5 Books That Left an Impression-Book 1

Dragons of a Fallen Sun

The War of Souls Series, Volume 1

Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman

Growing up, the Dungeons and Dragons board game was very popular. However, owning or playing that game was not allowed in our household. So my exposure as a kid was very limited in the fantasy genre. Primarily my exposure was through J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit. And as I discussed in my previous blog post, I was not really an avid reader when I was young so that exposure was mainly through watching the animated movie. I loved dragons though. And not just Smaug of The Hobbit fame, but any dragon. A popular band at the time was Asia and they used a water dragon on their self titled first album. They also featured a dragon on their XXX and Gravitas albums from 2012 and 2014 respectively. I would draw dragons and dragonheads a lot through my high school years and would read magazines that featured dragons, mainly in our school library. Conan was in the fantasy genre so that fed my appetite for that kind of adventure. Again, not being a voracious reader, I did not know or even look into DragonLance. And since Dungeons and Dragons was forbidden at home, I did not know about TSR (Tactical Studies Rules) or Widards of the Coast (WotC), who had bought TSR in 1997, and were the distributor of DragonLance games and novels.

Enter Dragons of the Fallen Sun (2000). My sister-in-law had picked up a near perfect hardback edition, probably at a flea market or yard sale, and thought it would be something I would like and gave it to me. I started reading it and was instantly hooked! I was completely immersed in the characters and the story just like those Conan novels from so many years before. Unlike the Conan books, this was a fairly large novel of over 500 pages so reading it one day was not an option. But I did read it every night after work and after the family had gone to bed for nights on end until I finished it. The characters were so well fleshed out and the plot pacing was near perfect. After finishing Dragons of the Fallen Suns, I searched out the remaining novels of the trilogy to read (Dragons of the Lost Star and Dragons of the Vanished Moon). Once I had finished the trilogy, I realized I had to go back to the beginning (which would have made reading this trilogy a lot easier had I started at the beginning!). I found and read what is called Chronicles and included Dragons of Autumn Twilight (1984), Dragons of Winter Night (1985) and Dragons of Spring Dawning (1985) and eventually concluded with the addition of a fourth volume Dragons of Summer Flame (1995).

So, here is the impression that this novel left on me. Remember, I started reading the DragonLance books in the middle. Chronicles and another trilogy called Legends (1986) had come before. After reading the War of Souls trilogy, I read the Chronicles trilogy which was the first. The writing and storytelling is drastically different. Still very good, but not as polished as the War of Souls trilogy. It was obvious that these were the first novels by Weis and Hickman. And I loved that! It showed me that, most likely, my first novel would not be my best. I showed me that writing is not only a passion, but a skill that has to be developed and improved upon. That it takes practice just like any other art. I continue to use Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman of an example of how to give your characters life and a complete background. These characters, for the most part, have lived an entire life before you began to read about them in the novels. This kind of development gives you the opportunity to expand your character's world into other novels. Just like what Margaret Weiss did with the novel The Soulforge based on the character Raistlin (a dark wizard) from the previous trilogies and had been one of her favorite characters. I was impressed by Dragons of the Fallen Sun and it led me into a world that I knew little about. And how awesome is that? You can be 20 years late to the game and still get wrapped up into the entire saga. That should be the goal of every writer's story telling.

Let me know in the comments below if you have read any of the DragonLance Saga and which authors you like the most. Have you every played Dungeons and Dragons and if so, what is most enjoyable about it?