Rating: 
Summary: Thrilling, exciting, and fantastic!!!!
Review: This book is awesome, along with the gnomes sense of humor with their obsession with raisins and perfection along with Sturm's seriousness and Kitiaras fun-loving attitude, they make one Hell of an adventure and end up crash-landed on the moon!! There they meet up with a Dragon! And yes, the Story DOES TOO connect with the Chronicles, they just haven't seen the reason why Sturm didn't mention the Dragon or Draconians, but I know why, but I'm not sharing! ANYWAYS, buy this book, it is a must read for DragonLance fans!!! It's funny as hell!
Rating: 
Summary: Darkness and Light
Review: This book overall is ok. I mean, yes it tells you about Kitara and Sturms thing together, but where the stroy took place should have been somewhere different. But, if you are a true DragonLance reader, you gotta read this one.
Rating:
Summary: Darkness and Light yields a bland gray
Review: This book was one the first Dragonlance novels starring the Companions that was not written by Weis and Hickman, and unfortunately it provides ample ammunition to the "If its not Weis and Hickman its [no good]!" (said in my best Mike Myers Scottish accent).If you don't know, the 6 Preludes books follow the Companions in the time period leading up to the beginning of Chronicles. The first question is, do I need to read the Preludes first? The answer is pretty much a resounding no. Since they were written afterwards, you won't lose anything in the way of plot of character development. Also, they are generally inferior to Chronicles/Legends so they may get you started on a bad foot in exploring Krynn. Now, as far as this book goes, you will find it lacking two major things. One is any meaningful character development. Sturm and Kitiara were both supporting cast members in Chronicles/Legends and were not drawn much past thier archetypal definitions. You might think that putting them as the stars of an entire novel would help explore these characters but you would unfortunately be wrong. At the beginning and end of them, Kitiara is the same headstrong selfish fascist, while Sturm is the self-righteous devotee of the Measure and Code (neither of which are given any treatment here). The second is any meaningful exploration of Krynn or expansion of the core story. Most of the book takes place on Lunitari, a bleak empty world. True it is part of the DL universe, but the lack of other material on it makes it seem rather disassociated. Not that there is anything wrong with a bleak empty world, as many great science fiction/fantasy authors have used this setting before with great effect. However, it is almost always used to accenuate character development, conflict and/or relationships. Here is serves only to accenuate the lack of those same elements. The saving grace of this story is that unlike the DL books release prior, it is not about beating some SuperBadGuy, people don't instantly fall in everlasting love (a Weis trademark), and its the first DL book where we get to meet gnomes in depth. If you consider books to be good or bad, you will probably lean towards thinking this one is bad. I you have a generous gray area in your evaluation scale, you will probably think it exists just a little bit on the wrong side of mediocre. Fortunately It reads fast, doesn't really drag its feet much so when I finished with I didn't feel like I had wasted much time on it. A rating of 2.5 stars would be accurate, but since it was a rather brave attempt at breaking into what was formerly a single author (technically a duo), I'll give it 3.
Rating: 
Summary: Front page: gnomes flying machine works!
Review: This is about a mercenary named Kitiara and Sturm, a knight of Solamnia. They are going to Solamnia to find Sturm's father, when they lose their horses and come across gnomes with a flying machine. The gnomes promise the humans that if they get them unstuck, they with fly them anywhere they want to go. Sturm, being a knight, is all honorable etc., but Kitiara is quite the opposite. Gnomes are known for being inventors - although about only 10% of their inventions actually work. Kitiara is doubtful that the machine will fly, but they help the gnomes anyway. And the ship, the Cloudmaster, proves to work. All is going well, until something goes wrong, and they crash-land on the moon Lunitari. All red sand and rocks, as far as the eye can see. It's not that bad at first, but when they meet walking, talking (but not so intelligent), tree's, a crazy survivor from a strange incident, giant crystal ants, and when Kitiara grows as strong as ten men, Sturm has visions, and all the gnomes get better at what they were already good at (though they couldn't make it rain before...), they decided that they had better get off the moon - quickly.
Although Kitiara is not a character that I really like, I found the book funny and entertaining.
Rating:
Summary: Engrossing, yet distant
Review: This story, is indeed one of the more interesting works in the Saga. As stated above, it entales the story of Sturm and Kitiara five years before the War of the Lance. Traveling to his home land, in an effort to find his lost father, Sturm finds on the way, how very different he is from Kitiara, both in principle and action. Along the way, they meet with a group of gnomes, travel to the Red Moon, and engage a very real dragon. While this forshadows a part of Kitiara seen in the Chronicles, I find it hard to believe that Sturm would fail to mention to his companions that he had seen a dragon, even if the two had agreed to not speak of it. His honor as a knight, I guess. The story seemed detached from the rest of the Dragonlance plethora, and in doing so, left it somewhat unbelieveable (even for a fantasy world). Overall,however, it was well written, and very entertaining, thus making its good sides greatly outweigh the bad.
Rating:
Summary: The book that introduced me into the world of Solace.
Review: This was the first book of the Dragonlance Saga that I read. It was actually pretty good. Ever since I read this book, my collection and the number of DL books has grown over the years. This was an excellent book that I highly recommenmd!
Rating:
Summary: Hmmmmmm?
Review: Well, I won't say that this is a bad book, but is was definately not the best. While it was an interesting story, it relly didn't fit in with to rest of the series. I like how Sturm and Kit are portrayed, but I found the whole idea of landing on Lunitari a little out of it. The gnomes are really cute, and the ending is actually pretty good, so I guess it's not that bad!
|
