And they are "good" from a certain perspective: they are wonder YA fantasy AND they pull you into D&D. Win-win. They just haven't aged well.
Well, yes...but it's more than that. It's the authors and their writing style.
Dragons of Deceit (referenced above) was released in August 2022. The problems inherent to the text and narrative style remains. It's the YA premise and target age of the novel's audience. Or at least, the ground rules which governs the YA nature of the prose and plot.
But since the original
DL Chronicles, it's almost been 40 years. Since DL was in its heyday, we have had a lot of GRRM inspired post-modern fantasy go our way. And that's before we get to
Game of Thrones and
House of the Dragon, too. All of which brings us into grim and gritty themes and narrative styles that have changed over the years. It is an issue which still divides the tastes of many of us.
I appreciate that this remains a significant point of disagreement even among older gamers. Hell,
swearing on ENWorld is still seen as in invitation to moderate and remove such language.
I get it, but the YA stuff is no longer for me - and I can't pretend otherwise.