tilly_wizard's reviews
174 reviews

I was prompted to reread this after all this time thanks to the release of Vault of the Undying - I don’t recall any stories which were set in the Godsfell Woods of Lemish, but this is set in the Darkwoods, which is the closest thing. 

I absolutely adore these early, apocryphal Dragonlance novels, and this is one of the best. Michael Williams continues to build his own mythology of the Solamnic Knights and the Brightblade lineage, strongly inspired by Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle, intercut with a subplot about an elf prince who has been transformed into a giant spider by an evil mage. The twist of this particular story -

that the elf prince began as a spider, transformed into a prince as part of the mage’s scheme to win an elf maid’s hand in marriage, since he will never win her love

- I suspect is also an adaptation of a traditional folktale which I can’t quite recall. The legendary Germanic craftsman Wayland Smith also makes his way into Krynn, along with various bits and pieces of Celtic lore, such as the druidic tree alphabet. 

The main theme is along the same lines as the original tale of Gawain’s encounter with the Green Knight - the conflict between ideal codes of chivalry and human limitations (Gawain’s desire to preserve his life causes him to commit his single moral failing) - which is conveyed through the refrain that to the last, there is always choice. The framing story (the tale is being narrated by Sturm to Caramon and Raistlin), as well as one of Sturm’s mystic visions, emphasises the bond between Sturm and Caramon/Raistlin, and the heroic destinies of Sturm and Raistlin - each becoming the ultimate exemplar of the Solamnic Orders and the Orders of High Sorcery, respectively, after making the choice of self-sacrifice.  The foregone tragedies of Sturm and Raistlin are contrasted with the most touching and hopeful scene in the novel -

when the enchanted spider-turned-elf Cyren is laid to rest, the sign of Mishakal appears in the sky, suggesting that due to his experience of true love, his soul has been blessed and allowed passage into celestial paradise.

Sturm and Raistlin are far less antagonistic here than W&H generally depict them, and I suspect that as Williams had been part of the Dragonlance project since the beginning, when the development of story and characters was more collaborative, the characterisations here were modeled on that original conception, where Raistlin was still generally regarded as a friend by all (albeit difficult to get along with), and his genuine love for his brother, support of his friends and defense of the downtrodden were considered equally important aspects of his character, alongside his ambitions. 

Williams’ vision of the land of Lemish is wild and dark and primeval - he invents an encounter with a treant which is totally different to any other depiction of such in Dragonlance before or after - and mysteries of other parts of Ansalon are raised but ultimately left unresolved (Angriff Brightblade experienced some kind of divine enlightenment in Estwilde; the evil wizard Calotte remains undefeated deep in the forests of Silvanost) supplying DMs with adventure hooks which can be used to be ensnare even those campaigners who have read the novel and are already privy to the secrets of Vertumnus. 

Williams also provides a complex and fascinating bardic magic system where the powers of the gods can be invoked by sacred musical modes, which is a worthy addition to any Krynnish campaign, especially since the sourcebooks have rarely treated the bard as a viable class option in Krynn. 

Curiously, this book goes out of its way to take a side on D&D’s perennial “baby orc goblin dilemma”, with a gruesome massacre of a goblin village being used as one of several incidents which demonstrates the Solamnic Orders’ fall from grace.

As always with these early books, there are a few digressions from what is generally accepted as being “canon” - aside from the main issue of the whole novel later being overwritten by The Soulforge, the Earth calendar is used rather than the Solamnic calendar, and there is also a brief mention of a female draconian.

The content warning at the start of this book is so fucking perfomative lmao. My "international" edition is printed in my country, but all the helpline numbers are still the American ones. I know it would take actual effort for the publisher to change the numbers for different countries, but they should have just deleted them instead of giving us all another reminder that the USA is the only country that matters, in this book which has anti-colonialist themes. 

I didn’t reduce the score for this, because it almost certainly isn’t the author’s fault, but it didn’t exactly put me in a good mood to start reading. 

According to the author's note, the book (presumably the first draft) was written in four weeks, which did not surprise me. 

This book started out promising - a village is attacked by monsters and 

Isolde is unwillingly transformed into a werewolf aufhocker.

 

Unfortunately, it struggles to maintain this momentum, and most of the first half consists of Adrian saying and doing things that offend Isolde, Isolde being miserable about it and making Adrian miserable until he apologises. Meanwhile, the secondary cast navigates assorted romantic mishaps, none of which are very engaging because these characters didn't have enough page time or pathos in the previous book to endear them to the reader. In the second half, SSC keeps adding more layers of gratuitous melodrama

(Ana was raped! Yesenia was raped! Yesenia was pregnant when she died!)

and every time I cared less because it felt like she was trying too hard.

