Customer Reviews

The Dawning of a New Age (Dragonlance Dragons of a New Age, Vol. 1)

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(39)

 

 

I think some people are having a knee jerk reaction to this book's sub-par quality. After having been treated to the near brilliance of Weis and Hickman for so many years, many readers are upset that this direct continuation of the storyline had such a drop in quality. The story is still enjoyable, but it is not presented in as eloquent a fashion as was the case in previous books.

Now, I don't know if Ms. Rabe has written any books before this, but it seems like a first book. A lot of the dialogue is awkward and there are places where the prose is very stilted. These kinds of shortcomings, however, do not call for one star or even two. I've read books that were much worse. Books with no plot, impenetrable prose, and even dialogue that sounded like the two people were having different conversations with each other at the same time. Essentially what I am saying is that, while the presentation of the story was lacking, it is still enjoyable, especially for Dragonlance fans.

This book continues the story where it left off at the end of Dragons of Summer Flame. We see old friends and meet new characters. The beginning of the book then skims over the next twenty years as the land changes with the withdrawal of the gods. I hope that there are other books in the series that flesh this period of time out, but it's not really necessary for the story that Ms. Rabe is telling here. And as far as the reviewers who complained about kenders and dwarves not behaving as they should, don't they think that different members of those races will have completely different personalities? I know humans do.

Anyway, if you're a fan of the Dragonlance saga, this is a must read for the continuing story. From what I have heard, if you jump straight to Weis & Hickman's War of Souls trilogy, you'll be missing out on a lot. Just don't go into this book expecting the same level of writing as those two and you should be okay.

Come on people..Think what Rabe had to do here. She had to dive into a Dragonlance world that had never been written about. One that was a suprise to most Dragonlance readers, but still, this had to happen sometime. This book is a great addition to the Dragonlance world. Not only does it have enough action and adventure to keep it exciting, but the story that goes with it is interesting to say the least.

Jean's characters are a little shallow, but what can you expect? This is a trilogy, there is a lot more time to expand on the little things that drive the characters. Keep in mind that Rabe had to start this new age and lead the pack into the new sets of books that were bound to follow them. Her destroying the Tower of High Sorcery in Palthanas was needed to move the story forward. It might be a spot that Dragonlance readers have been reading about since the start of their Dragonlance experience, but still...it was needed.

All in all this book is an enjoying read. Rabe's writing style is a little difficult to get used to, but it is still enjoying enough to keep turning the pages of the book. This book keeps on the legacy of Dragonlance and while it was difficult for Rabe to start a world from almost scratch, she has my respect for turning it into something that could be worked with.

So the decline of the Dragonlance Saga continues! After the highs of the Chronicles and the Legends, and the somewhat legendary "Legend of Huma", the world of Krynn has never really recovered. There are still many entertaining books in the series, don't get me wrong, but "The Dawning of a New Age" is a book that should never have left the clutches of Weis and Hickman. Jean Rabe clearly struggles to make sense of the huge plot changes made in "Dragons of Summer Flame" (a brief return to former glories). The characters are badly underveloped and one can hardly imagine a "Meetings Sextext" series being developed for these characters. The plot is desperatley lacking in any ideas and the book is too quick in finding answers to how magic was suddenly re-discovered. Palin is the only character with any sort of depth to them, and thats a character who came from older books. Wheres the characters like Tanis and Raistlin i ask? The only good things are the fight scenes, but even these are un-realistic. Dhamon is able to take on about 10 Knights of Takhisis at once but the energy of the telling is endearing. Steer well clear of this cliched rubbish and get the new Weis and Hickman book which should be considered as the real follow up to "Dragons of Summer Flame". Hopefully the glory of Dragonlance will return with this book. Why did Weis and Hickman ever give such an important book over to any one else? Its spectacuarly awful!

Okay all you who think this book is semi to really good, read it again and tell me what you think. This book is incredibly dumb, boring and to top it off, it screws up the famous characters that Weis and Hickman created and who we fell in love with. My suggestion is to skip this series (or if you read it) go on to Weis and Hickmans' "Great repair on Rabes trajedy" Dragons of the Fallen Sun. This book basically points out that the New age stories are a Crock of bull and trys to repair the damage done by the butcher of Dragonlance Jean Rabe. Dont spend your money on this book. Stay with the Legends wies And hickman.

