| Title | : | Brothers Majere (Dragonlance: Preludes, #3) |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0786929715 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780786929719 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Mass Market Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 352 |
| Publication | : | First published December 1, 1989 |
Brothers Majere (Dragonlance: Preludes, #3) Reviews
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Raistlin, Raistlin, Raistlin! I am a Raistlin fan boy. He is simply the only character that has kept me reading Dragonlance books so far. This book takes place between Brothers in Arms and Dragons of Autumn Twilight. Raistlin, Caramon, and Tasslehoff's cousin Earwig Lockpicker journey to Mereklar. Legend has it that as long as there are plenty of cats in Mereklar the city will be protected, but that cats are disappearing at an alarming rate. They unravel a mystery with the aid of the Cat Lord Bast. A must read if you love Raistlin.
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Raistlin, Caramon and a kender, What a perfect mix! What starts out to be a mediocre story about lost cats actually turns out to be one of my favorite Dragonlance adventures. Caramon and the lich was the best!
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Es terrible, pero al menos es mejor que los libros de Tanis y Tas. Sólo tiene dos estrellas por eso, porque este lo he podido terminar.
Empezó muy bien. Caramon no era tan tonto ni Raistlin tan... Raistlin como en los demás libros y eso me gustaba, pero no sé en qué punto comenzó a ir todo cuesta abajo y acabó siendo una parodia de sí mismo. Todos los personajes conocidos eran OOC y los nuevos eran absurdos. El supuesto misterio del libro no era misterio ninguno y el modo de llevar la trama demasiado cuestionable y soporífero.
Lo describen todo al más mínimo detalle, se ve que para rellenar espacio, porque luego todo eso no tiene propósito ninguno. Tres páginas describiendo cómo Raistlin hace una poción; una y media diciendo cómo el kender y Caramon abren una tapa. Diálogos estúpidos, vocabulario aún más estúpido, y calidad literaria bastante, bastante abajo.
Me ha parecido más un fanfic que un libro de la Dragonlance. -
*spoilers*
Kevin Stein drew the short straw when he was asked to write the further adventures of Dragonlance’s most popular character(s). Guaranteed sales at the time, I’m sure, but in terms of critical approval this was always destined to be a lose-lose situation. Had Stein created too much of an elaborate backstory or delved too deeply into the characters psyches, then there’d be an outcry of “only Weis and Hickman can do that” and every minor contribution would be picked over to death. Swing the other way and you have a boring, lifeless time-killer that’s destined simply to be “not as good as Weis and Hickman”. Ultimately, this book will come as a disappointment to anyone enthralled by the Legends series and wanting another journey of such bombastic proportions. You will not get that here. Nevertheless Stein has done an excellent job of walking the road between those rocky hard places and delivering a tale that’s satisfying, fun and true to the characters as they were created.
I enjoyed reading this a lot, though I’m also a touch frustrated with it. The trouble is, whilst Stein does indeed create a tale well worthy of the reading, as a prelude to the Dragonlance Chronicles it doesn’t work. Yes, Takhisis, Queen of Darkness is back and trying to enter the world of Krynn again, just as she did in Kendermore. As a conceit it worked in Kendermore because the tale was never really meant to be taken very seriously, but here we have a character journey that doesn’t mesh with the chronologically later books. Ultimately, in the Chronicles, had Caramon and Raistlin been this aware that the God of all things darkness was trying to make her way back into the world … things probably would have played somewhat differently. This book would have been a better adventure for non-Chronicles characters who maybe ended up dying or became perceived as mad. Not Raistlin and Caramon.
Still, we can brush these frustrations aside and enjoy a book that has a lot to offer, namely a fun central mystery involving missing cats and an oddly large reward; and an almost slasher-like vibe that occurs as town councillors are slowly dispatched by a rather large cat in gruesome, well written detail, whilst Raistlin and Caramon fall under the spell of Lady Shasta, and the relationship and subsequent bickering between the brothers is explored in delightful detail. The pacing of the book is excellent and Stein resists the temptation to throw too much at the reader in one go, and as far as a light-reader can manage, I think a good atmosphere is created.
