Tanis, the Shadow Years (Dragonlance Preludes, Vol 6) [Mass Market Paperback]

As an avid Dragonlance reader, I found this book very insightful on Tanis's past. The prelude volumes are extrordinary reading and very fulfilling for those DL readers who first read the chronicles and wondered where Tanis, Flint, Sturm, Tas and the others originated. The preludes should be the next books to read after the chronicles. Besides, Tanis is awesome as always in this book.

Following the success of the better-known Dragonlance saga and legends, the world was expanded via a series of spinoff novels, many concentrating on the histories of characters from the earlier stories. In this prelude, Tanis the half-elf gets the opportunity to travel back in time, or rather in memory, when a enigmatic dwarf leads him to an even more enigmatic magic-user. He is sent back nearly a hundred years, to a time of war between humans and elves and to a mainly elven village under attack from a human horde. Tanis succeeds in finding his father, but is utterly horrified at the brutal man (which is surprising to Tanis, but hardly to the reader given what we know of Tanis's origins). Most of the story focuses on another aspect of the journey: Tanis is supposed to be bringing back the mage's lost love Brandella from the age of their greatest infatuation. In the process, Tanis gets caught up in battles between humans and elves. Among the heroes of the moment are Tanis and Brandella, the mage's younger self, an incompetent human comedian and a hard-working but poor dwarvish couple, each of whom develop distinct plot trajectories turning into different sub-stories. The bulk of the novel occurs in the past/memory setting, but there are also sequences in the "present" (slightly pre-Chronicles) world before and after, and an excursus into the realm of the dead.

The strengths of the book are its scene-setting and characterisation. For a fantasy novel, the characters are refreshingly three-dimensional, facing dilemmas and paradoxes - displays of fear which become terrifying and transmute into bravery for instance, and questions over whether it is really best to know the truth about one's past. The atmosphere is also well-constructed, with the reader drawn into the desperation of the defence of the village and Tanis's mental turmoil.

The weaknesses are that this core story is not deemed sufficient to frame the entire novel, and is not given an adequate resolution. The bulk of the story - dealing with Tanis, Brandella, and Tanis's father - is resolved by a little over halfway through, and the rest of the book pursues a number of sub-plots, character paths and inserted moments which can seem rather anticlimactic and tagged-on. Having kept the reader's interest through the battles and dilemmas, the book is prone to lose it as the main plot is stretched thin. The authors also make rather too much use of deus ex machina devices, with new characters and effects introduced to get Tanis out of sticky spots. The suspense is somewhat weakened by the reader's prior knowledge that certain outcomes implied as possibilities in the story, but ruled out by the Dragonlance continuity, could not possibly come to pass (we know for instance that Tanis will not die, that Brandella is not around by the time of the chronicles, and that Fistandantilus will not rise again). The core plot also has unresolved tensions hinging on whether Tanis was actually in the future or just in an individual's memory. All the structural detail points to the latter - Tanis's actions in the past bring about real effects in history, items left in the past are still in the same place in the present, and so on - but the adequacy of the resolution of the Brandella storyline depends on the contrary on the setting being mere memory; otherwise, the compensations achieved hardly outweigh the tragic effect of the resolution. Brandella's motivations for acting in the way she did are also left extremely vague. In all I found the resolution deeply inadequate, not living up to the story which preceded it.

This book is probably my favorite, because of all the things they used to make it great.Adventure, romance, suspense, all that good stuff.All in all, a great book!