For a lot of people, the DragonLance series has not been a high point in their reading careers, and for still more, it’s been relegated to the dustbin of history since the late ’80s. But me, I’ve always had a soft spot for those original authors, and the characters and world they created. So I know the more recent history, with a great huge novel devoted to killing lots of people and taking away the gods and the moons and whatnot, and then another trilogy revealing that the cause behind the preceeding events was not what it seemed. Now, there is a new trilogy in which nature abhors a power vacuum, and so Miss Weis is going to see to it that it has been filled.

Unfortunately #1, all the old characters are completely out of the picture these days, excepting the newly returned gods of course. But since they’ve never really appeared as characters before (well, okay, but these ones haven’t), it’s hard to have a stake of familiarity involved. Unfortunately #2, the land is so different as to be unrecognizable, littered with elven refugees and a Solace on the verge of becoming the southern Palanthas. Unfortunately #3, vampiric cult. Seriously.

But it’s not all that bad, it’s just that I have mildly higher expectations, and they have not been met. As generic fantasy, it’s perfectly inoffensive, and in fact still more reliably written than a portion of what I read these days. (Ask me three years ago, and it’d be better than two-thirds of what I read, so.) Amber and Ashes tells the tale of Mina (disciple of the One God in the years when Krynn had none) coming to terms with the lie that has dominated her entire life and choosing what to do next with the new life that has been left to her. It’s also the story of that vampiric cult I mentioned (which is not quite as bad as it sounds), the gods setting a new pecking order after recent changes, and the pawns they are using: in this case, a monk, a kender who sees dead people, and a death knight. (Yes, the kender can see him.)