Final thoughts on the Chronicles
I've been meaning to post more on Dragonlance for a while, but I haven't had the time (see below post if you want to know why.) However, I did get through the Chronicles, and I have a fair number of thoughts on the series:
First, a mini-rant: Why is it that every main character has the ability to "sense" truth and evil? They walk into Verminaard's castle, are presented with a fork in the tunnel and go left because they feel evil coming from the right side? Or Laurana, who repeatedly shows that she can just *know* when someone is telling the truth? Particularly Kitiara, who is not exactly a bastion of truthfulness anyway? Laurana's just the most prominent example; there were several points where a character just kind of knew things, because that was easier than them actually having rational reasons for doing things.
Secondly: It turns out there actually *are* black people on Krynn! Who knew? Paying attention, they do describe Theros Ironfeld (the smith with the silver arm who forges the dragonlances) as having black skin, and later on there's a brief comment that black people live on Ergoth, a small island off the coast of the main continent. So, black people aren't invisible, they're just a seafaring quasi-pirate race that has almost no impact on the plot.
That aside, I've come to the conclusion that the series is actually reasonably well written. Yes, there are major racial problems (it *was* written in the 70s-80s.); yes, the sentence-level writing is very rough, the point of view character switches frequently, sometimes from paragraph to paragraph, and Weis & Hickman spend entirely too much time describing the inside of their characters' heads. HOWEVER, once they manage to get out of the campaign-inspired first book, the plotting is fairly well done.
There are few areas where the characters are mindnumbingly stupid (the only really glaring example, I'll discuss below). The pacing flows fairly well. There aren't many deus ex machina moments, and the handful that do exist are literal moments where Paladine (in Fizban form) shows up to help - and those work, since Paladine sets things up from the first chapter of the first book, so his involvement in nudging events in the right direction is entirely reasonable within the structure of the story. The characters are well-defined, and even when they make mistakes, the majority of the mistakes are entirely within their character - Tanis falling for Kitiara's wiles, Caramon blindly trusting Raistlin, Raistlin looking for power, etc. There's clearly a reason that the series was so very popular in geek circles.
Which brings me to the only real wtf moment in the series, and my biggest problem, because it's so very, very avoidable: Laurana.
Laurana is a schizophrenic character. She bounces between hyper-competent leader and fighter, and lovesick idiot whose incompetence would put a valley girl to shame.
She was capable enough to convince the Solamnic Knights to take the dragonlances, to successfully fight off dragons at Palanthas, and to, apparently, lead an army to victory after victory over the bad guys. She's charismatic, she claims to have realized that she can't put personal objectives over the good of everybody, and as the daughter of the Speaker of the Suns, she had to have had at least *some* training in the responsibilities of leadership, if only listening as her older brother got those lessons.
And then she grabs the idiot-ball and runs for the touchdown. She takes the word of a draconian, a being we have been assured all series are pure evil, that her One True Love is dying and she has to come alone to see him. She believes him because Kitiara, a *leader of the enemy army* had previously told her that Tanis was at her side, and Laurana just *knew* that she was telling the truth. (Because, apparently, she's a human lie-detector.) And of course, the draconian would never lie, and Kitiara would never lie, and even if they were telling the truth, it is *entirely* reasonable for the leader of the army to go alone into enemy hands to visit one POW.
Not to mention the idiocy on Kitiara's side. This is her plan to take over Krynn:
1) Kidnap the leader of the enemy army.
2) The army gives up.
3) Victory!
What kind of a plan relies on the army giving up because their figurehead gets kidnapped? We are assured that this is the plan that will bring Kitiara back into the Dark Queen's good graces and win the world. Really?
Le sigh. But other than that, the latter two books were actually surprisingly enjoyable, 15 years later.
On to the Dragonlance Legends! I recall that being a better-written series overall, so let's see if it holds up better than the Chronicles!
First, a mini-rant: Why is it that every main character has the ability to "sense" truth and evil? They walk into Verminaard's castle, are presented with a fork in the tunnel and go left because they feel evil coming from the right side? Or Laurana, who repeatedly shows that she can just *know* when someone is telling the truth? Particularly Kitiara, who is not exactly a bastion of truthfulness anyway? Laurana's just the most prominent example; there were several points where a character just kind of knew things, because that was easier than them actually having rational reasons for doing things.
Secondly: It turns out there actually *are* black people on Krynn! Who knew? Paying attention, they do describe Theros Ironfeld (the smith with the silver arm who forges the dragonlances) as having black skin, and later on there's a brief comment that black people live on Ergoth, a small island off the coast of the main continent. So, black people aren't invisible, they're just a seafaring quasi-pirate race that has almost no impact on the plot.
That aside, I've come to the conclusion that the series is actually reasonably well written. Yes, there are major racial problems (it *was* written in the 70s-80s.); yes, the sentence-level writing is very rough, the point of view character switches frequently, sometimes from paragraph to paragraph, and Weis & Hickman spend entirely too much time describing the inside of their characters' heads. HOWEVER, once they manage to get out of the campaign-inspired first book, the plotting is fairly well done.
There are few areas where the characters are mindnumbingly stupid (the only really glaring example, I'll discuss below). The pacing flows fairly well. There aren't many deus ex machina moments, and the handful that do exist are literal moments where Paladine (in Fizban form) shows up to help - and those work, since Paladine sets things up from the first chapter of the first book, so his involvement in nudging events in the right direction is entirely reasonable within the structure of the story. The characters are well-defined, and even when they make mistakes, the majority of the mistakes are entirely within their character - Tanis falling for Kitiara's wiles, Caramon blindly trusting Raistlin, Raistlin looking for power, etc. There's clearly a reason that the series was so very popular in geek circles.
Which brings me to the only real wtf moment in the series, and my biggest problem, because it's so very, very avoidable: Laurana.
Laurana is a schizophrenic character. She bounces between hyper-competent leader and fighter, and lovesick idiot whose incompetence would put a valley girl to shame.
She was capable enough to convince the Solamnic Knights to take the dragonlances, to successfully fight off dragons at Palanthas, and to, apparently, lead an army to victory after victory over the bad guys. She's charismatic, she claims to have realized that she can't put personal objectives over the good of everybody, and as the daughter of the Speaker of the Suns, she had to have had at least *some* training in the responsibilities of leadership, if only listening as her older brother got those lessons.
And then she grabs the idiot-ball and runs for the touchdown. She takes the word of a draconian, a being we have been assured all series are pure evil, that her One True Love is dying and she has to come alone to see him. She believes him because Kitiara, a *leader of the enemy army* had previously told her that Tanis was at her side, and Laurana just *knew* that she was telling the truth. (Because, apparently, she's a human lie-detector.) And of course, the draconian would never lie, and Kitiara would never lie, and even if they were telling the truth, it is *entirely* reasonable for the leader of the army to go alone into enemy hands to visit one POW.
Not to mention the idiocy on Kitiara's side. This is her plan to take over Krynn:
1) Kidnap the leader of the enemy army.
2) The army gives up.
3) Victory!
What kind of a plan relies on the army giving up because their figurehead gets kidnapped? We are assured that this is the plan that will bring Kitiara back into the Dark Queen's good graces and win the world. Really?
Le sigh. But other than that, the latter two books were actually surprisingly enjoyable, 15 years later.
On to the Dragonlance Legends! I recall that being a better-written series overall, so let's see if it holds up better than the Chronicles!