Guardians of the Lost

No, I'm not referring to my role as parent to two college students.  Rather, the title of this entry, Guardians of the Lost, is the second novel in a fantasy trilogy, the "Soverign Stone Trilogy" by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman.  These authors will probably forever be known for their authorship of the original "Dragonlance" novels set in the D&D universe and while those books are the best of any other Dragonlance novels I've read, it's a shame that most readers won't look beyond that.  Most will assume this team only writes one way and may, in fact, put them in the dreaded formula writers category.

But not so fast.  The "Soverign Stone trilogy" is at least the fourth set of novels that they've written outside the Dragonlance setting, mostly very well received, and I have to say, this trilogy is darned good.  This second novel in the set takes place 200 years after the first one ended and thus there are many changes.  But of course this is fantasy and so several of the characters in the first novel show up here as well, particularly the bad guys.  Second novels in trilogies tend to suffer in my opinion, from having to bridge the two "real" stories that actually happen in most trilogies.  Of course there are exceptions (Godfather II, and The Empire Strikes Back) but generally, I tend to want to get through the second book just so I can read the third.  But this time was different, as the book served to flesh out the entire world that we encountered in the first.  I also noticed that the authors threw in a lot of characters this time, sprinkling in new ones all along the way.  But it's not confusing at all since we get to spend a little time with the new ones as we go along.  This is well done and I am totally intrigued to see what happens next.  Which of these characters will have major roles in the conclusion?  Well done!  This moves the third book further forward on my To-Be-Read list.