Rating: 
Summary: A Different Time
Review: Dragons of a Fallen Sun, is keeping the DragonLance name strong. This novel is different in a good way. This is a changing time in the Dragonlance series. Instead of having a light at the being of a tunnel, walking into the darkness. You are in a dark hole, working your way out of the darkness.The characters in this novel are not the same ones for Legends and Chronicles. These characters have different problem then in previous books. The characters are being developed in a harsher environment then the other books. There is no goodness in this new world. Characters in this novel are trying to bring back the goodness into the world. I do think that this is a darker novel then the previous ones. But it is a good change; it makes for different heroes, friends and villains. I think that everybody well enjoy the new struggle for good in this book.
Rating:
Summary: Finally, Dragonlance has returned
Review: After reading Rabe's elementary attempt to put Dragonlance into thte fifth age, it now appears that the publishers of the once vaunted Dragonlance Sagas have turned, like a town on the old west, to their original gunslingers to save their dying franchise.And despite being several years removed from their beloved land, Weiss and Hickman appear to have not lost their flair for the dramatic, nor their touch od the strange.Dragons of a Fallen Sun is the best Dragonlance novel since Summerflame, revitilizing a dying world. While the tone is significantly darker than in many of the other novels, the authors have maintained their propensity for character devolpment, plot twists, and quirky sense of humour.However the unfurtunate downside is that the novel reads like the very first novel did back in 1985, good in points, but still as if the authors are trying to test the waters. Overall this book maybe exactly what was needed to bring Dragonlance back from the grave
Rating: 
Summary: agreed with Ubermensche
Review: I don't want to write an entire review because I'd just restate what Ubermensche said on March 22nd. I'd just like to emphasize that the end of this book is extremely unfullfilling. I finished the book and kind of put it down and thought: "now what?". So my advice is to wait until the next one comes out before you read this one, or I guaruntee you'll be left hanging, and not really in a good way.
Rating:
Summary: I probably shouldn't like it, but...
Review: ...what the hell. By all rights, Dragonlance should have ended after the Legends. Dragons of Summer Flame was in many ways a ludicrous novel, and I can't claim that this is exactly a masterpiece either, but it's...better. Hell, I couldn't stop reading. I couldn't help it; the damn thing made me feel like a kid again, and I don't think I've ever been cliffhanged quite so effectively as I was here. As far as the writing style goes, it's really not bad. A few embarrassing transitions here and there, but ultimately it at least feels as if they care about it to some extent, in marked contrast to something like Legacy of the Darksword, or the tragically hapless and abortive Starshield project, which read as if W&H paid some random stranger off the street to bang it together. At the beginning, there is...poetry. If you want to call it that. Now, I'm certainly not enough to argue that Michael Williams's poems dispersed throughout the Chronicles and Legends were in any objective sense Keats-level masterworks, but they weren't badly written for all that, and they hold rather a special place in my heart. But this--jeez. One wonders why they bothered, if they couldn't even induce Williams to give them something to use. Bah. Oh well; enough of this. As much as I question this novel's integrity, I still enjoyed it quite shamelessly, and the wait for Dragons of a Lost Star (I thought the second and third books should have been Phantom Moon and Fading Star myself--you get symmetry with the 's' sound and number of syllables, dontcha know, but...) is gonna be a long hard cold five months ...and so into the shadow, and not your shadow but the eager grayness expecting light, I ride the storm away. *shiver*
Rating:
Summary: The pendulum has started to move again
Review: As a die hard Dragonlance fan, this one was just as hard to set down as the Raistlin chronicles.(I read the whole thing in just under a week.) And once again there is a new magic in the world of Krynn. I only wish the story had not ended so quickly for me.
Rating:
Summary: I have few problems with this book everything works
Review: Despite how other authers have screwed up the world of Krynn weis and hickman are back on the scene to fix it all. Palin is finally interesting again, Rabe destroyed him not the evil mages in this book. Some of the new charactors take some getting used to but by the end of the next book they will be firmly in the hearts of all dragonlance fans. This is an excellent book there are no two ways about it I can't wait for the next one.
Rating: 
Summary: What Happened to the Soul in Dragonlance?
