Dragons of Autumn Twilight

Rating:
Summary: good fantasy novel
Review: If you look at this book, then you might believe what you have in you're hands is a Lord of The Rings rip off. After all, it contains dwarves, elves, all of the essential things. Well, you would be wrong. Dragons of Autumn Twilight, the first of three begins with lifelong friends meeting in a bar within their home town, but their quiet evening of reminiscing is interrupted by 2 mysterious wanderers called Riverwind and Goldmoon. Goldmoon saves a man's life with a mysterious rod, after the man falls into a fire. As it turns out, goblins are after the rod for reasons unknown, so after saving the man's life, she gathers together Tanis, Sturm, Raistlin, Caramon, Flint, and Tasselhoff to help her escape the town before she is Goldmoon and Riverwind are both killed. Upon escaping the city, the group is in danger, as now they are being followed by the goblins. They venture across the land of Krynn, until they reach a forest in which Raistlin unleashes his powerful magic. By the end of the first book[ the book is divided into 3 parts] much has happened. When book two begins, they open a slave caravan, and release many prisoners. They then go to a castle where a great battle begins, and one of the prisoners they released from the slave caravan by the name of Fizban dies. I don't remember everything that happened in tis book, as I read it about 2 years ago, but I do remember that there is an extremely gory part in which Riverwind is severely injured. This is a wonderful book, and I advise you to read it now.

Rating:
Summary: Want some good fantasy? Read something else.
Review: With the popularity of Dragonlance, I figured that it would be pretty good. Oh how I was wrong. I literally forced myself to finish it. (Anything is better than homework) It could have been a good story, but it was very poorly written. The character viewpoints flickered about constantly, sometimes in the same paragraph, which bothered me to no end. There were some technical errors that made me cringe, like the repetative use of 'thee is' by the centaurs. It is THOU ART dammit! I think that really turned me off from the book. I disliked the vast majority of characters, except for Raistlin, who was actually somewhat intriguing. For the most part, they seemed shallow and underdeveloped. Overall, the entire story felt manufactured instead of written. I reccommend this book for kids in grades 5 through 8. For that age group, it is a perfectly satisfying fantasy adventure. Otherwise, it's not worth the money.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Fantasy!
Review: This book was THE best fantasy I have ever read! It was just so intrieging. I couldn't wait to get my hands on it right from the moment I read 1 page in the book store. Very nice adjectives too.

Rating:
Summary: Andrew's book review
Review: I first read the Dragonlance Chronicles when I was a Dungeons and Dragons-playing teenager. Back then I would have said this was an excellent series, but I was looking at it through the biased eyes of a D&D fan.

Twenty years later, I have read them again for purely literary pleasure, and I have to say, these books stink. As others have pointed out, it isn't really the plot, nor the setting that fails, but the writing and the characterization.

If you are a fan of cliches and overdramatic dialogue, this series is for you. I write this review to agree with what others have said in complaint of this series. I suspect that those who rated this book 4 or 5 stars have never read Tolkien, M.Z. Bradley, or Tad Williams.

If you are a D&D fan and want some light reading or background to a Dragonlance campaign, then read these books.

If you are looking for serious and well-written fantasy, pass over this series.

