Dragonlance
“This book was one of my earliest introductions to fantasy and thus to the limits (or lack of limits) of the imagination. I read Dragonlance before I read Tolkien, and was just amazed by the bigness of the world. All I wanted for my tenth birthday was to swing my sword like Caramon, and get a Tika on my side. Talk about the original ride-or-die chick. She is single-handedly responsible for the early onset of puberty amongst untold legions of geeks.” ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates
Somehow I managed to forget about Dragonlance when I wrote my top ten books from my childhood list. Unlike Ta-Nehisi, I did read Tolkien prior to reading the Dragonlance books but I was nevertheless deeply enchanted by these stories. Like many other fantasies, they were inspired by Dungeons & Dragons games, and however juvenile they may read now it’s hard to overstate how wonderful Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman’s characters were – from Raistlin to Tasslehoff to Tanis and on and on down the list. And the authors weren’t afraid to kill off some of your favorite characters either. I shed a few tears, I admit, over the course of this series.
The first trilogy, Chronicles, was marvelous, but I think I enjoyed its sequel even more. It was a wonderful story of magic and time travel, but it was the relationship between the twins – Caramon and Raistlin – which made Legends so fascinating and heartbreaking.
I think that the series inevitably outgrew itself. That was the deal going in – they were going to create a world not limited to its original authors, but farmed out to many authors-for-hire who would write side adventures, flesh out past histories, and essentially milk the franchise for whatever it was worth. But even Weis and Hickman’s books went on too long. I stopped reading them eventually. Perhaps I simply outgrew them myself, moving on to more serious works like George R. R. Martin’s still unfinished Song of Fire and Ice (which will be airing on HBO by the way).
Whatever the case, Dragonlance was a cornerstone of my early epic fantasy reading. It will always have a special place on the shelf.
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I, too, thought the Twins trilogy better than the original Chronicles. I never read any more of the series than that, though. (Well, I think there were a couple of short stories in that universe which Hickman and/or Weis wrote which I read, but that was it.) Good, solid, middle-grade fantasy; I must have read a ton of that stuff when I was a kid.
Yes – very solid. And actually I went to junior-high with Tracy Hickman’s son, though they moved not long after that to Utah…
In response to another comment. See in context »I love fantasy but I’ve never made it all the way through Tolkien; it really just peters out midway through Two Towers. Loved the movies, though.
What I really loved, though, was the Tad Williams series that begins with The Dragonbone Chair. It mostly inhabits the same kind of low-magic world that’s in Song of Fire and Ice, but it’s a lot less political and a lot more about a young man’s adventures and coming of age. It’s like Fire and Ice, only with the Tolkien-ian travelogue/adventure that Fire and Ice lacks.
I think you’d either enjoy it immensely or find it a little young for your tastes. I loved it in high school but I’m not sure I would, now. It really does inhabit a space between Dragonlance and Fire and Ice, I think. Fire and Ice really sets a high bar for toothiness in fantasy. If you can stand something a little more sugary then you should give it a try.
Two Towers gets a bet bogged down, but the third one – Return of the King – is one of the finest pieces of literature out there, and you’re doing yourself a disservice not finishing it!
Have you read any Steven Erickson? That’s some Epic fantasy…
I tried Dragonbone Chair and couldn’t get through it, to be honest. I know some people absolutely love those books, but I have also heard they’re slow for a few hundred pages.
In response to another comment. See in context »