Year of Epic Fantasy 2017: Day 21 (Dragons of Autumn Twilight)

Title: Dragons of Autumn Twilight
Authors: Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman
Themes: Teamwork
Quotes: “You know," he said with unusual somberness, "I asked my father once why kenders were little, why we weren't big like humans and elves. I really wanted to be big," he said softly and for a moment he was quiet. 

"What did your father say?" asked Fizban gently. 

"He said kenders were small because we were meant to do small things. 'If you look at all the big things in the world closely,' he said, 'you'll see that they're really made up of small things all joined together.' That big dragon down there comes to nothing but tiny drops of blood, maybe it's the small things that make the difference.”
Reading/Listening Time: 19 hours, 59 minutes

Review:

For some reason all my life I thought there was an actual book series called "Dungeons and Dragons" based on the game, and I wanted to read one last year. I found out there isn't a particular fantasy book or book series called "Dungeons and Dragons", which was kinda disappointing, but there are a lot of books inspired by the game and this is one of them.

The story itself has two listed authors, but I'm pretty sure there was a whole group of people involved in the creation of this story. Usually I'd think of that as a bad thing (like the new star wars trilogy, or that campfire game where kids take turns telling their own story and by the end it makes no sense), but here they're clearly held together by a coherent vision. They're not trying to make the story their own, and interestingly they end up making something that is greater than the sum of its individual parts.

I don't want to suggest that this novel is perfect, it's a little episodic and some of the dialogue is a little cheesy, but it is one of those books that you read and you feel like any one of the characters could have held a compelling protagonist role all on their own. That's something I really admire in a story (especially when you get to see that the "episodes" really are building on each other, it's like uncovering a mystery).

My favorite character in the story was Tasslehoff. I think he's the type of character that would have been really easy to write as a simpleton and I'm so so glad they didn't choose to do that in this book.

Rating: 3/5 Stars.