Lately, I've been reading any and all Dragonlance books I can get my hands on, and most recently finished The Second Generation. Having only now started Dragons of Deceit, I was tickled by the apparent difference in the book when it comes to Justarius's opinion on our good friend Dalamar—the dark elf mage that dated his daughter, Jenna.
Take a look at this excerpt of "The Sacrifice", from page 293 of The Second Generation:
If Justarius had sent them, he would have told her first, and she’d had no word from him in months, ever since their last quarrel. He strongly disapproved of her lover.
Compared with page 116 of Dragon of Deceit:
And although Justarius was a Red Robe, a follower of Lunitari, daughter of the god Gilean, and Dalamar was a Black Robe, follower of Nuitari, son of the goddess Takhisis, the two were friends.
...While I understand that these books were published decades apart...It is way more entertaining to pretend that Justarius's issue with his daughter's partner had nothing to do with the normal reasons Dalamar is maligned—Justarius just wants his friend back!
Jenna, please lend your poor father his study buddy back, he misses him!
Back to Dragonlance, and it's time to advance the plot. Unfortunately, I don't have the Legends trilogy so we have to skip Raistlin's entire quest for godhood, Kitiara's death, and Caramon's workout montage. Pity.
Instead we get to skip ahead to the next generation of heroes. Sort of.
It's five separate stories, in no particular order: three of the stories serve primarily as character introductions, one is an apocryphal romance set before the original dragonlance novels, and the last is a madcap adventure starring three of the new heroes.
Kitiara's Son
A woman shows up at Caramon and Tika's tavern in Solace with a wild tale of how Caramon's evil older sister Kitiara seduced their mutual friend and paragon of chaste virtue Sturm mostly for shits and giggles but forgot her birth control.
This isn't the apocryphal romance.
Steel Brightblade is real, and he's his parent's son. He has Sturm's honor, courage, and integrity and Kitiara's wits, ambition, and skill. And he uses all of those traits to their fullest as a member of the evil goddess Takhisis's new knightly order. Caramon and Tanis do their best to save him, but saving a true believer from themselves is easier said than done.
The Legacy
We're back to Caramon's family again for story two. This time it's to meet his three sons, Tanin, Sturm, and Palin. Tanin and Sturm take after their father, although they're a bit more concerned with honor and glory than Caramon ever was. Palin, on the other hand, takes after his uncle. Which is why every living male Majere is sitting in the Tower of Wayreth when the story opens.
The mages say they're trying to keep Raistlin from stealing Palin's body to resurect himself. The truth is that they're trying to trick an overprotective father into letting his magically gifted son take the Test. The truthier truth is that is isn't a good idea to toy with the most powerful magic user in history, even if you think all you're doing is creating an illusion.
Palin passes his Test and his test of character, and he gets a nifty new glowing stick as a souvenier. A glowing stick that is one of the most iconic magical artifacts on Krynn and could only have been given to him by Raistlin himself.
"Wanna Bet"
In almost any fantasy setting, almost every tavern that serves a multi-raciel clientelle comes with an engraved plaque that says "Do not try to outdrink the dwarf". Palin doesn't need to read that sign. Unfortunately, his brothers are the sort of young men who take good advice as a challenge.
It wouldn't be a major Dragonlance adventure without a deity wandering around in the flesh. Reorx, as Dougan Redhammer, is a nice change from Fizban. But... he isn't quite so farsighted.
Reorx created the tinker gnomes on purpose. The dwarves and the kender were and accident. But all three races are Reorx's children through and through. And it shows.
Plotwise this is the most important story in the book. And it's far and away the silliest. Palin’s the central character, and we get to see both his wits and his insecurities on display. More than any other character in the book, Palin’s kind of a study on what it’s like to be both very talented and nearly crippled by the knowledge of how thoroughly overshadowed you are by the one person you can’t stop comparing yourself too.
Raistlin's Daughter
Raistlin wasn't exactly known for his womanizing ways. In part, that was because he was cursed to see anyone he looked at as though they had been aged hundreds of years. But the simple truth was that by the time he became an adult, Raistlin didn't have room inside for any real human connections beyond the one with his brother that he resented so much.
It'd take some convoluted circumstances to get Raistlin into a situation where he'd be likely to get a woman pregnant. Magic and curses and an impossibly beautiful woman from an ageless and mythical race add up to convoluted and then some even before adding in the whole 'we have to huddle together for warmth, naked' thing.
It's no wonder the story starts off with a note from Caramon saying that he doesn't believe it.
The Sacrifice
Back in the Chronicles, Tanis was known for his wisdom and written as being unable to bring that wisdom to bear in her personal relationships. It's no exaggeration to say that Tanis's poor handling of his romantic life was central to the fate of the world during the War of the Lance.
Is it any surprise that his poor handling of fatherhood becomes central to the fate of the elven nations and by extension the world?
By contrast, Laurana was pretty much pure distilled awesome except for a bad habit of walking into traps. So is it any wonder that after he lets himself get tricked into becoming a puppet-king, her son shows signs of making the forces of evil thoroughly regret his coronation?
I’m always confused about how elven aging work. Even now, Laurana is barely considered an adult by elven standards, and she’s roughly a century old. Gilthas is 16 when this story happens, and he’s indistinguishable in maturity from a human 16-year-old. So do elves physiologically mature at more or less exactly the same rate as humans, and it’s just cultural that they aren’t considered adults until they’re at least several times as old as they were when they hit puberty? Or is it a brain chemistry thing, like how they say that our brains don’t finish maturing until our mid-twenties. That sort of matches how Laurana herself is written in the Chronicles.
That last idea is truly horrific. I remember being a teenager. Can you imagine how much it would suck to mentally and emotionally be a teenager for eighty years?
Final Thoughts
It's a good collection, and the stories almost all do a good job of setting the stage for what's coming. But that’s also the flaw. This is a collection of introductory and stage-setting stories, so it’s hard to fairly judge it on its own. That said, every story in here was a good read and only The Sacrifice bogged down even a little for me.
There's one thing that really bothers me though. The 29 page preview of The Dragons of Summer Flame comes with a truly brutal spoiler.
Lori Mattix hanging out with Gary Glitter, Alice Cooper and Micky Dolenz (and others) at a press event for Gary Glitter at the Beverly Hills Hotel in April 1974. (submitted anonymously, edited by us.)
Sylvain Sylvain and Johnny Thunders with Sabel Starr, Lori Mattix and friends backstage at the Whisky a Go Go, c. 1975. Photo by Richard Creamer. (submitted anonymously, edited by us.)
Group photo of, among others, band manager and photographer Anya Phillips (1955 - 1981) (second left, with beer bottle), musicians Sylvain Sylvain (born Sylvain Mizrahi) (1951 - 2021) (center top) and Peter Jordan, and Nancy Spungen (1958 - 1978) (fore second right, in black lace top) (most famously known as future girlfriend of Sid Vicious), as they pose together in an apartmen in Manhattan's Greenwich Village, New York, November 1975. (Photo by Eileen Polk/Getty Images)
Lori Mattix and car dealer Cal Worthington at a press event for Gary Glitter at the Beverly Hills Hotel, April 1974. Photos by Richard Creamer. (submitted anonymously, edited by us.)
