Temple of the Dragonslayer – a book review

Temple of the Dragonslayer by Tim Waggoner is the first book in the New Adventures series of Dragonlance books. I grew up on Dragonlance and absolutely love the stores Weiss and Hickman among others have brought us. My first love were the Chronicles but the War of Souls trilogy was equally great.

I haven’t read a Dragonlance novel in a long while and so I grabbed this cheaply off Kobo. I started to read it and found it somewhat, simplistic, it felt as if someone had just written down a role playing session. On checking the books back cover again I discovered this was a Young Adult novel. The writing style now made sense and although it made the novel less enjoyable at least explained the writing.

As usual the companions in the book covered  the standard range of characters. The heroine is Nearra an amnesiac magic user with her are Davyn a rogue, a minotaur, a fallen Knight, an Elf thief and a Kender that believes he is a wizard. As expected the the story is a little predictable with the antagonist, Maddoc the Black Robed wizard father of Davyn manipulating everyone to his own dark ends.

The pace of the novel whilst swift does ramble a little with the characters given little time to grow and shine although I guess that will come with the later volumes. The characters are interesting but lack a motivational depth a kin with previous books. The story is straight forward enough and manages to tick all the fantasy battles, wizards, magic, knights and dragon battles but that is just about it, it just ticks the box. I will reluctantly admit that the original War of the Lance trilogy had its flaws but it had real heart and charm something that is lacking in this one. 

I m unsure yet whether to persevere with the series but if I do it will only to be immersed in the world of Krynn rather than for great fantasy.