I must admit that i am quite new to this, but still curious! Is there any correct order of reading the books? If such an order exists, it would of course be too much to list it here, but maybe someone could give me a link?
Jan
Though chronologically the books (counting only those written by Weis and Hickman) begin with soulforge, I recommend reading them in this order:
Thus:
Chronicles Trilogy (Dragons of Autumn Twilight, Winter Night and Spring Dawining)
Legends Trilogy (Time of the Twins, War of the Twins, Test of the Twins)
Dragons of Summer flame
Then the Prequels
Soulforge
Brothers in Arms
Then
War of Souls trilogy (Dragons of a Fallen Sun,Dragons of a Lost Star,Dragons of
a Vanished Moon)
then if you wish, you can read the lost chronicles trilogy, set between the original chronicles trilogy. You don't have to read them but Dragons of the Hourglass Mage is quite cool.
Hope I helped!
You forgot The Second Generation. :P Well, I know it's just a collection of short stories and not really a "book", but I think it's worth reading anyway. (It's set after Legends but before Dragons of Summer Flame.)
shareand don't skip The Soulforge, you'll regret it.
shareThank you very much for your kind help! Earlier or later than your help…I can’t remember…someone else on another page suggested another way of reading the books, beginning with “Chronicles” as you can see below, and ending with “Kingpriest Trilogy”, where the rest is in no order.
However I found a series of 6 books called “forhistorier” in Danish, meaning something like “prestories”. Since I am Danish, and reading the books in this language, I can not give you the exact title on this series, only the correct names of the books themselves, since this is printed just inside the books. So far I have been reading 5 of them, and you can see the titles here, beginning with “Kindred Spirits” and book 5: “Steel and Stone”. Does this ring a bell? What is thnis series called?
My last question to you is, if you can try and make a correct chronological reading order for me, including all the titles I have mentioned below? Please list as many as you can in this order, and then just mention the rest in the end, in arbitrary order, if you really can’t place them somewhere. Ok? Thanks!
Kindred Spirits
Wanderlust
Dark Heart
The Oath and the Measure
Steel and Stone
Dragonlance Chronicles
By Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman
Dragons of Autumn Twilight
Dragons of Winter Night
Dragons of Spring Dawning
Dragonlance Legends
By Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman
Time of the Twins
War of the Twins
Test of the Twins
Lost Chronicles
By Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman
Dragons of the Dwarven Depths
Dragons of the Highlord Skies
Second Generation
By Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman
Second Generation
Dragons of Summer Flame
Dragons of a New Age
by Jean Rabe
Dawning of a New Age, The
Day of the Tempest, The
Eve of the Maelstrom, The
Dhamon Saga
by Jean Rabe
Downfall
Betrayal
Redemption
Dragonlance: War of the Souls
By Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman
Dragons of a Fallen Sun
Dragons of a Lost Star
Dragons of a Vanished Moon
The Dark Disciple
By Margaret Weis
Amber and Ashes
Amber and Iron
Amber and Blood
Heroes
By various authors
The Legend of Huma
Stormblade
Weasel's Luck
Kaz the Minotaur
The Gates of Thorbardin
Galen Beknighted
Kingpriest Trilogy
By Chris Pierson
Chosen of the Gods
Divine Hammer
Sacred Fire
Once you've read all of these core series, there really isn't a reading order. In no particular order: the Raistlin Chronicles, Tales, Elven Nations, Dwarven Nations, Kang's Regiment, and the Defenders of Magic.
What about “Dragons of Summer Flame”, “Soulforge”, “Brothers in Arms”, War of Souls trilogy (Dragons of a Fallen Sun,Dragons of a Lost Star,Dragons of a Vanished Moon), “The Lost Chronicles Trilogy”, “Dragons of the Hourglass Mage”
Jan
I'll try to answer to you with what little I know about Dragonlance (only read 8 books so far) and with the help of this Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Dragonlance_novels . Don't know if you have checked it already, but I recommend it - looks quite useful. Here http://fi.risingshadow.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=37&Itemid=44 is an article (which I also used to make this list) concerning the reading order of Dragonlance books, but - unfortunately - it's in Finnish. :p I don't know, maybe you could try to find a similar list in Danish?