 The universal complaint about this book which I agree with is that there is far too much word count eaten up by sex scenes. The first book felt like it had just the right number, but this book has at least twice as many, and most of them contribute nothing (except to assure us that Isolde is still hot for Adrian despite all these fights they keep having). The writing in these scenes feels mechanical and repetitive, which makes their great love feel very shallow. I'm too gay to understand these books that go on and on about how Men are the root of all evil, and yet still devote the majority of the pagecount to the heroine’s true love/lust for a man.

In the author’s note, SSC also admits to not really "knowing" any of the underdeveloped secondary cast from the first book, and so during the writing of this book she decided that they all had gruesomely tragic backstories (of course) and also

several of them are traitors.

She says “I think the hard part is trying to decide if you are really against anyone because they all have their motives - but that’s the interesting part of being morally grey, and in a lot of ways, I hope you struggle to decide.”

Which, I did not. She expects me to believe that these people have been ride-or-die besties with Adrian for 200 years while Yesenia/Isolde was dead,

but Isolde is the only one who loves him enough to want to save him from being mind controlled by the evil goddess?

Come the fuck on. 

Presumably the theme of the book is supposed to be “transformation”:

-  Adrian is transforming into a really monstrous vampire due to being mind-controlled by Dis;

- Other characters undergo various physical transformations (vampires shapeshifting into animals; amputation; change of hair colour) and/or are revealed as traitors (transformed from allies to enemies);

- The graphic design has a butterfly motif (which is not depicted in the text at all, for some reason)

This is a substantial list, and the presence of any theme at all is something of an improvement, because there was no particular theme in the first book which stood out to me (apart from the general heroine’s journey/spiritual awakening/self-knowledge mumblings which are the bread-and-butter of YA/NA fantasy/romance), but I don’t feel that these ideas were ever used to communicate anything applicable or meaningful beyond the surface level. 

The one aspect of this book which I do think is really emotionally poignant is Isolde’s connection with her mother’s homeland, but there isn’t enough of it. The situation in Nalini has been firmly in the background for these two books, and I hope that’s going to be the main setting for the third one. I also want to hear more about Aroth (Yesenia’s homeland), because this ancient matriarchal utopia of witches which was conquered by men sounds very Robert Graves, and it’s always funny to me how ubiquitous his wildly unhistorical ideas are in modern fantasy books with delusions of making serious points about feminism and colonisation. 

 The author is basically marketing this on TikTok as Zutara fanfic, and...not really? The king has fire powers and the queen has water powers (and darkness powers, and dragon riding powers lmao), but that's about where the similarities end. I'm not exactly sure what the author thinks are the reasons for the long-enduring appeal of Zutara, but I am pretty sure she doesn't have the same ideas about it as I do. 

ACOTAR is the other primary inspiration, and considering how much I despise that series, I don’t have much commentary to offer. ACOTAR itself was so palely derivative of 80s fantasy classics that, by the time that these storylines and characters inspired by ACOTAR have been diluted down into this new generation of books (generally in abridged form, as most authors are unwilling or unable to replicate Maas’ overinflated wordcounts), they leave a very faint impression - like a carbon copy of a carbon copy. 

The aspect of this book that brought this to mind for me was the fact that Kell (our Zuko/Rhysand analogue) has in his circle of friends and advisors a woman who is, apparently, an ancient goddess. The full extent of her powers remains a mystery, and her primary function in this book is to occasionally dispense exposition and hints about the mysteries of past events (particularly with regard to Kell’s missing relatives). This character unfortunately has even less presence than Amren in ACOTAR, who is, in turn, a pathetic imitation of Sethra Lavode from Steven Brust’s Dragaera. 

Regardless of its weaknesses when compared to the source material, romance between royals from enemy kingdoms with opposing elemental powers is an eternal winner of a storyline.  

It's the kind of silliness that you can only get from self-published books (and the absolute trashiest fantasy romance imprints). There's dragons and faeries and witches. Iconic lines and character bits from other stories are shamelessly recycled. Characters' emotions and beliefs pivot on a dime. The cast is squarely divided into 'friends' and 'villains'; all the 'friends' are good and supportive of the main characters, and all the villains are cartoonishly evil. 