This was the first dragonlance book I ever read. I have been playing d&d for a while and some of my fellow adventurers talked about how great the dragonlance series was. So I went a local used book store and looked for some dragonlance books. I'm not sure what possesed me, but somehow I saw this book above the others and decided to take it home. Believe it or not, from now on this got me hooked on the dragonlance series. Since the book was used, there a few notes in it(such at Rabe saying ther was only one tower of high sorcery). At the time I didnt know what it meant and just thought it was funny.

After reading this book a couple of times and comparing it too my newly bought chronicles series, I can tell that Rabe is not the best author. She never really went in depth with the characters, and before you knew them, they just died, sometimes stupidly. And, she obviously does not know too much about Krynn geography.

The one thing that saves this book from a 1-star rating are the dragons. I always have been facinated by them, and now they have personalities and agendas of their own. They are really great.

With all that in consideration, I give this book a 3-star. I will go buy the other two books since I HATE cliffhangers on books. I will also be buying the Preludes volumes since they have the stories about the "companions" during that five years. Have a good day all.

Initially, I was glad to see that the DL dynasty would not die with "Dragons of Summer Flame," but now I think the series should have ended there. Instead, we have been left with an airport novel which tries to borrow from Classical literature (gee, I think I've seen that tempest scene a few dozen times), but instead becomes quite dull. Rabe's writing is pedestrian and lacks the oomph that other writers lent to the series. The book is readable, but never conveys the background of despair against which this story is set.

I know I submitted a review a few days ago. But I was in a rush, so it did not come anywhere close to expressing how I feel about this book.

This book could have been great. It does have a decent plot. The problem was that it focused too much on the plot (and even that was too rushed), instead of going into detail about all the new changes of the world, the characters, and most important of all, their emotions. The kind of emotions that reach out beyond the pages and make the reader feel them too.

It reminds me of a game of roleplaying. Sure you can give the character as much background as you like. You can create plots in which the character will act a certain way. But without the person playing the character and giving it life and personality, there are no real emotions. There is nothing.

I'll quote Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, cause mabey they said it best. "The most important part of the DRAGONLANCE Saga for us has been it's characters and their realationship with one another. Strange fantasy worlds are interesting but, without people that we care for and about, they have no life." This statement is found in the DragonLance Chronicles collector's edition.

I am not looking foreward to reading The Day of the Tempest, or The Eve of the Malestrom. The sad truth is that I have to. All of us who are devoted to DragonLance won't be able to help from it. No-matter what the reviews say, no-matter how much we know for ourselves that these are the worst DragonLance books ever, we all will have to suffer through the depressing destruction of our beloved world of Krynn.

Jean Rabe overlooks every aspect that made us fall in love with Krynn in the first place, so in essence she is destroying it.

Characters were unoriginal. Oh my gosh! Dhamon is a knight of Takhisis, what a surprise!?!? The kender was a poor man's Tasslehoff. The pirates?? disgusting characters..really..which cause you to sometimes think you're watching an episode of Hercules: the Legendary Journeys. Also, Palin was a complete and utter disappointment. He was supposed to be such a great character but became nothing more than a peon in the 5th Age. All the characters were poorly developed, cliche and boring. Rabe tries to make the characters unique like the kender with the glove, but doesn't succeed at all. Where's Raistlin, Tanis and Sturm when you need them? The plot is dreadful and boring. Even Weiss and Hickman's Chronicles weren't that great, they were interesting at least with characters such as Raistlin. But 5th Age? Give it a try, but dont' expect another Dragons of Autumn Twilight

What can i say. the book has its good points, one thing that really disturbed me though was that the kender was nothing like it should be. They seemed to skip about 6 books that should explain about how magic came back into the world and i'd like to here a little more depth in the characters, the author is rushing it too much maybe if the triliogy was 6 books she could have written it well. over all this book decently explained a few points that i was missing, although a little more detail would have been appreciated

I read this and I was disapointed, the feel was wrong Palin was wrong and the Kender were wrong. Jean Rabe is not a bad auther but she shouldn't have tried to follow from weis and hickman. There are some good points to this book and all dragonlance fans should read it and the rest of the series, just to keep up to date with the world of krynn.