The Dragons (Dragonlance Lost Histories, Vol. 6)
The Dragons (Dragonlance Lost Histories, Vol. 6)
War Among the Dragons . . .
“When dragons make war, Krynn can only tremble in the shaodw of angry wings.”
– Astinus Lorekeeper
Aurican and Darlantan, mighty serpents of gold and silver, have been nurtured in a world of wisdom, meditation, and sublime faith. On the other side of Ansalon, Crematia, a dragon of red, inherits the Dark Queen’s legacy of betrayal, violence, conquest, and plunder.
The advent of a worldwide war sweeps these powerful beings and many more into desperate strife. Battles rage over Krynn with a fury that threatens to annilhilate nations and whole races — even dragonkind. As campaigns ebb and flow, generations of lesser mortals come and go, and the great serpents are left to determine the fate of the world. Their triumphs may create a destiny of all-encompassing light or cast the world beneath the shadoe of ultimate darkness.
The Dragons
The Lost Histories Series probes the historical roots and epic struggles of little-known inhabitants of Krynn.
User Ratings and Reviews
2 Stars Niles bites of more than he can chew.
This novel takes on the incredibly difficult task of covering the history of Krynn from the perspective of both the chromatic and metallic dragons in a three hundred page novel. I am sure like other Dragonlance fans, the unique insight of the dragons that lived and fought through the First and Second Dragon Wars and the War of the Lance was a welcome supplement. The author however, could not have given the topic justice unless he constructed a thousand page tome for the immense time span. As it was, I felt as if I was reading bulletpoints. The author allowed me to develop contempt for the villans but the climaxes came too quickly. The sudden death of major characters left me dry and wanting. The romance you are supposed you build with a character and the crooked grin one gets when the villian finally meets their end or tinge of heartache when a hero tragically dies is missing from this novel. Sadly, the author could only work with what he was provided and was forced to move on and tell us of the continuing saga of the fallen victim’s progeny. Douglas Niles is a talent author, but I think any writter would have struggled to fit 10,000 years of history and three wars into a three hundred page book. With that said I would only recommend this book to those who are fans and quite familliar with the Dragonlance world and who has aleast read the Chronicles Trilogy and the Legend of Huma.
5 Stars Simply Amazing!!!
BEFORE YOU READ ANY FURTHER…IF YOU HAVE NOT READ “THE LEGEND OF HUMA” AND “THE KAGONESTI” DO NOT READ THIS BOOK!! YOU WILL MISS ALLOT OF STUFF IF YOU DO NOT READ THOSE OTHER TWO BOOKS FIRST!!
Ok, that being said, let me get to the “meat and potatoes” of this amazing book.
It begins several thousand years before the first “Dragon War”, the second “Dragon War” and the “War of the Lance”…not to mention before the “Cataclysm” also.
This is the story of the dragons of “Paladine”, and of course those of “Tahakisis”. Spanning multiple generations of dragons and thousands of years it follows the life, death, and epic struggles of the dragons.
You can really see how their individual victories, and losses greatly affected the lesser people’s of “Krynn”. A victory of a single Silver dragon could shape millenia of peace on the land, while a dark victory meant millenia of death and terror. You can really see how close the dark queen really came to winning the dragon wars, and the war of the lance.
It also goes into detail how the gods cast their lots into the battles so that evil would be defeated, and how they were punished for bringing back the powerful spell magic back to the land.
Now, I had one beef with this book. in “The Legend of Huma”, “Huma” fell in love with a female silver, named “GWENNITH”….and of course this was the dragon who loved him, and who he rode in the final battle of the “War of the lance”. Now here is the problem: in “Dragons” she is mentioned…and they call her “Heart”. How the writer could miss this seemingly small, BUT VERY NOTICEABLE DETAIL, is simply beyond me.
Problem 2: In this book they mentioned “Humas Compaings”, and conquests..once again THE WRITER OVERLOOKS ANOTHER SMALL, BUT VERY VERY NOTICEABLE DETAIL…Huma was never on any conquest or campaign…from the time he got to the front lines, he was immediately swept into one mishappen adventure to the next, and was only in contact with the rest of the nighthood only a handful of times till his death in the end of “Legend”…HOW COULD HE THEN BE ON ANY CONQUEST OR CAMPAIGN LEADING TROOPS TO VICTORY OR GLORY WHEN HE WAS NEVER AROUND THEM???
This brings me to a point repeated over and over…AUTHORS NEED TO READ EACH OTHERS WORK SO THAT THEY DON’T MAKE THESE KIND OF MISTAKES.
If you can see past thses flaws, then don’t miss this book. It is amazing!! A true epic, a crown jewel in the DL series..
But thats my opinion, I could be wrong… -Jon
4 Stars For the forces of good and evil…
This book transports me to another level of magnificence in a fantasy world. That of Dragons. The story works beautifully in weaving the lifespan of dragons with the already established histories of Krynn from a new perspective. The Dragons don’t always act like you’d expect but this story soars with delight. Clearly, I recommend it.
1 Stars Managed to Make Dragons Boring
This is a disappointing book of epic proportions.
This book spans, literally, thousands upon thousands of years of Krynn history. What dozens of books covered before, this book tries to cram in a couple hundred pages. A what cost? The space to add critical aspects of writing such as pacing, detail, characterization, etc.
The dragons are all identical. Not a single dragon has its own personality. We are told by the narrator that some are selfish, or rash, or compassionate, but we never see this in the dragon’s actions. Many of the dragons, in fact, do the opposite. Most of them show themselves to be foolish, stupid, and hopelessly naive, even after they have been world-wise and battle-hardened by centuries of life on Krynn. As a nitpick, all the dragons go by their human use name, despite never knowing humans.
The evil dragons are completely over the top. If you enjoy layered, complicated villains with unique personalities, motivations, and a personal history, you will not find it here. The evil dragons are just evil, with no reason for it, and it is only violent evil: mutilating sheep and burning down fields as opposed to the sneaky, plotting evil we are reminded they are both capable and fond of in other books. For a decent example of this, check out the Dragonlance novel The Black Wing (Dragonlance: Villains, Book 2), which gives the back story of the dragon Khisanth (Note that the dragon has a dragon name in her own mind, not a human use name.) The dichotomy between the good and evil dragons is strained, pounding you on the head just in case you didn’t get that the dragons worshiping the Queen of Darkness are the bad guys.
The battles fall flat. All the action in the book is identical: the dragons square off mid-air, blast a few spells at each other, claw for a while, and then the good dragons flee in convenient mated pairs to lick their wounds and repopulate the species. The fights lack details, drama, suspense. And at the end, even though the Chief Bad Dragon is killed, there is always his/her son to carry on their evil ways. The war in The Dragons doesn’t contain the epic battles, the tides of battle, the rise and fall of morale and tension that the other Dragonlance novels do; it remains in stasis.
Overall, this book suffers from every malady known to literature. Poor characterization, including ‘perfect’ characters; pacing issues; lack of any kind of detail; thin plot; one-dimensional villains and heroes; gratuitous info-dumping; and unmoving action. Somehow a Dragonlance novel made dragons the most boring thing on Krynn. Vastly unsatisfying.
And I so wanted to enjoy this book.
5 Stars thousands of years of history in just over 300 pages
The Dragons is a great read, and a necessary one for fans of the Dragonlance world. Through these larger than life central characters huge amounts of the history of the Dragonlance world are lain bare. The stories are well written and fascinating but the historical background information dealing with the the Dragonlance world back to the very beginning of its history are what really makes this book.
Filed under: Dragonlance Reviews
