Dragonlance discussion

I just finished Dragons of Autumn Twilight and I have to say that it was a painful read. I won't list all of the problems I had with the book but I agree with most of the points made by anyone who gives this book a 1-star review on goodreads or amazon.

But I really want to like this book and this series. I know that the Dragonlance universe is huge and the idea of diving into a huge world with tons of lore really appeals to me. So my question is, does it get better? Do the writing styles of Weiss, Hickman, et al., improve over time as they mature as authors?

I'm a huge fan of GoT and LoTR and I've read a lot of the books by Terry Brooks, R.A. Salvatore (many years ago), Robin Hobb, Terry Goodkind, Raymond Feist, and others, so I've read a lot of the genre, but this book was just such a slog.

I'd have to say that that very much depends on the actual author(s). I quite liked the Chronicles. They were my introduction to Dragonlance. I read them as an omnibus (and a long time ago), so cannot really confirm if the style changes significantly from Dragons of Autumn to Winter Night and Spring Dawning, but I went through that brick faster than a one-legged man in a butt-kicking competition.

I would also warn against ditching the entire Dragonlance universe because of one book. There a numerous authors contributing to it (including R.A. Salvatore) so judging it on one book/author is like renouncing wine in general because of one crappy bottle of Grande Chaleur (a particularly bad wine once sold in my home country).

If you're looking to test other parts of the Dragonlance forest, I can highly recommend the Dwarven Nations (Dan Parkinson), the Elven Nations (Paul Thomas/Douglas Niles), the Heroes I and Heroes II trilogies (though I was never a fan of Richard Knaak), the Meetings Sextet and the Preludes.

I've been a fan since the late 80s and still enjoy a Dragonlance novel or two occasionally.

Bottom-line: Don't judge the restaurant by looking only at the facade ;)

I appreciate your comments.

I'm 50 pages into Dragons of Winter and the drama between Tanis and Laurana is driving me crazy. (Tanis told her he loved Kitiara but now he's having second thoughts and he's getting jealous of this other dude, Elistan. This has lead to a lot of loud, angsty arguments. Seriously, he yells at her.) I try not to get too hung up on it since tbh I'm reading books that were probably meant for a much younger demographic. Sturm's strict adherence to his lawful-good warrior's code of honor is also a little exasperating. And the way he keeps wanting to kill Raistlin and the way Caramoon keeps (with voice cracking each time) saying some variation of "You'll have to get through me first!"

Basically, I'm taking the mentality that I just need to grin and bear it through these books since they build the foundation for the other novels (I'm assuming all of this - correct me if I'm wrong). Maybe I should go back and read some of the historical novels that take place chronogically prior to Chronicles.

Based entirely off some advice I found on Dragonlance Nexus, I had planned on reading the classic core novels (Chronicles, Legends, Lost Chronicles, Second Generation), then move onto the core novels of 5th Age, Age of Mortals, & then the historical novels.

Do you recommend a different progression?