This is pretty unremarkable, inoffensive self-indulgent nonsense, but I still liked it, and it will never stop being hilarious to me that it's the BadWrong shippers who are always writing novels. 

Docked an entire star for awful grammar, creepy AI art., and the terrible formatting of the map in the paperback.  

 Yes, yessss, this was just the kind of self-indulgent nonsense I like. The only way it could have been better is if it was gay.

I have seen a decent amount of criticism leveling the accusation that this book is all smut with no plot, but I don't think that's accurate. The ratio of smutty events vs non-smutty events is fairly low, but I suspect it feels higher to a lot of people because the plot is so predictable that you can skim through it at breakneck speed.

The whole plot about the witch hunts of hundreds of years ago,

Isolde being the reincarnation of one of the witches who was Adrian's true love

, etc etc is telegraphed so hard that there is no mystery whatsoever even the first time around, and therefore I somewhat strangely found this horror-fantasy book about vampires and witch hunts to be a rather comforting reading experience. 

Some scattered thoughts from a shameless Age of Mortals enjoyer:

W&H in Dragons of a Vanished Moon:

W&H in Dragons of Fate: Kaz who?

I wonder what Richard Knaak thinks about this book, lol

Weis & Hickman are rather infamously poor team players, and since this book basically disregards every trace of Dragonlance history which wasn't written by one or both of them (of all the books, it's the most closely tied to Brothers In Arms), and the "References" bibliography at the end is significantly reduced from that included in the previous book, and lists exclusively novels and sourcebooks written by Weis and/or Hickman (with the sole exception of Karen Wynn Fonstad's superb Atlas, which only covers Chronicles and Legends), I assume this is an attempt to establish "Classic Dragonlance" as a new canon timeline that "Holy Six" purists can accept without needing to be constantly vigilant against the possibility that someone might introduce an actually interesting idea to the setting.

In essence, this book is to The Legend of Huma what The Soulforge was to Preludes and Meetings, with the difference being that The Soulforge remains within, say, the top 10 of all Dragonlance novels in terms of prose, narrative voice and literary technique (regardless of whatever one's feelings about its treatment of the previous shared-world canon may be), whereas Dragons of Fate is...very far below that top 10 threshold.

Strangely enough, the 1st edition hardback Dragonlance Adventures is listed here, but not the 3rd edition Sovereign Press/Margaret Weis Productions sourcebooks, which this book occasionally nods towards. 

The idea of an AU with Raistlin in White Robes has been kicked around since Legends of the Twins (2005). C'mon Margaret, give the people what they want.

___

The new characters from Dragons of Deceit are barely in this book. Despite being front and centre on the (hideous) cover art, Destina's sole purpose is to be a vehicle to move around the Graygem, and Kairn is even less than that. This is not necessarily a bad thing, since Destina was...not well received as the new protagonist, however it does make the first book seem largely pointless in retrospect. 

Sturm is also not much of a presence, which feels like a missed opportunity since (for obvious reasons) he has had far less page time than Raistlin and Tas over the previous run of the series. Rotating POV chapters between the three of them would have been appreciated. The main theme is a subversion of the adage "never meet your heroes", where Raistlin and Sturm's personal heroes/historical foils do in fact live up to and surpass their expectations, which suits the intended "traditional" romantic high fantasy tone of Dragonlance very well. With that being the case, it would have been more effective to hear Sturm reflect on Huma from in his own POV throughout the book, rather than mostly sidelining Sturm and Huma in favour of Raistlin and Magius, and then having Raistlin put the question to Sturm at the end, and having Sturm agree based on only a couple of interactions. 

Speaking of which, Raistlin is so soft in this book, lmao. I'm not complaining, exactly, since this is the far better alternative than for him to be completely villainised and written as the "sociopath" that Hickman has always asserted he is (even Weis isn't particularly sympathetic towards him most of the time, despite what the fans like to delude themselves into believing), but since this book is (in terms of the psychological state of the characters) taking place after Legends but long before Tales I/Dragons of Summer Flame, it is somewhat jarring to have Raistlin give his heartfelt confessions/almost-apologies in this book, long before his return in the Chaos War (at which time he knows in his heart of hearts that he regrets everything, but isn't ready to admit it out loud yet - that's what the end of DoaVM is for).

The only reason this convoluted character development/regression is slightly excusable is because of the time-travel shenanigans ensuring that he won't remember this in the future (except, the book suggests that the characters will, in fact, subconsciously remember these events and emotions in the future).

Despite the fact that a big chunk of the plot is based on Brothers in Arms, the book is strangely reticent about referring to other, more recent novels, particularly Dragons of the Hourglass Mage. 

