The Dragon Isles (Crossroads) [Mass Market Paperback]

Well it was a mariner's tale, all of this novel either takes place on a ship, under the water, or a few brief trips to port cites. However Sullivan nicely pulls this off without making it boring and does not rehash the fact that the characters are under the water, making into a central description device. Instead of tying it like an anchor around the plot-line and the story's development he uses it as a sail into the unknown.

This novel also got back to the core of fantasy and the Dragonlance shared world, with use of an ancient prophecy guiding the treasure finders, and the return of a dragon as our main villain. The sea dragon Tempest is an excellent villain, powerful, different than what we have seen before in other Dragonlance villains, and actually evil, always a plus.

The heroes are well thought out for a 300 pager like this novel as well. You have a roguish sea captain, a beautiful sea elf, a mysterious bronze armored knight, and a kender that all add something to the adventure, plus no complaining, they are always on the up. The Dragon Isles includes amazing location, some humor, plenty of action, a couple different plot-twists that are pretty good, and is even nicely broken into three labeled parts. Each part has a different tone and you can tell the action slowly increases until it is at a very high tempo in part three.

Only downside is that it was really a difficult story and sometimes it strains Sullivan. At a few points he has characters do things that would be almost impossible in water and what not, but other than that I think this is a really good first outing, I hope Wizards of the Coast has Sullivan writing plenty more Dragonlance novels.

Final Thought: Sullivan may be a squire under the sea, but with his legs set firmly upon the ground he'd be a Knight. Pick this one up for your Dragonlance fix!

My main beef was the indestructible syndrome that the protagonist party seemed to have. I'm not saying that none die (and I'm not saying that any *do* either), but they faced overwhelming odds more than a couple times and it just seemed like they survived on a massive dosage of good luck, almost as bad as the 5th age Jean Rabe stuff where the heros take out an entire boat of knights and scrape their shins or something. Especially since the main antagonist in this book is a massive evil sea dragon.

The sea dragon thing was interesting since they were hinted at in the original Dragonlance trilogy (when Tanis gets saved by the sea elves), but that whole storyline went completely unexplored, and instead we got to follow some ppl around on a treasure hunt. Don't get me wrong, it was interesting to learn about the Dragon Isles of lore, but the sea dragon storyline has *so much* potential. Hopefully we'll get a Richard Knack or someone to flush that out.

Overall I'm not sure that this book is worth the 7 clams I paid, but it was entertaining. If you see it for 4, I'd grab it, maybe even 5.