Dragons of Autumn Twilight; Dragons of Winter Night; Dragons of Spring Dawning, Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman
There seems to now be a bias against the fantasy trilogy. Opinions vary about why this is, but one of the items most frequently cited is the popularity of the DragonLance trilogy and its many imitators. Media tie-in fantasy is seen as replacing the quality fiction that came before. After reading this trilogy, my opinion differs only slightly. Weis and Hickman are adequate writers, but they are working within the constraints of a preset world.
The plot in this trilogy is quite typical of something based on a role-playing game: a bunch of adventurers looking for stuff to defeat evil. What makes this plot original is the way details are handled within a novel; some of these things are present, but others are stereotypical of the genre.
What does make this book different than most? Not much, but the things that do are quite extraordinary. For one, the makeup of the adventuring party is original; it's made up of people from the same hometown who fall into being heroes. They have to escape from the ever-present Evil Forces and only then become adventurers. Another thing that makes this book different are the cute touches, the most memorable being the Gnomish engineers.
The most important creation, however, is the character of Raistlin. He is a character with no clear allegiances and no fixed opinions. This makes for interesting interactions with other characters and a lot of thinking on the reader's part.
Bad parts of the trilogy completely counteract the originality. There are too many gaps in the plotline, as if the authors had decided, "Hey, this junk is boring; let's cut to the chase," without realizing that the journey that leads up to the action is just as valuable as the action. The interesting and likeable characters aren't active enough in the plot, and it becomes easy for the characters to degenerate into stereotypes. One of the wizards, for instance, seems to be a direct copy of the Merlin character in the Disney adaptation of The Sword in the Stone. This even affects the most original character in the book, Raistlin; the character does evolve, but in a way that I considered cheap and an easy copout. We aren't given clear reasons for the change, and thus the change does not work.
I really wish that the authors could redo this trilogy right: without sticking to the guidelines of the game world and the tiny boxes this put the main characters into. After all, the first book was a delight. Unfortunately, it was followed by two more.
All in all, this trilogy appears to be aimed at the under-14 set. At 20, when I've been reading various pieces of generic fantasy since 1987 or so, it becomes tiresome.