The "prehistories" series you mentioned appears in that Wikipedia article under the name "Meetings Sextet", and since it seems to be about how the Companions met it's probably the first series in the chronological order. So here goes:
Kindred Spirits
Wanderlust
Dark Heart
The Oath and the Measure
Steel and Stone
(+ The Companions that wasn't in your list but can be found in Wikipedia)
Dragonlance Chronicles
By Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman
Dragons of Autumn Twilight
Dragons of Winter Night
Dragons of Spring Dawning
Lost Chronicles
By Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman
Dragons of the Dwarven Depths
Dragons of the Highlord Skies
(+ Dragons of the Hourglass Mage, which is the third part of this trilogy)
*Note about the Lost Chronicles:
-Dragons of the Dwarven Depths: takes place between the events of Dragons of Autumn Twilight and Dragons of Winter Night
-Dragons of the Highlord Skies: takes place during the events of Dragons of Winter Night
-Dragons of the Hourglass Mage: takes place during the events of Dragons of Spring Dawning
Dragonlance Legends
By Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman
Time of the Twins
War of the Twins
Test of the Twins
Second Generation
Dragons of Summer Flame
By Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman
Dragons of a New Age
by Jean Rabe
Dawning of a New Age, The
Day of the Tempest, The
Eve of the Maelstrom, The
Dragonlance: War of the Souls
By Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman
Dragons of a Fallen Sun
Dragons of a Lost Star
Dragons of a Vanished Moon
The Dark Disciple
By Margaret Weis
Amber and Ashes
Amber and Iron
Amber and Blood
*I don't know about the rest of the books (below). They don't seem to be part of the main storyline, so I suppose you can read them whenever you want. In that Finnish article it is only mentioned that the Dhamon Saga is supposed to be read after the Dragons of a New Age trilogy, like in your original list. To me, Heroes and Kingpriest Trilogy look like they are just some "extra" books... but if the Kingpriest Trilogy takes place in Istar before the Cataclysm then I guess it would be *chronologically* the first trilogy? Lol.
Dhamon Saga
by Jean Rabe
Downfall
Betrayal
Redemption
Heroes
By various authors
The Legend of Huma
Stormblade
Weasel's Luck
Kaz the Minotaur
The Gates of Thorbardin
Galen Beknighted
Kingpriest Trilogy
By Chris Pierson
Chosen of the Gods
Divine Hammer
Sacred Fire
--
Sorry for the possible errors. I'm not an expert on this matter but I'm trying to figure out a good reading order myself. It's painful, really... why does there have to be 56797 Dragonlance books by 876 different authors? Argh!
IMO the "Meetings Sextet" (as the first set of six books mentioned in the post above were called including Kindred Spirits, Wanderlust, etc) were hit-and-miss.
I'd definitely recommend starting with the "Dragonlance Chronicles" (Dragons of Autumn Twilight, etc) as they are generally considered to be the best books in the entire series. Once you get to know the main heroes and culture of Krynn in the Chronicles trilogy, the other books become much more palatable and understandable.
For me, the Legends trilogy comes a close second - some might prefer it over Chronicles - but to me Chronicles + Legends are must-reads in the DL universe, while the rest range from great to so-so.
If you love the 2 trilogies, then you'd naturally move on to whatever catches your interest. Most people find the Majere twins fascinating, that's why their fiery fraternity is just about the most written-about storyline in DL
The Chronicles and then the Legends trilogies were the original novels written by the original authors. Once these got popular the publishers started getting greedy and created new series of books all based on the world created by the original authors but written by third parties. There are all hit and miss and can be read in any order IMO.
I wouldn't worry too much about order, more quality over quantity.
These books were aimed at me at the time and I was reading them as they were released.
Chronicles and Legends are fantastic and so I carried on as the titles were published. After that they went downhill pretty fast and while I still have them I am going to have review them to see if they can free up some space.
I am reading Soul Forge at the moment, which if read after the first 6 books is of interest, but I was surprised to find there are now 150 titles in the series.
I had no idea and my mind boggles at how poor some of them must be from the ones that made me leave the series without much hesitation.
Brothers in Arms will be next as I think it is solid enough to warrant trying the next book, but I have no real desire to wade through any of the other potential dross there is.
Not that it is just this franchise, I have read some Aliens, Star Wars and Halo and outside of the core books they really are pretty atrocious and dire and only a HC fan could defend them.
For normal fans of these series you have to admit and accept that just because it has a logo on the front it isn't by default going to be any good. Quite the contrary and should always act as a warning.