Great Collection

I've been a Dragonlance fans for years but tended to avoid the short stories. Recently I've decided to make my way through the many short story anthologies, with preference given to ones written by Weis & Hickman. I enjoy some of the other DL contributors (Knaak, Niles, Pierson, etc.) but Weis & Hickman are in their own category.

As you may be aware its been some time since a new Dragonlance novel has been published (around 2010 I believe) and many of them are out of print. This makes getting some of the anthologies a challenge. Some are available in Kindle, some in audiobook format, others only in print through second hand stores. If you are only after one or two stories per anthology then that is a fair amount of searching to do and in some cases money to spend. Fortunately this anthology has compiled many of their stories, including ones like The Players of Gilean that was exclusively in, and the only unique addition to, The Best of Tales Volume One. As the subtitle implies, some of their stories cowritten with others (i.e. the Kang ones written by Weis & Perrin) are not here and I believe Raistlin and the Knight of Solamnia is absent too but there are enough to make this worthwhile, especially if you are after the Weis & Hickman stories specifically as I was.

The book itself is good. Like any short story collection, some are demonstrably better than ones. I would say none of them are bad and of course everyone has different tastes. The two that stood out for me were Silken Threads and True Knight. Honestly I wish I had read these years ago. The two can be read back to back, and probably should be as True Knight is a continuation of Silken Threads and has the same major characters. Their combined length is a longer novella, or shorter novel and both are in the truest Dragonlance tradition. The narrator has a good voice but is a bit slow in parts; nothing that 1.25x speed can't solve though.

There are interviews with other Dragonlance authors, TSR/Wizards of the Coast employees, and one at the end with Weis & Hickman that add a great deal of context to the stories and how they were initially developed. I originally planned to skip these and am glad I did not. They are worth listening to and some of the personal stories are quite moving. Overall, I'd say if you are fan of the Dragonlance universe this is an excellent addition to the collection.

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