past it. Destina is left with just her mother who came from a tribe of humans more aligned with nature than chivalry. Solamnic law would have her father’s estate pass to the next male heir, and Destina being an only child complicates that. There was a will in which her father named her heir, but it was burned in the raid on the city of Palanthas around the time of her father’s death.
As is probably expected, everything collapses. Destina’s cousin is able to secure a court order to her father’s estate meaning she loses Castle Rosethorn, which has been in her family for generations. Her betrothed leaves her since she no longer has the backing of a noble family and even her mother returns to her people. Destina is left all alone, though worth noting she is not homeless as she was allowed to retain the family’s home in Palanthas which her father kept for when he needed to do business in the main city (she had a really hard life up to this point…). Still, she is unable to reconcile this new life as her own, but a story she comes across in one of her father’s books about the Device of Time Journeying gives her an idea.
It’s at this point that Dragonlance veterans known what Destina found. The Device of Time Journeying is a central part of the Legends trilogy. Destina wants to find it so that she can go back in time and save her father so that none of this will ever happen. The problem there is her father died a noble death which is essentially what every Solamnic Knight aspires to. Destina displays a knowledge of The Measure, a list of rules and laws that guide all Solamnic people, but is willing to betray her own self and her own moral code to undo what has been done. That’s because she hatches a plan with a renegade wizard named Unger to give her father a potion of cowardice so that he would flee the battle and thus spare his own life.
The issue that arises from her plan is that Dragonlance has established some strict rules when it comes to time travel. Time is explained as a river and one person alone cannot impact its flow. It is said that only the races of chaos can actually change time. Destina, being a human, is not among one of those races. That is why Unger suggests she carry with her the Graygem, which is a gem that contains the essence of the god, Chaos. It’s a central item in Dragons of Summer Flame so we basically know what’s going to happen with it, but at this point in time Unger has simply stumbled upon on it. He has seen a vision of the future which includes this gem being smashed and the gods vanishing. Seeking to either avert that future or profit from it somehow, Unger has tracked it to a Dwarven kingdom, but he was savagely beaten when trying to obtain the artifact through deceitful means. Unger is the catalyst for this adventure, and it wouldn’t be much of a story if this threat of time travel didn’t bare fruit.
Without getting too in the weeds and spoiling the plot, I will say that Destina’s journey puts her on the path of the famed Heroes of the Lance. She is merely a conduit for the authors to play with these characters once again, and by time travel no less, they can essentially revive those who are dead. It’s an interesting choice since it’s been preestablished that time is hard to change in any meaningful way, but Dragons of Summer Flame presented an ending that was pretty controversial at the time. It was basically a reset for Dragonlance and one that may have been essentially mandated by the forces in charge of the actual game. When Weis and Hickman came back to write The War of Souls trilogy, some viewed it as them “fixing” what had become of Dragonlance in its fifth age. Is this story going to be a way to undo essentially all of that? Probably not, but it’s an interesting thought.
The movements of the plot are a bit plodding, but the book itself is less than 400 pages so it’s not exactly sloth-like. It’s biggest obstacle is Destina herself. She feels inconsistent. She’s a smart and capable woman apparently devoted to her father and The Measure, but lacks any sort of conviction. If we had been spending stories upon stories with her, some of the events of this book would feel like a real betrayal of her character. At times, the book itself even brings this up, but merely acknowledging it doesn’t remedy it. The introduction of the other Heroes of the Lance feels a bit like a crutch too. Weis and Hickman appear disinterested in writing a novel without the kender Tasslehoff Burrfoot and he will worm his way into this one essentially becoming a de-facto main character by its end. If Dragonlance has a main character, it’s basically Tas. There are also moments where the plot moves quickly, and I don’t just mean time skips. Things that need to happen or items that need to be found basically just are. It’s remarkably convenient that a character like Unger exists for Destina to come in contact with.
The conclusion of this part of the story is, by far, the most interesting part of the book. Everything leading up to that point was fine. I was carried by my nostalgic affection for this series and I spent considerable time lounging on a beach in Jamaica with nothing to do except drink and read. I didn’t become invested though until that end. I suppose one of the hallmarks of a good book is it makes you want to immediately crack open the next one, should it exist, Dragons of Deceit did accomplish that. I won’t know how worthwhile it is until I’ve read the trilogy, but for now, it’s a start.
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