Rating:
Summary: An average rating of four and a half stars?!
Review: First of all, I have to admit that I'm not an expert on this type of book, "fantasy" I guess it's called. I don't read much of it. But I do love to read, and I like to think I have an open mind, so when it was suggested to me by a friend, I decided to give it a try. Sometimes when I take suggestions, I end up very pleasantly suprised, like when I read the science fiction novel "Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card. NOT THIS TIME. This book was a waste of my time. The only thing that kept me reading it was a desire to not disappoint the person who brought the book to my attention. The plot is okay. The problem is with the writing. Is it cliche and tiring. The same descriptions are used over and over again. Nothing about any of the characters made me identify with them, and they are grossly underdevoloped. When I read a book, I want to love the heroes, and hate the bad guys. I want to cry when the main character hurts. (That's the point of reading something like this isn't it, to lose reality for a while?)This book didn't evoke any feelings in me, except maybe boredom and slight disgust that this is such a popular series. Honestly, I think I can write better than the authors of this book. I can see how it MIGHT be appealing to a young teenager, or someone with the same mindset as a young teenager, OR someone who liked the stories when they were young and is still attached to them for sentimental reasons, but that's about it. If you're an adult looking for a good read, look somewhere else. In fact, read Mary Stewart's Merlin series, starting with "The Crystal Cave". The story she weaves is hauntingly beautiful, and her writing is amazing. I think that the series is even considered "fantasy", if you're stuck in that genre.

Rating:
Summary: .:AWESOME:.
Review: .:simly an awesome book, as the title of my review might suggest:. .:As a fan of fantasy i decided to pick this book up one day, and was facinated by it:. .:it does get slow at some points, and may seem grusome to continue, but the book is very fast paced for most of it and i feel that it was one of the best books that i have ever read:.

-encler-

Rating:
Summary: A good tale weakly told
Review: First, the good points. The book is fast-paced, has lots of action, and tells an interesting story. So what's to complain about? In a word: style. The pace is fast, but with the speed of the action comes a shallowness, a lack of introspective depth that leaves the mature reader dissatisfied in much the same way that The Hardy Boys series might. What's great when you're eight isn't as fine when you're thirty-nine.

Whether conveying consolation or conviviance, the dialog is often platitudinous. The authors could have spent a little more time creating dialog that proved that the characters were capable of original and ponderous thinking.

Certain details are omitted that should have been included to provide set-up for an important later event. For example, early in the book Tanis discovers that the door to Tika's cottage is open, despite his conviction that it had been closed and bolted. Why was Tanis sure of this? The authors don't say. The reader, flipping back through the pages, trying vainly to find out who had closed and bolted the door, or who SAID he was going to close and bolt the door, or who had been SUPPOSED to close and bolt the door, finds nothing to justify Tanis' mistaken belief. The reader thus becomes annoyed for having wasted his time.

Emotions oscillate from extreme to extreme, from brotherly love to hatred and back again, with no more provocation than a few careless words. The main characters often have strong feelings, but they are usually not based on anything that might be reasonably expected to evoke them. When changes of mood do have a plausible basis for evocation, such as when the heroes entered the ruins of Goldmoon's tribe, their effect on the characters has a cardboard quality. You are told that the characters feel very badly indeed about the desolation around them, but somehow the reader is not fully convinced. That might be because Tanis and Riverwind have the emotional complexity of Frank and Joe Hardy; i.e., none to speak of.

The "serious" combat scenes are usually implausible and sometimes just plain goofy. At best, the reader gains the impression that time moves rapidly here, in this paragraph, but much more slowly there, in that paragraph. At one point, the draconians are skillful and efficient fighters who easily capture the heroes. A few pages later, these "intelligent" fiends are deceived by a simple trick and set to running hither and yon, screaming in terror, confused and disorganized, and remaining so for long enough that Sturm and Flint could break apart a fake dragon, carry off its wooden head, extract Tas, and hold a lengthy conversation about what they should do next. This is slapstick, not serious fantasy.

(Correction: The lengthy conversation in that particular episode of combat occurred during Tas' rescue from the burning wicker dragon, and not afterward. I'd misremembered. However, in this story there are times when it seems that enemies might show up at one of the heroes' planning discussions, expecting to fight, but being told by Caramon, "Go back to freaking out. We aren't done talking yet." And the villain does indeed turn around and run away, and apparently none of the other heroes even noticed he was there.)

