Dragons of the Highlord Skies is the second volume of the Lost Chronicles by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. It picks up shortly after the events of Dragons of the Dwarven Depths and partially overlaps Dragons of Winter Night. Focusing on Kit, the story explores her finding out what is going on with her former group of friends. Having been informed of the assassination of a fellow dragon highlord by a disparate group led by a half-elf Kit is desperately working on hiding the fact she not only knows the group in question but is related to two of them. At the same time she is trying to convince Emperor Ariakas that they need to attack the high clerist’s tower and take Solamnia as the next stage in their war. While she is working on that Iolanthe, a wizardess working for Ariakas, is trying to figure out which side she should support in the growing dispute between Ariakas and Kit. The dragon army as a whole is working on sowing discord amongst their enemies by working on luring one of the knights of Solamnia to the far north where a dragon highlord is hiding a dragon orb that can be used to fight and potentially even control dragons.
This was a good addition to the series as I greatly enjoyed seeing more of the events of the war of the lance. The thing that potentially intrigued me the most about this particular volume though is the change in focus and concentration. The vast majority of the story is told from Kit’s perspective with decent sized sections told from Iolanthe’s and various knights of Solamnia though later we do see sections from Laurana’s and Tas’ point of view. I think this is the first time we see the perspective of some of the bad guys from this was so it really adds some interesting information and background to the events taking place. The downside of this change in focus is the slight lack of humor that was present in so many of the other books due to the inclusion of Tas as he provided a lot of unintentional comic relief that really helped to break up the seriousness of the events. I still greatly enjoyed the book but it did have a more serious tone to it a lot of the time because of this. This wasn’t a bad thing but it was different. Much like the previous book in the Lost Chronicles, this one helped to fill in some gaps in the story originally told in the Dragonlance Chronicles. I feel like I am gradually getting a more complete story of what actually happened during the war as there was considerable gaps in the original books. The plot was pretty good as it continued filling in those gaps in the war while also filling in some gaps in the character’s development that was taking place during the war. While the book may have felt slightly different and clearly had a different focus in terms of the characters it still clearly felt like it was part of the story and was only adding to the story already told. I will admit there were times where I felt slightly confused about where it fell in the timeline until I realized there was some overlap but overall it was a pretty good read. This book gets four out of five stars from me.
A pretty good example of a fantasy novel that should hold considerable appeal to readers who prefer fantasy. If you enjoy fantasy novels with a sword and sorcery feel than you really should enjoy this series, even more so if you like books with a Dungeons and Dragons feel. I don’t think this series would appeal to readers who don’t enjoy those types of works. While you can read this book and even this series relatively independently I would highly recommend reading the previous books and the Dragonlance Chronicles in order to get the full picture of what happened. The age range for this series is intended to be adult readers but outside of the violence depicted I don’t necessarily see any issues with recommending it to older teens and young adult readers as well. Basically, any readers above the age of about fourteen should be good for this series I think. As always, if you decide to try this book out feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.