Review: Having read most (if not all) of the Weis & Hickman collaborations (including much of their Bantam/Spectra work), I honestly have to wonder whether the two were attempting to break new ground with Dragons of a Fallen Sun (DOFS) or were merely fulfilling a contractual obligation. This is disappointing considering that they haven't truly recovered their rhythm since the spectacular Dragonlance Legends trilogy, as I was hoping they would with DOFS. Instead, Weis & Hickman have fallen into their (recent) pattern of introducing series rich in ideas but short on execution. In this sense, they are reminiscent of Raymond E. Feist and his post-Darkness at Sethanon work. Old readers of the Dragonlance series, I'm certain, will agree with me that the "voice" of the authors has changed dramatically. Where Weis & Hickman used to flesh out characters, taking pains to explore each one's particular psychoses, their new characters are paper thin and un-original: you've "read" them before and somewhere else, at that. Meanwhile, the narrative no longer has the epic feel that characterized the first two trilogies. Instead, the new narrative is perfunctory and utilitarian, making DOFS feel more like a "product" than a novel: DOFS is there to satisfy the demand for a Weis & Hickman DL novel, nothing more. Readers will observe that Weis & Hickman took great pains to re/introduce the backstory of the series to old and new readers by inserting brief historical references in the narrative. They fall flat in this attempt: it feels contrived and the reader is left to wonder whether the authors even REMEMBER the world they created. The writing was so uninspired and static that I had to keep on checking the novel's jacket to make certain that I wasn't reading a portion of the Death Gate Cycle, or an AD&D 3rd Edition gaming guide. Their attempt, for instance, to introduce a Joan of Arc-type character, Mina, is miserable. You get the feeling the authors watched the movie, "The Messenger" and assumed that the reader had as well, exploring little of Mina's motives and delineating less of her past. Of course, this may yet prove to be the saving grace of the series as it unfolds. The mystery surrounding the One God, and its connection to the troubles of the Fifth Age are the only reason readers should even bother to pick up the next installment. Furthermore, the attempt of Weis & Hickman to re-cast Raistlin Majere as his nephew, Palin, is ill-advised. Where Raistlin was terrible and possessed, yet strangely sympathetic, Palin comes across, notwithstanding his troubles prior to DOFS, as petulant, rude, whiny and irritating. Some would argue that this is exactly what Raistlin would have been like without his puissance; without his eldritch might. Meanwhile, old favorites, like Alhana Starbreeze, Goldmoon, and Lauranthalasa don't come across as characters, so much as extended plot devices. One might even say that, despite 15 years of back-story, they remain three of the most boring characters in the Dragonlance saga: predictable and unidimensional. The only character who remains true to form is Tasslehoff. This is not surprising because no DL character is as loved as "Uncle Tas." In fact, Tas develops some depth that was touched on in earlier novels: he is wiser, sadder, and more serious than other Kender (which is really not saying much). To have written Tas any other way would have been literary suicide for Weis & Hickman: readers expect Tas to be written well at all times. This goes to say that if the authors had spent as much time writing the rest of the novel as they had (obviously) spent penning Tas' dialogue, DOFS would have been a much better novel. And the Elves! Hickman & Weis dedicated half the novel to either of the Elven nations: Qualinesti & Silvanesti. While it's nice that the authors decided to explore an "undeveloped" section of the Dragonlance world, their new style seems ill-suited to the attempt. We would have expected more intrigue, treachery and double-dealing in the elven courts -- similar to the double-dealing and back-stabbing in George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series. Instead, it's all straightforward and rushed. The only nice touch is the fact that Silvan and Gilthas, the young elven "rulers," are actually more similar than either imagine, and this lends itself to potentially rich conflict down the road. Nevertheless, as I mentioned previously, DOFS is not a novel but a product. And there's the tragedy! Old fans were expecting a new Weis & Hickman series to celebrate the saga's 15th anniversary, and they got it: forced and blunted. DOFS is like magic in the Fifth Age: the mystery, the power, and the wonder are gone. It's as if Weis & Hickman were worshippers of one of the Old Gods who left Krynn, and they're now writing from a dwindling pool of ideas. Perhaps this is the heart of it all. Weis and Hickman named their new trilogy The War of Souls. Perhaps it's their war for their souls as writers. Yet, if DOFS is any indication, Weis and Hickman have lost the first battle.
Rating: 
Summary: Good but backstory lacking
Review: I am a big fan of Weis/Hickman and was not disapointed in this book. The only complaint I have is that there is not history or explaination for the Fifth Age in this book. Having been burned by non Weis DL books more than once I had stopped reading anything not writtenby Weis and Hickman. So going into Fallen Sun I had no idea of who these dragons were or what was going on. A timeline or a compacted synopsis of the Post Chaos War years would have helped.
Rating:
Summary: Everything I could have asked for
Review: I now sit dizzy in my chair after reading this newest Dragonlance novel. Programming my company's latest release day and night, I waited for the twilight when I could return home to "Dragons of a Fallen Sun." Even then, it took me, a slow reader, two days to read through the novel. My vision blurry, stomach empty, my head spinning, there is a warm smile on my face. As one who hadn't been able to finish a Dragonlance novel since the "Legends" series, in my teenage years, I had been caught unprepared. With several intersecting stories, Weis and Hickman would lighten one's heart, capture one's attention, then switch to another context. Then suddenly the book was over. I found myself not liking all of the characters as much as I had liked the ones from the previous series. But that was okay. Each character's motives were always put into the open, I always felt as if I understood each of them. (Though sometimes the motives seemed concocted.) But it was okay. There's just something different. The honor, values of the characters / of the authors made the story a pleasure to read. It's okay that it wasn't really ended because traveling through the story was good enough. What I found most interesting was trying to guess the parallels that the authors were making between what happened in the story and their views of the world. I guess it was more than just a story for me. The fiction allowed them to create scenarios that could not have been drawn from life, in order to show their view and ideas about the world. I enjoyed every detail and digression.
Rating:
Summary: Another good book
Review: Well, when I started this book the constant jumping around kind of threw me. I have read other new books that have started doing this and I really hope this is a passing trend among writers. I mean I personally enjoy Tas's anticts which will constantly make me put the book down for a bit to stiffle laughter. However, Silvan's whole thing was for the most part, pretty boring and not what I would expect in a Dragonlance novel. About every time I got to a chapter that started out with him, I was dissapointed and usually picked those points to set the book down and carry on woth normal life, note I say about every time, but not always. The book took me a while to get into, it took a while to get really started. But when I finally finished chapter 4, which took a whole week to get to that point, I put the book down. The reason I put the book down was, I went to get a Mountain Dew, go to the bathroom, and grab another pack of smokes because I knew I was locked into a day filled with adventure and the same feelings I had back in the Twins stories. I then went from Chapter 4 through the entire book in under a week and spent an entire day going to all the bookstores in the Detroit area looking for the second book. Unfortunately to no avail, now I have to wait 4-6 weeks for Amazon to ship it to me, talk about a guy checking the mail everyday waiting for delivery. Please hurry Amazon this is probably the most anticipated delivery I have had from you.
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