Another conspicuous flaw is the too-rapid shifting of viewpoints, from Tanis, to Flint, to Sturm, back to Tanis, to Raistlin, to Goldmoon, back to Tanis again, to Tasselhof, to Caramon, again to Tanis... It is possible to have more than one viewpoint character in a book, but the shifts should come less rapidly. The viewpoint should stay with one character long enough for the reader to fix in his mind how that one character regards each of the others. Weis & Hickman bounce the viewpoint around as if it were a basketball, with three or four shifts occurring on a single page.

Despite these flaws, the story is a good one. The stylistic awkwardness may be compared with a chair made from good, but unfinished, wood. Had it been sanded and polished, the chair could have been a work of art; instead it's a merely rugged chair that puts splinters into unwary butts. In the same way, Dragons of Autumn Twilight could have been a masterpiece, but it was left in a rough state of storytelling with annoying splinters.

Rating:
Summary: The Start of the World of Krynn
Review: It was this book that started the Dragonlance and led to the 25 years of excellent fanasty writing. Weis and Hickman are such a great and talent team. When I first read this book over 15 years ago, I was blown away. The book is actually two parts, the first part being the finding of the greatest gift and the second part being finding the leader for the greatest gift. I jsut love the relationships that were created in this first and come to life in the next parts. I cannot say how great this book is; it is an easy read but written so well that it leaves the reader with a powerful message about good vs. evil, love and the meaning of sacrifice. I would recommand this novel to any reader but if you are a fanasty nut, this is a must read right up there with seeing the Star Wars Trilogy or reading the Lord of the Rings.

Rating:
Summary: Great Start to the series
Review: Dragons of Autumn Twilight starts the Dragonlance series and, while it is not perfect, it is a fun easy read for anyone interested in fictionalized accounts from the D&D world.

As a semi-retired D&D player it was a joy to read a saga based on the D&D rules and world. While it might seem odd for veterans to think of Fireball as a high level, difficult spell, the 'real world' use of D&D rules added to the enjoyment of a fine fantasy story. The authors make D&D a believable place.

As the editorial review pointed out, there are a few cliches, and here and there the book seems a little weak (some important characters are thrown in late, without enough differentiation to make them easy to keep strait), these faults are easy to overlook since the story is quite good and characters are memorable and interesting.

Parents can rest assured that while there is violence (there is a war on, you know), there are suggestive scenes, and a brutal rape is mentioned (but not described), the book would barely rate PG-13 if it were a film.

It's no wonder this book has spawned something like 100 others - Dragons of Autumn Twilight leaves you wanting to read more of the story of these characters, and this place.

Rating:
Summary: The gateway fantasy series.
Review: I first read this book when I was in eigth grade. Then, it was definately what I would call a "gateway" fantasy book, fueling my need for magic and arcane worlds and pulling me into a genre that later became my core reading material. Now, 14 years later I decided to revisit the series and what better way than to start at the beginning.

The plot reads like standard fantasy. For 300 years the people of Krynn have turned away from the old gods, deciding to worship something new after the fate altering Cataclysm that nearly destroyed the world. But the old gods are still forces to be considered. The sudden dissappearance of two constellations representing the Queen of Darkness and the Valiant Warrior are the first of many new changes for Krynn. As the story progresses the prescence of a new army threatens to overtake Krynn, one manned by reptilian warriors called Draconians and allied with fire breathing dragons. Into the mix enters a servant of the Dark Queen, the dragon Highlord Verminaard with a lust for power. Against all odds a small band of heroes assemble to try and take on the threat of Verminaard, and with the aid of one or two ancient relics might just get the job done, if they don't end up killing each other first.

14 years has not lessened my enthusiasm for this series, but I will admit that I was more opened to the flaws in the first installation than I was at 12 years of age. Some of the dialogue in the book is corny and flat, and the adventure the heroes set out upon can be predictable and cliche. Still, in light of that I still enjoyed re-reading this entertaining tale and would recommend it to anyone wanting to break into fantasy as a good starting point. There is enough action, romance, comedy, and tragedy to satisfy a reader of all tastes.