Of the original Dragonlance trilogy, Dragons of Spring Dawning is not my favourite. Even so, it contains some excellent moments while serving as both a pseudo ending to the War of the Lance and a fine introduction to the Legends series.

Perhaps it is Dragons of Spring Dawning's transitional position that makes it impossible for it to be the best of the three. There is a real sense in Dragons of Spring Dawning that we are not speeding towards a resolution of the War but a shift in hostilities from the vast and impersonal to the internal and personal. Which means that while the book is necessary in the greater arc of the series, it must fail to live up to the promise of its predecessors because it cannot, by its very nature, deliver a fitting end to all the threads of the story.

Dragons of Spring Dawning generates a feeling that Weis and Hickman reached a point where their huge cast of characters was too much to handle. Gilthanas and Silvara, Goldmoon and Riverwind, Alhana Starbreeze, Lord Ariakas, Astinus, Raistlin (although that is rectified by the Legend series), and even Fewmaster Toade get short shrift. Their stories could have been the basis for at least two more books in the series proper, which also would have allowed for a stronger telling of the stories that it does manage to tell.

Of course, many of these missing stories have been told by others in future installments of the Dragonlance universe, but one can't help wondering how much better these stories would have been if they'd contextualized within the War itself and told by the originators of the series.

Regardless, the stories that Weis and Hickman do manage to tell in Dragons of Spring Dawning are well told.

It was particularly nice to see Tanis Half-Elven through the eyes of my four year olds, whom I read the book to.

I always hated Tanis. I found his whining insufferable; I always felt the "supposed" darkness of his soul was a bit of a joke; I thought his attack on Berem was too easily forgiven by his friends. Nothing in my latest oral reading of the book has changed my mind on any of these points. But something did change for me, and I was finally able to see how Tanis' role as leader can gloss over his faults for an audience as easily as it seems to for his friends in the book. Tanis seems to have a genuine charisma. I don't get it personally, but now at least I recognize how it works.

The entire series is worth reading multiple times, and this is an important step along the way, but if you're anything like me don't expect to love this episode in the Dragonlance story. It is far from the best.