Series: Dragonlance Chronicles Vol. 2
This is quite a good sequel to the first book in the series, and it actually addresses some of the problems I pointed out in my review for Dragons of Autumn Twilight. Not in a completely satisfactory way but at least we have a secondary character which is not white, and is a good guy: the blacksmith who creates the dragonlances Theros. The part of the women here is also enhanced, Laurana comes into her own as a warrior and a leader of people and we finally get the very foreshadowed Kitiara who is very much in control of her situation.
Kitiara is an interesting character and even if she is in the part of a villain she comes across as a woman who is sexually liberated, who get what she wants when she wants it, and who is the equal or superior to any man she meets. Her story will surely be more developed in the conclusion to this, but she is a three-dimensional female villain, which is actually a rare thing in any kind of fiction. She is working for the wrong side but it is hard to tell if she is truly evil, she comes across as self-serving but not unnecessarily cruel, and unlike most other female villains in fiction none of her evil comes from being too emotional or hysterical, and that is actually quite refreshing. That being said there was little of Kitiara in this volume, but it bodes well for the series as a whole.
In terms of the more general story, now that the characters have mostly been introduced in the first volume we can get down to brass-tacks and into the action, and this volume is packed with it, leading to a final confrontation with a real emotional punch when one of the leading characters bites it. In the long tradition of second installments in a trilogy, it ends in a downbeat, everyone is sad, things look bleak and the third volume will have to solve that, very much an Empire Strikes Back ending here.
TL;DR: 8/10 Really Fun
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