Dragons of Deceit by Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman

(Del Rey, 2022)

Reviewed by John Dodd

I never read the Dragonlance books when they first came out…

I’m getting that out of the way before I say anything else, because anyone who knows me will think that I was one of the people who read and reread Dragonlance till it was ingrained in my campaigns, and the simple truth is, it wasn’t.

I came to this with no preconceptions, no vast enjoyment of previous books to colour my experience of the world, no expectation of seeing beloved characters from my childhood. I came to this as a newbie to the Dragonlance novels, hoping to find a story that would perhaps inspire me to go back and read all the other books.

The book starts with the story of Destina Rosethorn, and visions of Dragons in the Lees, a dire prediction and warning of all the bad things that will come to pass. When her father is lost in battle, Destina resolves to find a legendary artifact and use its power to change the past and rescue her father from his fate.

At this point, the book becomes a quest to find a legendary item, and without putting much in for you to want to care about Destina, who is so obsessed with what she wants to do that she several times acts in a way that makes you consider that here, in fact, is not the hero that you were looking for. She lies, tricks, and sneaks her way to get what she wants, not in the sense of being desperate enough to make those sorts of bad choices, but because she sees them as the best course of action to get what she needs. What follows for a good two thirds of the book is an item hunt, where you learn that the item in question is in the possession of one Tasslehoff Burrfoot, and so Destina resolves to find him and get it from him.

Tricking one of the original and beloved characters into thinking they are married and using magical items to influence their behaviour is not the action of a hero, no matter how desperate the circumstance. I don’t know the original characters, so it could be that this happened all the time, but it’s not how I’ve heard those stories spoken of.

Where things improve is in the last third of the book, where time travel does come into play and the story moves to a time when all those who were a part of the first books are still alive. In the present day, this means that the keeper of souls suddenly finds themselves asking where souls that should be with them have gone. At this point, nothing is certain, and the stakes could not be higher as Destina begins to realise the nature of what she’s done and also that it may be too late for her to do anything about it.

This is where the storytelling that I’ve heard of comes in, with wide reaching ideas that affect the nature and balance of the world being brought to bear and the certainty of yesterday becoming the uncertainty of tomorrow. It’s here that the stakes are found, and the story kicks into high gear, placing not only all that has been found in this book into uncertainty, but also everything that went before in every book that was written. A very bold move and one that will no doubt not bring everyone joy, particularly those who were invested heavily in how the original books ended up.

It does take a while to get going, but once it does get going, it’s superb storytelling. Given that this is part one of a trilogy, and given that it’s Dragonlance, so there’s no chance that the remaining two books will be cancelled due to the popularity of the original series, this is worth taking a chance on, particularly if the books to come pick up where this one ended up running.

Review from BSFA Review 20 - Download your copy here.