It’s a shame that the climactic showdown isn’t as well drawn. Caramon fights some demons opens a casket and Earwig the Kender puts on a ring which blocks Takhisis entry to this plane. It’s all a bit quick, unfortunately. Raistlin’s mental showdown with Shasta, who turns out to be a Lich (and Caramon had slept with her haw haw) is tenser, but still over too quickly. Still, I came away satisfied having got what I wanted from this book – frankly, I got a lot more than I’d wanted, since I thought Stein was going to majorly fluff this assignment. He doesn’t, and it’s another recommendable entry in the ever enjoyable Dragonlance saga. Just … ignore the wonky canon stuff. Oh, and maybe it would be nice to have a Dragonlance novel without a Kender sidekick now – though the recurring Dizzy hoopak joke and Earwig’s discovery of women still made me laugh, I confess. -
As always really enjoyed reading about some of the companions who I have left for such a long time now, and the majere brothers are great favourites of mine. I hate the way Raistlin treats Caramon all the time, ordering him about and being so unappreciative of all he does for him but when Caramon is hurt Raistlin shows another side to his character and gently tends to his twin!! Earwig the kender is as all kenders brave, enthusiastic and adverntures to the point of dangerous, but I just love it when there is a main character in the books who is a kender, makes the reading so much more fun. The evil demons as always get ousted but this time they are ousted by the cats who where the protectors of the town and the cat lord is awesome but then I love cats of all shapes, colours and size so maybe I was prejudiced in my enjoyment of this book!!
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First prelude that actually was really well written and did not have spoilers for main series. Book makes reader feel the emotionally charged relationship Majere twins have and it is better than original series in that aspect.
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Raistlin, Caramon ve bir kenderin bulunduğu bir yolculuğun keyifli olmaması büyük bir hayal kırıklığı olurdu ama neyseki olmadı. Üstelik kenderleri birkez daha sevdim. Kitaptaki en güzel konuşmanında kenderler için söylenmiş olan "Siz zaten mucizesiniz." olduğunu düşünüyorum. Fakat bu romanı iyi bir kitap yapmıyor. Bunu iki sebepten söylüyorum: Birincisi yaşanan olayın herhangi bir RPG oyunundaki yan görev gibi hissettirmesi, ikincisi ise karakterlerin kişiliklerini gayet iyi bildiğinizden yaşanacak şeyleri tahmin edebilmek. Aslında karakterlerin kişiliklerine sağdık yazılmış hoş bir şey ama insan farklı bir şeyler arıyor.
Son olarak şunu söylemeliyim. Bu kitap kronolojik olarak Mızrak Destanı'nın 5-6 yıl öncesinde geçsede Efsaneler Serisi'nden sonra okunması gerekiyor. Çünkü Ikizlerin Sınavından ciddi bir spoiler içermekle beraber bazı göndermelere sahip. -
Deff different. But all the better for it.
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“You see, Caramon,” Raistlin said, with a soft sigh, “I think that I am at last beginning to understand.” “I’m glad you are. I don’t understand a damn thing!”
The quote above pretty much sums up how I feel about this book. If you are familiar with the Dragonlance Chronicles you know that the heroes went their separate ways 5 years before the adventure that took place in the original trilogy. Preludes tells some of what Raistlin and Caramon Majere did in that time. The story starts after Raistlin has completed his test in the Tower of High Sorcery. While his body was damaged he gained great power. The brothers along with the Kender, Earwig Lockpick cousin of Tasslehoff Burrfoot are looking for a job to replenish their empty pockets. They find a post looking for someone to help the town of Mereklar solve the mystery of their missing cats. The city of Mereklar loves its cats. All cats are welcomed there and it’s residence believe that one day their cats will save the world. But lately the cats have gone missing. The brothers and the Kender are hired to solve the mystery and return the cats to the city. But someone in the city doesn’t want the cats to return and are willing to kill to make sure that doesn’t happen.
