Dragonlance

I'm reading a Dragonlance Preludes book at the moment and it is pretty silly (some crazy gnomes build a flying ship that goes out of control and floats off to the moon! - don't worry this is not a spoiler as it says this on the back of the book).

 

Ugh, I remember reading that one Harbourboy - although I wish I didn't. Trust me it doesn't get any better as it goes along.

 

I own the Chronicles Trilogy, the Legends Trilogy, the Secong Generation, Dragons of the Summer Flame, as well as the War of the Souls Trilogy, all written by Weis and Hickman.

I found them all quite enjoyable, even if the last series was slightly confusing. And I plan on reading the rest of the books earmarked on Sorcerers.

Out of curiosity, is the Dragons of a New Age Trilogy a good read? It was marked for importance, but some people here say to stay right away from Jean Rabe.

 

Well, I might as well throw my worthless opinion into the heap.
As far as Dragonlance books go, you really should stick with the stuff by Weis (and Hickman)...and exclude the War of Souls Trilogy, as only about 10% of it is worth reading. But anyway, the Chronicles and Legends trilogies are excellent, Second Generation and Dragons of Summer Flame are good...but the real gems outside of those main-storyline books would be the Soulforge and the Brothers in Arms. They're excellent, and focus on Weis's favorite character (which happens to also be my favorite), who is certainly not your cut-and-dry black-and-white Crusader (or Ranger) of Goodity. Most non-Weis Dragonlance stuff just isn't worthwhile, though. And this comes from someone whose first D&D-related experience was reading the Dragonlance Chronicles...

Jaguar: the Dragons of a New Age trilogy is neither great nor horrible. Since you've read the War of Souls stuff already, most of its content will only be a refresher, and it wasn't terribly-well-written. I, however, was forced to read it while waiting for the publication of the more-than-slightly disappointing War of Souls trilogy.

My own expeditions into the Heroes, Preludes, and Meetings series yielded an equally dissatisfied result - of all of those titles, the only one I enjoyed was Tanis, the Shadow Years. The Legend of Huma was mildly entertaining, but far short of its hype.

But to put things into perspective, the few Forgotten Realms books I've read aren't too good: Baldur's Gate was a horribly-written bastardization of a great game, whilst the Icewind Dale Trilogy seemed amazingly bland to me. Then again, that could be partially because the last Salvatore book I had read before said trilogy was in the Star Wars universe, where he demonstrated a far more sophisticated knowledge of swordplay (even though it was mostly elementary fencing knowledge) than "Drizzt's blades danced and spun and danced and spun".

I'll shut up now, before someone kills me for heresy.

 

@Jaguar

Sound advice, friend.

@Zenastin

That would be best. Kidding! You have to pick up some of the other stuff, its awesome The Counselor and Kings, Cormyr, Archwizards and Avatar trilogies were awesome. And while I'm still on book3 (Condemnation) I can easily say that the War of the Spider Queen series is the best I've read...

 

Hey, the War of Souls wasn't THAT bad... I at least liked it.

*is sad* I wonder if he ever got that garden of his on the other side?

Dragonlance is also very soap-opearic when compared to FR... my favorite love-tetrahydrcon or whatever has dragons, humans, half-elves and elves involved, and it is less confusing than one might think.

*sigh*