Off The TBR Dragons of Autumn Twilight Read Along discussion

Now that we're about half-way done, are any themes starting to stand out for you?

Good Vs. Evil?
Faith?
Others?

Gully dwarves are the real heroes
Caramon is always hungry
Flint is still just the straight guy of the comedy duo with Tas

But seriously, you can't overlook the massive role that friendship plays in this story, even when those friendships are unlikely. That and fighting against overwhelming odds. speaking of which, running is always a perfectly valid strategy that most people forget when playing D&D

I agree with Dave. Friendship is turning out to be a huge theme here, perhaps more so than I remember it. Perhaps another way to say it would be loyalty. Or trust? There are these moments when Tanis has to trust Raistlin, or the entire party has to trust Bupu. Trusting Goldmoon and her newfound faith. It's really interesting, and seeing these imperfect characters sort of stick by one another is great.

I agree that friendship is a big theme. I also think learning to admit when you're wrong, as well as self-acceptance plays a role. Tanis is unsure of who he is: Raistlin knows himself and accepts his darker side. Sturm is grappling with his identity in conjunction with what happened five years prior when he looked for his father.

That trust/loyalty comes in big play in this section, too, because so many of them are unsure of Raistlin, and yet they depend on him. There's a bit at the end of book one where Sturm says he distrusted both magic and Raistlin, but he agreed that Raistlin should come along to help defeat the draconians, and it's so interesting to see those conflicting thoughts.

LOL Dave! My husband is a DM and he is always lamenting that no one ever runs as a group, they always fight, even if the odds are astronomically against them. I often play characters that nope out of fighting though, because, seriously, can we just keep this adventure moving and go find treasure? lol

Friendship is one that I'd forgotten about as well. I mean yeah I remember them as the Companions and the whole group acting like an adventuring party in game, but Weiss and Hickman did a really good job with developing the characters as friends with a history that enables them to deal with the really tough situations in ways you wouldn't expect to see if they were just thrown together. There's trust even when they don't want to trust (like with Raistlin) and they all watch out for each other.

Good Vs. Evil is another that continues to play out but I may wait to say more about it after this week. It's very blatantly there between the gods of good and evil. But what I'm searching for is instances of ambiguity.

Re: friendship, it has occurred to me that one way W&H manage this is by setting the story in a time when they are coming back from being apart, and they have this long previous history. I feel like a lot of epic fantasy would have started the story back when they all lived in Solace. Then actually shown us the vow, the five years apart, what they all did, then we'd be in like book 7 right now as they come back together and start to figure things out. By starting it where they do, we have this background of friendship to draw upon, and it's really interesting.

re: good vs. evil...I'm interested in this discussion. Right now, I'd say Raistlin is the only ambiguous one. Beyond him, it feels pretty much, "these characters are unambiguously good" and "these characters are unambiguously evil," and we know they're evil because they're...um...dragon people? Which leads to a whole other question of whether fantasy races like the draconians (or Orcs or Goblin etc) are inherently racist in that all members of the race are painted with the same brush.

I agree with Mary. Major trust issues in this group. They need to sit down and pass the ‘talk koosh ball’ around the campfire! Ha!

But there’s so much history between these characters that will take books to explore.