The all Dragonlance all the time thread!

Oh, you don't know the half of it. The Elven names alone should be taken out and shot.

I don't believe you.

I forget about the "Twins" trilogy.

_____________
*loved, as in the preterite.

I'm reading the first chunky book of George R R Martin's Song of Ice & Fire series at the moment (someone at my local library is an enormous geek and stocks the SF&F section well) but it's a bit dull. I think I may finally be over dodgy fantasy.

OTM fer sure.

His sci-fi stuff's shite, though.

Most definitely not OTM. His Otherworld series, though very craptacularly titled, is rock fucking SOLID.

-- nickalicious (nickaliciou...), August 9th, 2004.

I read the first two Otherworld books and found them dreary, meandering and lacking in original ideas. Slow-building, picaresque stories are fine for fantasy, but I like my sci-fi quite punchy.

Otherworld gets much more rewarding the longer you stay with it. I lost the will to live after wading through the first book, then the ball started rolling down the hill as the strands started to come together. Still not as tight as Memory, Sorrow and Thorn though - that trilogy is the cod-Arthurian bomb. And I got my (one-volume hardback, heavy as hell) copy of To Green Angel Tower signed when Mr Williams did a talk at the crappy local library near where I was living at the time. I was 15 and agog.

That I admit I liked.

Nick, for me the problem was -- I sorta mumbled this up above, but to repeat -- that Williams' treatment of the historical analogues throughout didn't get as really involved or interesting as I hoped it would in comparison to Kay's similar efforts. And I read Kay first, which might have also had something to do with it. For me, the interest with Kay is the balance of historical what-if mixed with fantasy then further mixed with that moral ambiguousness I found so striking in his stories. It's very heady stuff.

Nick, that's the Chronicles trilogy, get it STRAIGHT dude!

Those are pretty hazy in my mind, actually, I mostly remember Raistlin befriending the gully dwarf and wanting to eat spicy fried potatoes.

Every time we actually tried to play a Dragonlance module, it would devolve into arguments as to where the best fried potatoes could be found should Otik not be available.

The draconians were great because they were all about GENETIC MUTATION via magic. Also because of that great unsettling scene describing a dragonlet born of a corrupt egg that maintains its shape for a second or two before bursting and turning into draconians.

The story of the Dragonlance which started in the Inn of the Last Home under the vallenwoods ends in this wonderful book. Raistlin (Caramon Majere's frail twin) opens the mystical Portal to the Abyss to challenge Takhisis, Queen of Darkness. At the exact same time, his twin Caramon operates the magical time-traveling device. The fields of magic shift and collide sending Caramon and his kender friend, Tasslehoff Burrfoot, are sent into an unknown time and place while Raistlin enters the Abyss. Meanwhile the planet the full continent of Ansolon on the planet Krynn is undergoing one of the most destructive wars ever recorded by Astinus. Tanis Halfelven and Caramon take over a giant flying catedal and had Tasslehof and a gully dwarf fly the catedal to the Tower of High Sorcery. Once there Caramon and Tanis went past Dalamar's guardians (Dalamar- one of the most powerful sorcerers in all of Krynn) to find him laying on the ground after being stabbed by the Dragon Highlord Kitiara (Kitiara is the friend and foe of many people throughout all of the Legends and Chronicles)...

(um, x-post, yeah)

Caramon, I think.

Basically, Caramon and Tas end up in the future after the Dwarf War catastrophe in the 2nd book and find out that not only has Raistlin won over Takhisis but that he's essentially about to destroy Krynn via sucking all the life out of it and laying everything waste. It's been too long so I'm fuzzy about what happens after that, but the book splits itself between Raistlin actually fighting Takhisis in the Abyss, Kitiara and Lord Soth leading an attack on...cripes, I forget the name of the city, where Raistlin's tower is and where Crysania has been based...and Caramon having to face up to the fact that if he wants to save the rest of Krynn, Raistlin can't be allowed back from the Abyss. Tas's little gnome buddy get iced by Raistlin at some point and that finally wakes him up to the fact that Raistlin isn't much fun anymore. Caramon and Raistlin have a final faceoff via the Dragon Portal in Raistlin's tower, Caramon gets hold of Raistlin's humanity somehow (I forget the details) and the Portal is sealed, essentially damning Raistlin to eternal torment at Takhisis's hands, but the book suggests that his soul is able to retreat into a small quiet place where his brother still looks after him in a very abstract sense.

I'm probably missing some details. Oh yeah, and Kitiara dies and Lord Soth claims her for himself, the dead perv.

Double x-post! I don't care, I'm posting it anyway!

I'm enough of a Weis/Hickman groupie I've got the Darksword and Rose of the Prophet books. And all of the Death Gate cycle -- in hardback!

But after that, my interest declined, and I really can't believe there's much good about the new Dragonlance books they've done.

Although as the person who posted Taz Takes A Tentacle upthread, I am no position to judge the poor choices of others

We're all in this together.

I don’t really understand the background here – fuckery at WOTC aside, why did the problems with one product (magic the gathering) result in the cancellation of another?

as I said, I expect facepalms all around

Annnnnd all is resolved

https://io9.gizmodo.com/that-new-dragonlance-trilogy-from-the-series-classic-au-1846125826

Although as the person who posted Taz Takes A Tentacle upthread, I am no position to judge the poor choices of others

― shout-out to his family (DJP), Monday, October 19, 2020 11:25 AM (three months ago)

dying

A legend that lives on.

give me Otik's spicy potatoes STAT

Rob Bricken's (very great) column on old D&D novels, which has mostly been looking at Forgotten Realms stuff and a few side notes too, has, after dispatching one of the first spinoff novels, gotten around to starting the original trilogy:

https://gizmodo.com/dungeons-dragons-novels-revisiting-dragons-of-autu-1847446582

Unsurprisingly he says it's the best of the books he's read so far, which, yes.

Everything about the Raistlin bullying is OTM

Really is!

i'm sure i've mentioned this before, but just to reiterate, I once read a Margaret Weis series that was, if anything, a *more* fascist take on Star Wars

also the protagonist was named Dion Starfire

Bricken gets around to book two of the original trilogy

https://gizmodo.com/dungeons-dragons-novels-revisiting-dragons-of-wint-1847942044