What do You think about Dragons Of Summer Flame (1995)?
I had just re-read the Chronicles, books 1-3, again for the first time since High School. I forgot how good those books really are. So when I saw this in the store I had to jump right in. The first chapter is a little slow to get going. I forced myself to keep going. And to be sure, there are some paragraphs here and there that are too much background information that I just covered reading the other three books. So I skimmed them. But this book, with some of its pages being slow to trudge through, do not pale the entire book. This book is my favorite in the entire series. My favorite character is Raistlin and I was happy to see him mature a great deal. Yes, Raistlin. This book got me choked up a few times. I won't spoil it by saying who dies... but it did get me. And while some people did not like the feeling that the first three books were written from a series of DnD adventures, this book does not have that sense to it at all. So enjoy.But what is also great about this book is the ethical repositioning of things. The last chapter is the climax of not only the action, but also the reforging of the moral and ethical landscape that was familiar. Can you root for someone you thought was evil? The book, in a whole, is a great fantasy story that can be summed up by the pictures of the planet Earth found in some coffee shops that bear the question "there are nor borders". If you truly get what that poster is saying, you will understand this book's metaphors.
—Eddie Black
This was my first read from the Dragonlance series and I have to say, I was surprised I enjoyed it as much as I did. My partner is an avid reader of series and fantasy genre and I challenged myself to read one of his favorite novels; this one was it. His copy is held together by Scotch tape and the pages are yellowed, evidence of his obvious love for this book. I may just add some more tape to those pages. Without giving away too much information, this war of the Gods as written by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, mimics what our real world seek - world peace. Rather than fighting for what each race believes in, they band together to fight for the wealth and being of the whole. It really is a powerful message when you think about how this theme threads through the books 580-something pages. Not to mention, I never planned on crying at the end of this book, but one particular character I grew so attached to. I won't give away who or what happens, but I cried a good several minutes and then laughed and reminded myself the world of Krynn is pure fantasy.Still I enjoyed living in their world for the hours I did when I delve into this book.
—J.R. Ortega
The "New Generation" tag is a little confusing, since the title page of the edition I have lists this as Chronicles Volume 4. But this doesn't carry straight on from the first three volumes in the series, instead taking place many years later, and focusing on some of the children of the original Heroes of the Lance, although some of the original Heroes also make an appearance.It's a shame, really, that I found this quite slow going. The story was pretty good, though a little heavy handed on the moralism in places, and it was a great what happened next premise, but I did feel the treatment of some of the characters was very much on the harsh side. Dalamar, who I'd loved as a character in the earlier books, was nowhere near as appealing this time (though admittedly his role was somewhat incidental). Much of the focus being on the children of the Heroes also meant that there was less of a sense of familiarity with the central characters, and these new characters were a bit on the wooden side a lot of the time. I'm not entirely sure that 586 pages for this was really necessary, and the book did seem to drag in places. But it was worth reading to round off the series a bit more, and to learn more about Krynn.
—Sam
