Dragons of Winter Night (1985)

Written By: Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman
Published By: TSR, Inc. / Wizards of the Coast

Dragons of Winter Night is the second novel in the DragonLance Chronicles Trilogy, based on a Dungeons and Dragons campaign setting of the same name, that lays the foundation for all subsequent books to follow in that canon.  It takes place on the wildly racist world of Krynn during the winter time and chronicles the events of the War of the Lance as seen through the eyes of a vast array of characters who would later become known as the Heroes of the Lance.  Its plot revolves around the recovery of legendary artifacts known as Dragon Orbs, held fast in the clutches of evil, and returning them to the forces of good to combat said forces of evil.  As the heroes’ journey progresses, what is good and what is evil becomes a lot more unclear as their faith in society ‘doing the right thing’ with the Orbs is repeatedly called into question.

This novel is a quite the improvement over its predecessor, Dragons of Autumn Twilight, which suffered almost mercilessly with a cast not wholly unlike the D&D character sheets they were developed against.  While these cardboard cutouts have returned to the frontlines of this grand adventure, their simplicity has been remarkably subdued.  No longer are characters making purely awful and frustrating decisions because they are bound to the chaotic-neutral-good rating on a piece of paper somewhere–written in black and white–but now they are making choices while considering more realistic consequences sometimes.  Additionally, the large band of companions that has formed over the course of the novel’s predecessor is separated into two distinct groups for most of the novel’s duration, a much welcomed decision that allows for potentially overlooked characters to really stand out.

The blurring of black and white into various shades of grey could very well be the theme that holds this novel together: that no matter how good or evil or lawful or chaotic you are, ultimately there is someone out there that just doesn’t give a crap about you or your rules.  Sturm Brightblade, one of the most rigorously lawful, boring, and plain of the Heroes, summarizes this quite nicely when he tells Laurana The Hottest Elfmaid Ever, “I don’t know what to believe anymore.  Everything used to be black and white for me, all things clear-cut and well-defined.  I believed in the story of Huma.  My mother taught it to me as truth.  Then I went to Solamnia.”  This is a response to seeing the Order of Knights to which he fervently aspires showing its true colors of corruption and betrayal in spite of (or perhaps because of) having a strict moral code of laws designed to prevent such corruption from happening in the first place.  As the plot progresses, the other characters make similar discoveries about their own situations, and suddenly there is some tension and emotional stake that coalesces comfortably and almost organically by the conclusion of the novel.

That being said, there is still something frustrating about the characters and the way they are written.  There is a strange bipolar tendency resident in these characters where on one page they would steel their resolve and overcome completely insurmountable odds, but then crumple in the face of a far lesser threat on the next.  Laurana the Hottest Elfmaid Ever is the best example here as she is repeatedly subjugated by yearnings of her man (Tanis the Half-Elf) to ride in and whisk her and her friends out of danger in spite of proving herself repeatedly to be a formidable warrior in her own right.  In one particular sequence, she even goes so far as to relinquish complete control over her assets, including the highly coveted Dragon Orb that she had won in combat herself, due entirely to her womanly station in the elven kingdom where women should do nothing but cook and clean for the men who make the real decisions.  My issue with this sequence is that she hadn’t seen her elven relatives for months, was treated like complete and total ass when she returned (by this time her father had disowned her altogether), and was still overcome with regret and internal turmoil when she finally escaped.  Being that this is a pivotal point of her development as a character, perhaps that assessment is unfair;  but there are other, smaller, instances where characters would bicker among themselves but dissipate their tension through an awkward embrace or bizarre gesture not befitting their temperament or the situation.  The topic of love between characters is also brought up, and is so unwieldy that it makes me uncomfortable to even think about.  So I’m not going to.

So the conclusion is that the characters of the heroes are still rough around the edges.  This does not mean that Dragons of Winter Night is altogether a terrible rag, though.  At its heart, this is a novel about adventures in foreign lands, abundant with scenery that is thought-provoking and inspired.  Whole chapters are devoted to the detailed lore that really helps bring the world of Krynn to life, whether it is a description of an ancient coastal town landlocked by changes wrought by an ancient cataclysm, or an explanation about why a mountain filled with gnomes is known simply as Mount Nevermind.  Krynn is filled with tons of places to go and tons of places to see, and the characters get to plunge right into the thick of all of it, navigating briskly from one set piece to the next.  It is truly a world of boundless wonder and beauty, and the authors spare no expense when it comes to sharing the intricacies of this incredibly complicated world abundant with enchantment.  No matter how you feel about the Heroes of the Lance, it becomes clear that this is a world so loaded with beauty and purpose that you kind of hope that it does not get completely destroyed because of all this potential; you are certainly led to believe that you have barely scratched the surface at any rate.  That alone is what makes Dragons of Winter Night, and the DragonLance series in general, worth the effort.

B

Choice Passages:

“After a time, order was restored in Tarsis. The lord and his family established a new army. But much was changed. The people believed the ancient gods they had worshiped for so long had turned away from them. They found new gods to worship, even though these new gods rarely answered prayers. All clerical powers that had been present in the land before the Cataclysm were lost. Clerics with false promises and false hopes proliferated. Charlatan healers walked the land, selling their phony cure-alls.”

“Flame filled the street; the screams of the dying were heart-rending.”

“‘If it be hers,’ the Speaker said in a voice older than his hundreds of years, ‘then it is mine by right. For she is not of age, what is hers is mine, since I am her father. That is elven law and dwarven law, too, if I’m not mistaken.'”

“‘Please, Caramon,’ she whispered.  ‘This is torture.  We want each other.  I’m not afraid.  Please love me!’ … ‘No,’ he said, his passion choking him.  Rolling over, he stood up.  ‘No,’ he repeated.  ‘I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to-to let things get this far.'”