Review of Bones of the Dragon

I also heard about this one courtesy of the library's newsletter. As teenagers, my brother and I were obsessed with the Dragonlance series. Those characters loomed larger than life in our imaginations. Raistlin was just so scary and complex and cool, Sturm was so noble, Kitiara such a bad girl, Tanis so tortured. Anyway, I've read this author team's other books, but haven't loved them in quite the same way. Still, I thought I'd give this one a try.

I actually thought it might be set in the same world as the Dragonlance series, but I was glad to find out it's in a new world altogether. The people seem to be some sort of Native American/Viking hybrid (heavy on the Viking). It has an interesting premise for a fantasy novel with pretty conventional themes in general: The gods are battling with a new set of gods, and the old gods are losing. This throws the worshippers of the old gods into some disarray, as you might imagine. Other than that, as mentioned, the themes are pretty typical: young warrior, brawny and handsome but not so into thinking before he acts, meaning his brash actions get him into a lot of trouble. His best friend, the smart one, who tempers some of the dumb stuff. The love interest, who has no interest in the warrior but instead prefers the smart one. The two keep their mouths shut because they don't want to hurt their friend, but of course it comes out in the end.

And of course there is a quest: to retrieve a sacred torque from the ogres, who are worshippers of the new set of gods. We don't get to the end of that quest in this book (clearly this is meant to be at least a trilogy), but some interesting stuff does happen along the way.

While not entirely original, the writing is decent, and it kept me interested (I actually finished it in just a few days, which is always a good sign...it means I wanted to keep reading!). So, I'll probably check out the sequels too. Still, no match for Dragonlance, which is probably better in my mind than it is in reality...but some things make a big impact when you're a teen!