Those with better memories than Weis & Hickman will recall that Raistlin already had this in DotHM, but in the end he lets old man Fisto possess him again anyway.

Basically, the character development in this book would have been a lot more impactful if Raistlin had been allowed to do some real on-page reflection about this, but it’s never mentioned.


___

 

At this point, I have as much (possibly more) emotional investment in the constant slapfighting between Dragonlance authors, editors, game designers and WotC executives as I do in the actual narrative. 

Thanks to the lawsuit, we know the broad strokes of the editorial drama over the first book (the love potion plot, etc), and it’s too bad that we’ll probably never know what kind of radical revisions this one went through, but I have a few guesses.

The end of Dragons of Deceit introduced a new entity called the “Keeper of Souls”, who is responsible for keeping track of all the souls that depart to the afterlife. 

After the kerfuffle with the DoaVM appendix (and the long-running feuds over whether the Dragonlance cosmology is part of the standard D&D Great Wheel, and whether Paladine and Takhisis are/are not Bahamut and Tiamat), I was disappointed but not surprised when Hickman decided to change the workings of the afterlife again. Conversely, I was surprised but not disappointed when the Keeper of Souls is not mentioned at all in this book, and hopefully we’ll never have to hear about it again. 

If I could erase only one line from Dragons of Deceit, it would be that mention of the Hand of Vecna. Thankfully, 5E Multiverse Bullshit is non-existent in this book, although the number of inconsequential mentions of named artifacts still feels intrusive. Maybe there’s a “minimum number of game-able items/locations/NPCs” clause in the license. In particular, Dalamar and Justarius’ little sidequest to find the one NPC who can rebuild the Device of Time Journeying (which is accomplished with ridiculous ease) feels like it could have been salvaged from a discarded draft adventure module. 

---

Predictions for Book 3:

- We get a brief tour of Ansalon under the rule of Takhisis, and meet AU versions of all the characters, but in the end the One True Timeline must be restored

- Kang's Regiment will make an appearance

- Something about Soth, because this decades-long pissing contest over the least interesting character in the main storyline will never end

- Crysania will continue to be never mentioned again, except in the most oblique ways (a mixed blessing, honestly)

 The entire way through, I was thinking this book was worth a very unremarkable 3 stars, but the ending saved it.

You’d never know that the setting was inspired by the court of Louis XIV, without having been told by the author.

The setting is mildly interesting, and is reminiscent of those late-2000s-early 2010s books I always remember as “dude fantasy” (Malazan, the Kingkiller Chronicles, Locke Lamora…you know the type). More than anything, it reminds me of Thedas, with its Evil Fantasy Catholic Church, and a seemingly endless network of Blight Mortem-ridden tunnels running deep under the earth, and imprisoning the not-quite-dead remnants of ancient gods (also evil, of course).

What it isn’t very reminiscent of, however, is 17th century Versailles (read Irina Kermong’s review on Goodreads for some great details about that).

The story also has all the typical hallmarks of YA (plot structure, character archetypes, etc), but the characters are slightly older and there’s mentions of Drugs and Sex, so you know it’s for Mature Adults who read Adult Fantasy (as opposed to those degenerate adult children who read Young Adult Fantasy).

I want to have a knife fight to the death a pleasant exchange of views with whoever in the publishing industry decided recently that it’s time for love triangles to make a comeback.

This one is a particularly egregious case, because Hannah Whitten is a Known Reylo, and presumably intends to cater to other Reylos (the majority of whom harbour a strong disdain for love triangles except when it's Breylo, I guess); in this book, we have Lore, the Chosen One commoner who turns out to be the avatar of the goddess of darkness and death, and Bastian, the Chosen One prince who is the avatar of the god of light and life…and Gabe, who must be the squeakiest third wheel since Mal Oretsev himself. 

A lot of people seem to be mad about the instant connection between the three main characters, based on a feeling that they know each other, which turns out to relate to some kind of reincarnation prophecy. I actually like love at first sight/reincarnation romances, etc, so I was down with it, 

however

I cannot believe she had them Say The Lines, and yet somehow still expects me to regard Gabe as any kind of legitimate love interest.

It’s interesting that Gabe is developed a lot earlier and in more detail than Bastian (who is pretty but disappointingly bland until the last few chapters, much more of a Nikolai than a Darkling), but I and plenty of other reviewers remain pretty lukewarm towards Gabe, and even unconvinced that he needed to be in the story at all.