I read this book about twenty years ago, but for the life of me I could not remember anything about it. That should of been my first clue. This book was really difficult to get through. It was extremely boring. It's suppose to play out like a mystery but good mystery novels give you small clues and some insight that the protagonist do not have without giving away the story. This book didn't do that. I was lost through the whole thing. I did not have a clue about what was going on. The epilogue at the end tries to explain everything. This will go down as one of my least favorite Dragonlance novels. -
BROTHERS MAJERE is far from a great book, but I think I enjoyed it purely because it's a lot better than the other Dragonlance Preludes I've read so far (such as KENDERMORE). This serves as a stand-alone adventure for twin brothers Raistlin and Caramon Majere, although they're saddled with a kender (Tas from the original trilogy in all but name, which makes me suspect that the character was written as Tas and the name simply altered when the author found out he couldn't use him as he was in his own stand-alone adventure).
The Preludes serve as mini-adventures for the main characters of the Chronicles trilogy. They're slight and contain stories never alluded to in any other books in the series, so how much you enjoy them depends on your like of the characters, really. Luckily, Raistlin is by far the most interesting character in the whole Dragonlance universe, so Kevin Stein had things a little easier than the person who wrote KENDERMORE, for example.
This is an atypical adventure that reads like more of a detective story. Caramon and Raistlin are assigned to investigate the mystery of some disappearing cats (sounds like an Enid Blyton story, I know) in a sinister city. There are (surprisingly) grisly murders galore, along with mysterious supporting characters, and it all ends in a large scale battle involving demons and gods. It's hardly great literature, but as a pulp adventure it works and is fairly readable. -
This is an older attempt at continuing the story of Raistlin Magere: the early years that has mostly been made obsolete by the later installments by Margaret Weis in the Raistlin Chronicles. This particular work of the preludes remains interesting mostly as a study in what happens when characters in a series are placed in the hands of new authors: the dynamic between the twins is very different in this work from any others written by the two lead authors on the series. Let it serve as a warning for anyone who hopes that eventually a world like Harry Potter will be opened up for new authors to fill in the gaps: the names might be the same, but the identities are destined to morph. In this case, Raistlin's sharp edges are softened somewhat and Caramon's character reduced to an even greater simplicity than before. That, and these two soon to be great heroes are solving a mystery involving cats and contrived references to Egyptian mythos. It's not a terrible book by any means, but as part of the Dragonlance story it fails to entice.
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Maybe the plot was a little convoluted, and maybe the cats part was just kind of weird, but this book was actually pretty good overall. Okay...maybe I also wasn't overly fond of the kender (because only Tas is bearable) and his parts took up too large a percentage of the book. I don't think I really have any complaints outside of the above written.
I completely love that I think I was supposed to feel bad about it, but it really just made me laugh. Overall, there seemed to be an accurate treatment of the characters, which is good since I love the Raistlin/Caramon dynamic, especially when it gets complicated.
So this was totally worth reading and I'm glad that I didn't find it sooner so I had something to read this afternoon. That's how good this book was, I read it all in a few hours. Maybe I should have let it last longer, but I'm impatient. -
3.5 stars technically.
I am extremely biased because there were cats and a Cat Lord in this along with my favorite Dragonlance character: Raistlin. so I almost feel this is the strongest in the series, which would hold it at a steady 3 ish stars but I popped it up to 4 solely for the Cat Lord and the cats...
I did feel Raistlin was slightly ooc at some points though.
Dragonlance series has an issue with having low diversity and super hetero-storylines and Raistlin is one of the few characters that generally escapes their super hetero-storylines but this book was a bit pushy making him seem attracted to someone (though there was a reason, but still). However, the Cat Lord was defined as having dark skin so at least there's that. If Dragonlance continues maybe there will be more diversity all around (and less super heteronormativeness)! -
I love all the Majere stories, but this one has some odd parts.
There are meta-references I am highly uncomfortable with, and modern references that don't even make sense.
