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A review by benlundns
Bones of the Dragon by Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman
2.0
This book caught my eye as I was wandering through my library. I really liked the Dragonlance books as a young pre-teen. Fantasy wasn't cool yet, and these books were something I hadn't encountered before. Throughout the years I have caught onto other series by them, the Starshield books, the Deathgate cycle and so on. When I found this book I thought 'why not, I've gone along with them this long.'
The problem with writing for so long and so many books is that you find a certain way of doing things, and a lot of tropes evident in earlier books are present here as well. Weis and Hickman like creating characters that are DEEPLY flawed. This allows them to undergo a transformation of character or 'come to a realization' later or throughout the book. Almost all the characters have that quality, with the exception of maybe two people. I hoped at one time or another, that someone I was reading about would fall off a boat and get eaten by a shark. (Spoiler: No one gets eaten by a shark).
Also, not a lot happens. Everyone gets on a boat, and you think they are finally going to leave and get on with the story, and they end up coming back home. Then they have to travel somewhere and you think "NOW there're on their way" and they come back home. When they finally seem like they are getting somewhere...it's the end of the book.
The reason it gets two stars is because despite all it's tropes and false starts, at the core is a halfway decent story. You can see where the authors want to get to, it just seems like they took the most meandering, convoluted route to get there. I probably will pick up the second book at some point to see what happens to everyone, but it's not at the top of my to read list. A story is there, it's just not meaty enough for me to sink a weekend into.
The problem with writing for so long and so many books is that you find a certain way of doing things, and a lot of tropes evident in earlier books are present here as well. Weis and Hickman like creating characters that are DEEPLY flawed. This allows them to undergo a transformation of character or 'come to a realization' later or throughout the book. Almost all the characters have that quality, with the exception of maybe two people. I hoped at one time or another, that someone I was reading about would fall off a boat and get eaten by a shark. (Spoiler: No one gets eaten by a shark).
Also, not a lot happens. Everyone gets on a boat, and you think they are finally going to leave and get on with the story, and they end up coming back home. Then they have to travel somewhere and you think "NOW there're on their way" and they come back home. When they finally seem like they are getting somewhere...it's the end of the book.
The reason it gets two stars is because despite all it's tropes and false starts, at the core is a halfway decent story. You can see where the authors want to get to, it just seems like they took the most meandering, convoluted route to get there. I probably will pick up the second book at some point to see what happens to everyone, but it's not at the top of my to read list. A story is there, it's just not meaty enough for me to sink a weekend into.