The Dawning of a New Age

I'm not a fan of those ubiquitous Fabio on the cover romance novels, and this is as close to one as I plan to get. On the whole, it's not bad, well written and a good story, but Jean Rabe is obviously of the female persuasion. That comes through with all the spontaneous arm grabbing and kissing, as well as her stoic lead warrior Dhamon. 'I only believe in things that are real, like my sword," black leather pants wearing, flowing blond hair with rippling muscles, and even an embroidered shirt with poofy sleeves, which he takes any and every chance to rip off and flex his gleaming rippling muscles.

Reading this book, and I presume the whole series, is like reading a fair to middling Dragonlance tale with an occasional Danielle Steele page show more thrown in. Of course, the real star of the book is Feril, a druid-like (at least D&D druid-like) super sexy wood-elf babe (a Kagonesti, for those that demand technical accuracy) that always saves the day with her powerful and inventive nature magic. Part of the storyline is that the gods have all abandoned Krynn after the Chaos War, taking all of the magic with them, which was the subject of Dragons of Summer Flame. There is a review in my prior thread. In fact, this book starts off right at the end of DoSF. Right after. Then, within a few chapters, huge dragons have taken over the entire realm and have spent thirty years terraforming the land to their tastes, killing off most of the mass of dragons to aquire their powers and enslaving the people. That takes some of the charm out of it for me, as I liked the old Krynn, the one that has been in my mind since the late 80's. This trilogy is also the link between the old Weis & Hickman classics and their new Fifth Age trilogy, so I have to suffer through it. I started Dragons of a Lost Moon or whatever that series starts with and was instantly lost. That's how I found out there were remedial requirements.

The bulk of the book (and series) sets Dhamon, Feril, Rig the sea captain, Jaster, who is the nephew of Flint Fireforge, and an ubiquitous kender, along with Palin Majere, against the few remaining dragon overlords. Palin is the son of Caramon and nephew of Raistlin, refer back to my old thread through the link at the top of the page or just check out wikipedia's DragonLance page if you care.

How much of the story here is Mrs. Rabe's and how much is from TSR/Weis and Hickman might make for an interesting debate. My bet goes on her having been given an outline from an editorial staff and she fleshed it out into a novel. That's how TSR has always worked, except that almost all of the authors were heavily involved in setting up the game worlds (TSR is the old publisher and creator of Dungeons and Dragons-Thanks Gary Gygax for the decades of fun). They would sit around and role-play several versions of a story and pick the parts they liked best and make up the rest. Much of the huge output of TSR was at least pretty good, but some was awful. This ranks well above the awful, but well below the best. Douglas Niles is consistently good, as is R.A. Salvatore and W&H, but some are so bad that I found them unreadable. Azure Bonds was so bad that I couldn't read the rest of the Finder's Stone trilogy, which was a very early Forgotten Realms series, maybe its first crappy one. There would be more, but in general I think the TSR books are good. For a scathing review of a total dud, check out my review of Once Around the Realms. It's the first of the two. show less

... ma non ci sono riuscito. A 13 anni da "I draghi dell'estate di fuoco" ho voluto continuare il discorso dove l'avevo lasciato. Sono arrivato a metà, ma non ce l'ho fatta.
L'idea di base è carina (anche se immagino sia stata realizzata sotto precise direttive della TSR), ma personaggi insulsi e enormi buchi logici (come anche la solenne buffonata del concilio dei maghi) mi hanno allontanato sempre più dalla storia.
Magari salterò direttamente alla Guerra delle Anime.

The Dawning of a New Age is the first book in "The Fifth Age" series in the Dragonlance Universe. This is my first experience with books: a) not written by Weis and Hickman and b) outside of the "classic" series of the books. My response: average. The story contained all of the requisite swordplay, magic and intrigue, but let's face it, Dhamon does not as of yet have the breadth of a character like Sturm, Tanis or Caramon.

The Dragonlance series is my siren song. If I am looking for a book to get lost in I frequently turn to the Dragonlance series and this book did provide everything I needed to fuel my addiction. However, if you are new to this world stick the true masters of the realm: Weis & Hickman.

This book didn't click for me. Maybe I shouldn't have read Dawn of Summer Flame right before reading The Dawning of a New Age. Seems to me, that only a few authors can really capture the Dragonlance universe.

This book did start to take off near the end, so hopefully the second and third book in this series are better than the first.

Not a great book but maybe a good beginning for the series. Good character build and a couple twists. Way better than the 1/2 star that "robinchristine" gave it. Looking forward to reading book two “The Day Of The Tempest.”

Meh.

Los dioses se han desvanecido y la magia se ha debilitado hasta casi desaparecer de Krynn. Es la Era de los Mortales, pero también es la Era de los Dragones, más grandes y poderosos que nunca. Arrasan pueblos, esclavizan a sus gentes y se proclaman señores supremos de Ansalon. Goldmoon, miembro del grupo original de los Compañeros, no se da por vencida y busca nuevos héroes que desafíen a los dragones. Un hombre atormentado responde a su llamada, y a él se unen una hermosa kalanesti, un enano apellidado Fireforge, un arrojado marinero de piel negra y su compañera (un semiogro), un lobo rojo y, cómo no, un par de kenders. Todos ellos deben reunirse en Refugio Solitario con un mago llamado Palin Majere.