This particular author does employ the use of introducing re-occurring themes/objects/people in quite a better way than Weis/Hickman, but the story doesn't flow the same as the staple Dragonlance books. This unfortunately makes it feel out of place, with many paragraphs I wound up speed-reading for their redundancies, and it was very rushed towards the end. -
This was the first attempt to write a novel about the brothers Majere but another writer. It was a good story but it felt that the Brothers were not the ones Weis and Hickman wrote. Nevertheless it was a good mystery good about the twins growth after separating from the group.
Nevertheless it was good to pass a little time with Raistlin. -
Sebbene sia da un po di tempo che non leggo più dragonlance, non mi è dispiaciuto. la "lotta" tra i gemelli per conquistare una dama è una caratteristica che non ho mai incontrato prima. la narrazione ai concentra più sulla descrizione degli stati d'animo che sui combattimenti de gemelli. Poi c'è un nuovo kender...
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For those of you who can't get enough of the twins here's a story full of good old fashioned adventuring, damsels and the queen of darkness. Throw in a kender for good measure and you've got the makings of one heck of an afternoon jaunt in your comfy chair.
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It was a fantastic adventure story featuring my favourite characters from the Dragonlance series. It had plenty of action and adventure and is a great read for fans of the Dragonlance series.
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Les débuts des frères Majere, un récit intéressant et pleins d'action.
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Definitely a keeper. Good solid fantasy fun. =)
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At last it ended. My thoughts summed up in one quote: "'And alcohol', Raistlin concluded."
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It was fine. Caramon and Raistlin were refreshingly IC for much of it (we except the entire middle of the novel, which I'll chalk up to see sort of spell of some sort), and it was nice that it made nods to other Dragonlance books through the walls of Mereklar.
Plotwise it was entertaining, though the entire last chapter is just a giant exposition dump for things that weren't clearly shown in the novel. There were some mildly confusing POV switches. It can get pretty adverb heavy at points (tip for writers: every sentence does not need to have an adverb in it) There were points that were bad, but over all its a decent read for anyone who loves Dragonlance and doesn't think too hard about continuality errors (though if you do, the Preludes and the Meetings Sextant are not the series for you).
I did enjoy the first half of the book more than the last half, but that's not to say the last half was necessarily bad. -
I may not be qualified to rate this accurately; I've been away from the series too long, and Raistlin- well, some things never change. Tunnel-vision adoration for his archetype is one, and he was the first. Any fixation lasting that many years... you never really lose. The character feels like home.
The action sequences were not to my liking, and it sort of train-crashed at the end, but I can't bring myself to care. It was a fun book to revisit. Yes, bringing in The Queen of Darkness herself so soon feels a touch melodramatic, but it's Raist, so ok. It sort of works for him. Why not save the world from the powers of darkness on a whim of a chance detour? By investigating cats? With a kender? I'm in. -
I was a little hesitant to read it the moment I started since it wasn't written by Raistlin´s Mom (Margaret Weis) haha, but I refused to give up and at least give the book and author a try...and I wasn't disappointed!
It is really a very original and interesting plot! The whole thing with the cats disappearing and "cats are going to save the world" sounds kind of silly and weird at first, but the author weaves it into the story nicely. I felt it had a lot of plot twists, interesting new characters, a particularly good map for a particularly city, and he did get right the relationship and personality of the Majere brothers.
I read it quite fast and enjoyed it very much! recommended for any Raistlin fan! -
Kinda dumb so the other Dragonlance books are great but this one had a cat Lord who is a demo God when he is in the story it does not make too much sense, Bast was real dumb along with a city of cats, Caramom did some in Caramom things, compared to the books before this one. The idea of the great eye festival was also stupid. The book was funny and had a fine story it's just that Dragonlance books are supposed too better.
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Out of the Prologue's trilogy, this volume shines brightly. The Brother's Majere are always a captivating duo in all literature involving them, but the story of them intertwined with the Queen of Darkness, Earwig the annoying but typical kender, and the Lord of Cats is great entertainment and well designed.
