I think I’ve mentioned that I read books. Fantasy books. Well it has to be said that the best books I’ve read if you want vicious, cunning, magical dragons who sleep on piles of gold for preference are those of the Dragonlance Saga by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman (and then continued by various others). These are superb books with many interesting characters, loads of dragons and quite a lot of magic. There is however a disappointing and unfortunate lack of shrubberies. Nor are there any dangerous balms (vicious animals so I’ve heard). Weis and Hickman produced six books in two trilogies and a load of novellas. They then ended the saga with a final book which kind of changes the whole of their world, a place called Krynn. There are now more books being written in the new age, after the devastating Chaos War.

The first trilogy is The Dragonlance Chronicles. These three are Dragons of Autumn Twilight, Dragons of Winter Night and Dragons of Spring Dawning. The best character is Raistlin.

The second trilogy is The Dragonlance Legends. These three are Time of the Twins, War of the Twins and Test of the Twins. These focus on two of the main characters of Chronicles and are very good. The best character is Dalamar. . . closely followed by Raistlin.

If you like those then the novellas are also pretty good, they just add a bit more flesh to Krynn and to the characters and introduce a little intrigue (e.g. "Raistlin’s Daughter").

If you really like Krynn, as I do, don’t read the fourth book in the Dragonlance Chronicles "trilogy", at least not until you've read everything based in the Fourth Age. Clearly this was written a few years after the first three, hence Chronicles being known as a trilogy. This is a good book, but it completely destroys Krynn as we know it: there are such fundamental changes during the war it describes that Krynn just isn’t the same evermore. This is Dragons of Summer Flame and if you’ve read all the short stories and the two original trilogies and come to know and love Krynn then this one’ll come as a bit of a shock. I’ll leave it at that: I wouldn’t want to spoil it for you who want to read it.

Here are a few Drangonlance pictures, most (but not all) by Larry Elmore, I found on an excellent site here, and also on Elmore's own site here. I praise these artists - I think the works are excellent.

A warning though - these files are pretty big so please be patient if you wish to view the full size version

	A picture of a few of the Dragonlance characters		A picture of "The Companions" or the "Heroes of the Lance"		A Flying Citadel - a Dragonarmy siege engine
	Laurana standing over the body of her friend Sturm		The evil mages Fistandantilus and Raistlin		Steel, Palin, Usha and Tas in a scene from Dragons of Summer Flame
	Kitiara riding her dragon, Skie, about to kill Sturm		The deathknight Lord Soth, Knight of the Black Rose		Steel and the shade of Kitiara - his mother.
	Raistlin's apprentice, Dalamar, and a battle-weary Kitiara		The evil mage Raistlin and the good priest Crysania

Well, that’s my bit about dragons. I feel obliged to mention the newsgroup alt.fan.dragonlance. This is where all manner of Dragonlance related arguments occur, myself sometimes involved, and is a good source of information on all things Dragonlance. Authors of some of the books and staff of TSR are known to read this newsgroup and put in an occasional comment too.