Book Review: Dragons of Winter Night By Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman

Genre: Fantasy
Series: Dragonlance: The Chronicles
Author Info: http://www.margaretweis.com | http://www.trhickman.com

This is the second book of the legendary Dragonlance Chronicles.

Review for the first book

I have been feeling quite ashamed for not getting around to reading the fantasy classics everyone read as teenagers, so I’m fixing it one book at a time. Dragons of Winter Night is more of a page turner compared to the first book, it’s thick with action, tension, suspense, twists and turns with a touch of humor. The scenes with Fizban and the gnomes were hilarious.

In this book things were surprisingly more grey than I expected. There’s no black and white and even the most honorable, utopic factions are marred with greed, infighting and political intrigue.

The development of the characters is quite intriguing to read. We get to see the inner struggles of Tanis, Laurana, Sturm and even the Kender Tasslehoff. Raistlin’s power and magic skills keep increasing and his relationship with the companions somewhat improves (at least that was the impression I got.)

We finally get to meet Tanis’ love interest Kitiara and I must say it came as a huge surprise and plot twist. For the sake of keeping this spoiler free, I can’t say more but I didn’t expect that at all, even though I read plenty of plot twists. Tanis is torn between the human woman Kitiara and the elf maiden, his childhood crush Laurana. I absolutely hate love triangles but the love triangle here was negligible enough so I was able to tolerate it.

The Silvanesti scenes are bone chilling unless you are an experienced grimdark reader. I have to say the dark and creepy atmosphere was well done.

Even though it has been 30 years since the publication of the Dragonlance Chronicles, the books still hold up today. This book is a page turner and a great read, I’m looking forward to reading the third book and then the Dragonlance Legends series after that. I really wish I’ve read those books as a teenager, but nevertheless they are still quite enjoyable, even at my age.

Verdict: This is a must read for all fantasy readers, young and old alike.