Dragonlance: Lost Chronicles [2] Dragons of the Highlord Skies (2007)

Ever since I first finished Dragons of Winter Night, my biggest disappointment was that I couldn't read the story of our heroes defeating Feal-Thas and taking the dragon orb at Icewall Castle. It sounded so cool and it always bothered me that we never got a proper treatment at the time. I know there's an AD&D module with the storyline, but that's not the same as a fictional narrative.

Now, I finally got to read it. It only takes up half of the book, but it was great.

Before You Continue

This blog is part of my Dragonlance Retrospective
See this blog post for an overview of the Retrospective
These blogs are not plot recaps—they are most effective in conjunction with your own re-read of the series
Warning: CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE ENTIRE SERIES

Thoughts

Like Dragons of the Dwarven Depths, I enjoyed this book. It didn't drag much at all and I tore through it pretty quickly. I didn't realize that so much of it would center on Kitiara and the Highlords in general, which obviously makes sense from the title.

I've been pleasantly surprised by these first two books of the trilogy. Probably because much of the other Dragonlance material is subpar, and I haven't been impressed with much else out of Weis and Hickman. But it appears that they are made for this world and know these characters the best. Years later they've still got the magic.

Only downside to the book is that as usual, you can't get away from Tasslehoff, who has those magical spectacles that enable him to drive the narrative once again. Though it's not so bad in the second half of the book because the Companions storyline focuses on Laurana, who is a much more interesting character with an actual development arc.

The Knights

I'm not a huge fan of the Knights of Solamnia, and especially not Derek Crownguard, so I'll get this out of the way first. These types of characters, that are so obsessed with a singular goal that they eschew all reason, are a bit tiresome to me, kind of like military generals in movies who don't do things in a reasonable or logical way. (My father, a 29-year veteran of the Air Force, always remarks how real officers never do this or that. I guess it's rubbed off on me.)

I liked the other knights, Brian and Aran, and enjoyed the promise of romance between Brian and Lilith. I was sad to see them go at the end, but they aren't the other books so... yeah. By the way, "Brian" is not an appropriate name for a high fantasy novel. Derek I can live with, but Brian feels too modern.

The Cover

Another cover by Matt Stawicki, this one featuring Kitiara, Lord Soth, and the blue dragon Skie on the front. Love the look of the dragon on this one.

However, if you check out the full image on his website, it's kind of a confusing image because as you can see, the other side of the painting features Feal-Thas and one of his White Wolves, along with our heroes, presumably Laurana, Derek, and Flint. Of course, there is no scene in which all those characters are together at the Ice Wall Castle at the same time.

Another one of those "fake scenes" they use for a cover. A silly thing to complain about, I know, but what's wrong with using an accurate scene from the story? There are plenty of compelling scenes straight from the book (that don't need changing) that you can use as a cover image to sell it.

Kitiara

It was great getting a lot of screen time from Kitiara this go around. One of the more mysterious characters from the Chronicles trilogy, who is mentioned many times early on but doesn't appear until the second book, Dragons of Winter Night, we're able to get into her headspace quite a bit here. And what do we find out? She's jealous of Laurana and still thinks Tanis is hers.

I was mildly curious how Kitiara was going to get away from her imprisonment, she we know that she obviously does, and was satisfied with how Iolanthe used Kitiara's promise to Takhisis to rescue her and get her to go to Lord Soth. I enjoyed the escape and journey to Dargaard Keep, they were all written well.

If you felt her fate in Legends was a little harsh, I think reading everything here may change your opinion. Kitiara is very jealous and basically sells her soul to Lord Soth. In the end, she signed up for it.

Feal-Thas

Feal-Thas never appears in the original Chronicles narrative. We basically only hear about him in passing, and in the poem that covers the quest to the Ice Wall Castle. Finally we get to see him, and it's worth the wait. This dude is a badass and steals the show throughout the book.

He's a very compelling character, with an interesting history. A dark elf from Silvanesti who became a Black Robed mage, he was born before the Cataclysm. He was exiled from Silvanesti at a young age and eventually took the Dragon Orb from Wayreth to Icereach, where he lived for hundreds of years until the present War of the Lance.

Feal-Thas is a great villain and his interactions with Kitiara, Ariakas, and the Companions are all fun to read. At the end of the day, he's one of the standout villains next to Lord Soth. It's a shame he wasn't featured in the original Chronicles, but perhaps that's a good thing. Would Weis and Hickman have written him so well if he'd been shoved into a smaller portion of the narrative?

Thinking about all the other Dragon Highlords, he's my favorite of them all. Is that sad, considering he doesn't appear in Chronicles? Even the other Highlords who make a first appearance in this book are somewhat better than the ones we did get. In the original trilogies we only got Verminaard (died early), Toede (a joke), Kitiara, and Ariakas. Here, in addition to Feal-Thas, we also get to see Lucien (a half-ogre) and Salah-Khan (a Mongol-type from a land called Khur that is never visited nor mentioned in the original trilogies). It's like they deliberately tried to make up for the duds from Chronicles.

Reading Order

In my post for Dragons of the Dwarven Depths, I wondered how these books might work if they were read inline with Chronicles. For example, instead of going straight to Winter Night after Autumn Twilight, you'd read Dwarven Depths first. It seemed to work well for that one, but not so much for this one.

Some of Kitiara's story in the first half overlaps events in the first part of Winter Night, the second half (going to Icewall Castle to get the dragon orb) would slot mostly between the two major parts of Winter Night, and the third part happens after Winter Night. So it doesn't exactly work unless you jump around, which I don't think Weis and Hickman intended.

This book works well on its own, but it might be worth reading it in tandem with Chronicles, similar to how people have come up with a way to read George R.R. Martin's A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons in tandem (there are two major versions: Boiled Leather, A Feast for Dragons). I've never tried those myself, but if GRRM ever finishes that series, maybe I will.