A couple months ago I was scrounging about a local bookstore for something new to read and came across the DragonLance Chronicles Trilogy co-written by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. I didn’t really know much about them, but the descriptions on the back covers set up the trilogy as a Tolkien-esque fantasy saga. That sounded okay to me.

A couple weeks ago I started reading Dragons of Autumn Twilight, the first in the saga. I was very surprised at the suddenness that the story unfolded and went straight into the adventure. It was so fast, in fact, that most of the characters had been introduced with little more than names and brief descriptions. It isn’t often that one can complain about a story advancing too fast, but this one certainly did. I wanted to know more about the band of characters, all eight of them, and the setting before they were off on an adventure.

So, for the first half of the book, I felt like the author was not writing the characters very compellingly and progressing the story way too quickly. Then, I finished a chapter and turned the page to see the words “Book II” staring at me. At this point, the entire mood of the book shifted. The story slowed, the character development progressed, and even the storyline was a little better. I have to wonder if one author wrote book one and the other book two, but I don’t know for sure.

Anyways, the second half of the book was actually pretty decent. Despite the fact that there were already a lot of characters, several more were added, but that didn’t hurt things. These were good support characters that made the main band seem more appealing. Overall, I would give the first novel about a 6 out of 10 (where LOTR is a 10). It was good enough that I’ll read the next one, but not so good that I would recommend it as a must-read.