The Dragon Isles: Crossroads [Mass Market Paperback]

Stephen D. Sullivan (Author)

Book Description

Series: Crossroads | Publication Date: December 1, 2002

The Dragon Isles: abandoned home of the good dragons, land of amazing adventure and legendary treasure. The trouble is, no one knows how to get there.

Now Mikal Vardan and his crew have found the hidden route, but they’re not the only ones interested in the isles. A beautiful sea elf scavenger thinks the wealth of a lost civilization might be worth killing for, and a menacing sea dragon is determined to bring a reign of terror to the peaceful archipelago.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Stephen D. Sullivan is an author, artist, and designer. Sullivan's most recent titles for Wizards of the Coast, Inc. are the Legend of the Five Rings (tm) titles The Scorpion, The Phoenix, and The Lion.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Wizards of the Coast (December 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786928271
• ISBN-13: 978-0786928279
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 4.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #934,001 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

www.stephendsullivan.com - Adventure guaranteed. (Monsters optional.)

I was born in 1959 in Illinois, grew up in Massachusetts, attended SMU (U. Mass, Dartmouth), and moved to Wisconsin to work for TSR (the Dungeons & Dragons people) in 1980.

I've been in Wisconsin ever since, writing stories, drawing, and raising kids with my wife (who I've been with since 1980 as well).

I've had more than 30 books published (counting the anthologies and the ghost-written stuff not listed by name on Amazon). I've also been involved with more comic books and games than I can either list or remember. (More than 30 years in publishing will do that to you.) Projects I've worked on include D&D, Iron Man, Dragonlance, Spider Riders, Fantastic 4, Star Wars, Speed Racer, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Thunderbirds, The Simpsons, Darkwing Duck, The Twilight Empire, the Blue Kingdoms (with co-creator Jean Rabe), and many, many more.

I am co-creator and co-host of Uncanny Radio, a program dedicated to the strange and supernatural, with my friend Linda Godfrey. Though original over-the air broadcasts have ended, UR can still be heard in repeats online at www.uncannyworld.com.

After a brief stint doing in the "real world," I'm now back to creating fantasy and adventure stories (and art) full time. I've even started putting stories -- both original and reprints -- up for Kindle and other ebook readers.

More information about me and my projects can be found at my personal web site, where you can sign up for my FREE newsletter (with valuable info, tips, and freebies). Head right over to www.stephendsullivan.com and sign up now!

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Where Sharks Hold Court and Sailors Sleep, December 20, 2002

By 

Richard Raley "The King Henry Tapes" (California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Dragon Isles: Crossroads (Mass Market Paperback)

I don't know whom over at Wizards of the Coast, whether it was editor, publisher, or the author of this novel; but whoever plotted the Dragon Isles out came up with what I would imagine would be an extremely difficult story to write. And working on his first DL novel, Stephen D. Sullivan does an amazing job with that story. This one really surprised me with how good it was, I must admit I wasn't expecting much out of what I thought would be a boring mariner's tale.

Well it was a mariner's tale, all of this novel either takes place on a ship, under the water, or a few brief trips to port cites. However Sullivan nicely pulls this off without making it boring and does not rehash the fact that the characters are under the water, making into a central description device. Instead of tying it like an anchor around the plot-line and the story's development he uses it as a sail into the unknown.

This novel also got back to the core of fantasy and the Dragonlance shared world, with use of an ancient prophecy guiding the treasure finders, and the return of a dragon as our main villain. The sea dragon Tempest is an excellent villain, powerful, different than what we have seen before in other Dragonlance villains, and actually evil, always a plus.

The heroes are well thought out for a 300 pager like this novel as well. You have a roguish sea captain, a beautiful sea elf, a mysterious bronze armored knight, and a kender that all add something to the adventure, plus no complaining, they are always on the up. The Dragon Isles includes amazing location, some humor, plenty of action, a couple different plot-twists that are pretty good, and is even nicely broken into three labeled parts. Each part has a different tone and you can tell the action slowly increases until it is at a very high tempo in part three.

Only downside is that it was really a difficult story and sometimes it strains Sullivan. At a few points he has characters do things that would be almost impossible in water and what not, but other than that I think this is a really good first outing, I hope Wizards of the Coast has Sullivan writing plenty more Dragonlance novels.

Final Thought: Sullivan may be a squire under the sea, but with his legs set firmly upon the ground he'd be a Knight. Pick this one up for your Dragonlance fix!

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Pretty good <shrug>, September 22, 2003

By 

Keith Tokash "twigles" (Laguna Niguel, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Dragon Isles: Crossroads (Mass Market Paperback)

This story had a decent plot but nothing special. Some things were revealed to the characters at the end that I thought would have been obvious along the way but whatever. The character development was alright too. I cared somewhat for the main ppl but the only one I truly liked a lot was Shimmer. The kender was fun too, and it was neat to see a kender at sea.

My main beef was the indestructible syndrome that the protagonist party seemed to have. I'm not saying that none die (and I'm not saying that any *do* either), but they faced overwhelming odds more than a couple times and it just seemed like they survived on a massive dosage of good luck, almost as bad as the 5th age Jean Rabe stuff where the heros take out an entire boat of knights and scrape their shins or something. Especially since the main antagonist in this book is a massive evil sea dragon.

The sea dragon thing was interesting since they were hinted at in the original Dragonlance trilogy (when Tanis gets saved by the sea elves), but that whole storyline went completely unexplored, and instead we got to follow some ppl around on a treasure hunt. Don't get me wrong, it was interesting to learn about the Dragon Isles of lore, but the sea dragon storyline has *so much* potential. Hopefully we'll get a Richard Knack or someone to flush that out.

Overall I'm not sure that this book is worth the 7 clams I paid, but it was entertaining. If you see it for 4, I'd grab it, maybe even 5.