The Companions - who are in no way to be confused with the Fellowship - embark upon an epic quest to retrieve magical holy MacGuffins in order to set about restoring the True Gods to the world of Krynn. They then embark on an even more epic quest to Pax Tharkas, a fortress that should be the name of a power metal band. At Pax Tharkas, the Companions will engage in a deadly face-off with one of the architects of Krynn's darkest days, the bad hombre Dragon Highlord known as Verminaard. Roll for initiative!
So it's been quite a few years since I've read the first Dragonlance tome, Dragons of Autumn Twilight by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. Truth be told, I don't recall being too high on this book. When it comes to all of the various Dungeons & Dragons settings (from the classic era when the game was still good, mind you), I don't think I ever quite 'got' the Dragonlance setting. I was definitely more drawn to the gothic horror of Ravenloft, the weirdness of Planescape, the post-apocalyptic stylings of Dark Sun, or even the regal pedigree of Greyhawk. What exactly defined Dragonlance? What was its gimmick besides magic lances that kill evil dragons and the vague Mormon overtones? These were the kind of things my younger self wrestled with and what presumably helped keep me away from the series.
I recently had a hankering to give the book another try though and, while I still don't think Autumn Twilight is anything remarkable in the fantasy genre, I at least enjoyed it slightly more than my initial reading all those years ago. I'm told the series does develop into something more interesting and better written as it goes on, but I believe this initial foray into the Dragonlance setting has its share of teething problems, although there is a certain charm to the proceedings too.
It's no secret this novel was based upon real-life D&D sessions ran by Weiss and Hickman and there are plenty of times during Autumn Twilight where, if you have a decent amount of role-playing game experience, you can tell it's a D&D session being transcribed to the page. Sometimes a character you think you have a handle on will make a boneheaded decision or experience some exceedingly bad luck during an intense battle, which screams 'the player of this character fucked up and rolled poorly'. As silly and annoying as this can be at times, it also contains some of that charm I alluded to, because what D&D nerd hasn't been there to either cause or witness a truly epic botched roll of the dice?
Where the book really shined for me this time around was in the character of Tanis. Sure, most fans of this series love emo-boy magician Raistlin, but Tanis is the Captain Kirk of the bunch, and maybe it was something I couldn't appreciate as much when I was younger, but now I can empathize with Tanis on just how much babysitting and putting up with bullshit he has to go through as the de-facto leader of the Companions and the constant peacemaker between the petty squabbles that seem to constantly flare up. He also has a little Chuck Norris style beard action going on, has a human babe and an elf side chick, and later on in the novel gets a cool magic sword. If you're a man of taste like me then Tanis has to be your guy.
What hurts Dragons of Autumn Twilight is both its sometimes flat prose and how beholden it appears to be to Lord of the Rings. It's not a note-for-note rip-off, but there are enough similarities - from the party composition to the general plot overview of 'take mythical magic item into dark land to do X' - that it makes everything a little stale and pedestrian. You might be wowed if this is one of your first fantasy novels, but if you've been around the block with the genre, nothing here is going to floor you.
I can't in good conscience give this a high rating, but it's 'kinda recommended' by me, particularly if you want to get into Dragonlance and see where everything began.
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