Dragonlance There's A New Dragonlance Novel Coming

After all the legal drama between WotC, Margaret Weis, and Tracy Hickman recently, this probably won't surprise anybody. However, on Amazon, there is now a placeholder for a Dragonlance paperback novel set for a 29th July release this year.

The 2020 lawsuit referred to a trilogy - Dragons of Deceit, Dragons of Fate, and a third book.

As expected, it's by Weis and Hickman, and being published by Del Rey which is the sci-fi and fantasy imprint of Penguin Random House. It's 304 pages. And that's pretty much all we know!

After the lawsuit was dropped, Margaret Weis tweeted that exciting news was coming; it looks like this is that exciting news.

Dragonlance is a legacy D&D setting and best-selling novel series created in the mid-1980s by TSR, the then-owners of Dungeons & Dragons.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Hmmmm I don’t think that is accurate. There was the Legend of Huma, the history of the elven nations, the creation story of the gnomes, King Priest of Ishtar and The cataclysm. That is just to name a few.

The ones that I read felt bolted-on. Certainly the original trilogy gives a feeling of predestination to everything -- Huma exists only so that Sturm may exist, for instance. Real history and deeply developed fictional histories have lots of other bits that don't feed into the single original narrative.

Both Middle Earth and Westeros, for instance, have regions that are completely peripheral to the main events mentioned in the original stories and characters that are mentioned who never show up, never influence events, but exist because the world exists beyond just he main events of the story.

The original trilogy doesn't have anything like that with Krynn. Every nation on Ansalon is involved in the War of the Lance and there's nothing real sense that anything is happening over the next hill when the narrative moves away from that area.

 

[Emirikol Prime]

Fantastic news and I’m glad they sorted things out.

 

[Weiley31]

I think this all but confirms that tomorrow's setting announcement is 5e Dragonlance.

Well it's funny you say that.

D&D BREAKING: New Book Revealed - Candlekeep Mysteries - Bell of Lost Souls

 

[cbwjm]

So glad this is getting published, I'll be picking this up when it comes out. Dragonlance is still one of my favourite settings and I've loved reading the novels over the years.

 

[Morrus]

Well it's funny you say that.

D&D BREAKING: New Book Revealed - Candlekeep Mysteries - Bell of Lost Souls

Or, in fact, right here several hours earlier!

D&D 5E - The New D&D Book: Candlekeep Mysteries: 17 Mystery Adventures [UPDATED!]

The cover of the upcoming D&D book has been revealed! Candlekeep Mysteries is an anthology of 17 mystery-themed adventures for character levels 1-16. The image has appeared on Penguin Random House's product page for the book. UPDATE! Penguin's product page appears to have now vanished, but...

www.enworld.org

 

[Hutchimus Prime]

Any listing for this on a US site yet?

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

According to Margaret Weis, while the first book had plenty of lead-up time, later ones were written very quickly. I think she said that the one was written in the span of a month. I think they likely had broad strokes planned - for example, Sturm's death was planned from the very beginning.

I wonder how much of Krynn was plotted out in advance. Reading the original novels, it very much feels like the entire setting was built around one point in time -- the War of the Lance -- and that everything else has been vamping.

Maybe it's just wishful thinking, but I still wouldn't rule out a Dragonlance adventure/setting book this year. Looking at 2020, we had books released in March, July, September, and November. A July release would have more synergy with this book.

 

[EthanSental]

Setting book via dmsguild like some of Ed’s FR stuff or even the Baldurs Gate book from the game people. Both have been quality reads to me.

 

[see]

I have conflicted feelings about this. Thus far, I have been very impressed with the quality and standards of the 5th edition WoTC materials, thus, publishing separately makes me wonder about the rigor and frankly likability of this new work. We shall see!

WotC shut down its new novel production entirely at the end of 2016. Since then, the only new novels from its properties have been done under license by established publishing houses (Drizzt books from HarperCollins, Magic: The Gathering from Penguin Random House). This book fits that model.

 

[Azzy]

I read and loved the origional two trilogys back when I was a teen. I'll get these when they get released and hope that they are good. Weiss & Hickman have improved as authors over the years, so I'm not too worried on that front—it's the timeline past the original two trilogies that doesn't terribly enthuse me.