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One of the Best Dragonlance Adventures

Authors: Mark Kirchoff & Douglas Niles

It’s five years before the companions’ reunion, that fateful meeting in Otik’s tavern that sparks a shattering war between good and evil. Each of the companions, during this time, is off on their own adventures, and each is starting to see pieces of the evil to come.

For Flint, he is returning to Hillhome. But he doesn’t get the warm welcome he expected. Instead, he finds his family grieving, his brother dead, his alcoholic nephew running amok, and mountain dwarves having breached a centuries old stand-off. Flint soon discovers that his brother did not die of natural causes. Flint’s search for answers and justice leads him deep into Thorbardin, where he encounters a devious sorcerer, a beast pit, a beautiful military commander, and a collection of underground gully dwarves who consider him the answer to an ancient prophecy.

I’ll be honest, Flint was never one of my favorite companions. As a companion, he had a minor role as Tanis’s mentor and a comedic role as a grumpy old dwarf, but his character never felt complete to me. He was more stereotyped. More the expected D&D party member than an entity with his own personality, desires, and fears. But, in Flint the King his character grows, and we come to love him. Flint is more than his aged complaints, and despite an ancient history, he is not as stuck in his ways as we expected. Love and loss open his heart here and lead him to discover and fight the amassing of a horrendous army.

Flint the King is half action/adventure and half comedy. Dragonlance’s comedy is either brilliant or silly, with rarely any in-between time, and the kender and gully dwarves usually provide said comedy. In this book, the gully dwarves are just right, reminiscent of Raistlin’s Bupu, and the prophecy that leaves a down-and-out Flint as King of the Gully Dwarves is the perfect plot catalyst and provides some relief during bloodshed. And don’t get me wrong, there will be a lot of death and a lot of grief before this story ends.

Authors Mary Kirchoff and Douglas Niles expertly oscillate between character views, mostly staying with Flint, but occasionally giving us a glimpse into the naïve and hurting hearts of Flint’s family and into the depraved mind of the sorcerer. It’s a nice mix, keeping the action and adventure steady, giving us just enough of a cliff hanger to keep us constantly engaged and wondering about someone’s story, and making us remember why we fell in love with Krynn and its companions in the first place. This is a well-rounded world, a complete one, with places so fantastical and yet so real that they have both the feel of coming home and of high adventure. It’s perfection.

While we have lots of antics, we still learn a lot about Takhisis pre-war plans and start to see how some of the armies were built and supplied, seeing which actors were corrupted early on. This works well with the Chronicles, which tells the story of the actual war, while being a good stand-alone tale with a complete story arc and characters who inspire and motivate us.

In the end, you’ll never forget the Agharpult or the Creeping Weedgies and how they made you laugh, or Flint’s lost love and shattered family and how it made you see depth and softness in a formerly one-dimensional character who bears his entire heart and soul here and risks it all. Highly recommended.

– Frances Carden

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Frances Carden
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