Summer Flame Donezo

Indeed I finished DoSF last week, admittedly I was disappointed by the ending. I get the impression Weis & Hickman kind of wrote themselves into a corner trying to make it bigger and better than Chronicles. Their strength lies in the build-up and the gradual exposition, creating tensions and atmosphere. That's why the trilogies work so well, because it takes them three books and 1200 pages to get the point out. DoSF packed three books worth of material into just one book.

That said, the parts of DoSF that I liked were the best parts in the whole series that I've read. When the book was written in 1995, the company that owned DragonLance was going through some major changes of their own, as I gather. My purely unscientific explanation of the situation involves Weis & Hickman being asked to write a novel that will "drastically" overhaul the world of Krynn to make way for all sorts of new books and products in an attempt to sell the concept to a wider audience.

In any case I still enjoyed it thoroughly and it marks the perfect break point for me. I've found two non-fantasy novels to start up, but I still want suggestions from anyone who has a book to recommend me.

I bought a horror novel at a used bookstore in Vermont called Exquisite Corpse, which looks pretty cool, it has an American Psycho sort-of theme to it. And also I'll be bringing Zen and the Art of Motorcycle maintenance with me way out west.

Keep the comments coming! AHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAA

Dragons of a Summer Flame

Summer Flame I think is my favorite DragonLance book so far; is that lame? Its kind of like saying Return of the King is your favorite LotR book. I mean, you obviously read all the previous books, if you hadn't, this book would make no sense at all. So is it really your favorite? Or is it just the culmination of all the things you loved about everything that you've read previously. I guess I would have to go with the latter. Considering that as I read them, each book became my new favorite. Then again, now that I've finished them I can choose which previous books in the series I liked more than others. So I guess I'll recant my judgement until I'm actually finished with Summer Flame... although I'm pretty damn close.

I love having a hardcover book. Those softcovers are like the size of your palm, with print the size of a beetle's toenail. You have to bend them into the 4th dimension just to get a decent vantage point, or allow light particles to reach the page. My hardcover (which I obtained for 75 cents thanks to half.com... though I would have gladly paid $1.50 for it) is nice and tall, with stark white pages and text size rivalling the 'large print' versions of Readers Digest my grandpa used to read. I've smoked through this book, I've got about 110 pages left. Happy to know I'll have it finished before I take my trip in the very near future.

Which brings me to my next subject. The last 9 books I've read were DragonLance, and I'm going to take a break. Conveniently DosF is a book that marks an ending and a new beginning for the DragonLance saga, so it will be the perfect time to put my campaign on hiatus. I think I'm going to take a break from the fantasy genre altogether. I emplore you to recommend me something. Don't be shy. Go on now, click the comments link right below. I like books by Kurt Vonnegut, Chuck Palanuik (sp.. don't feel like looking it up) Douglas Adams... Philosphy/Satire with a hint of boorish, lewd humor. Or something completely different, you choose...