The Death Gate Cycle - Weis and Hickman  RRP œ4.99 each
                 (Fantasy paperback novels)

If I swivel round on my seat in front of the PC, away from the
piles of disks, I can see one of the other passions of my life,
part of the Medley collection of books. About a dozen of them
belong to Alan, all the rest are mine. There are more boxes in the
loft but in the spare room are the gems of my collection that I
read and re-read, and books still to be read. I don't get as much
reading done as I used to, due to the pressure of the magazines,
but any trip to a major shopping centre will see me making a
bee-line for the bookshops and, invariably, coming out with a few
more. (One reason why I don't go up to Forbidden Planet more than
once a year, I'd want to buy the whole shop!)

The majority of the books used to be Science Fiction but over the
last 4 or 5 years, the fantasy side has taken over, much as it has
in my taste in computer games. The largest collection is the TSR
and related series - a quick count - dare I admit to 79 books?
The series I have enjoyed the most were the Dragonlance books
which were originally written by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman.
The first six were written solely by them, then there were three
volumes of short stories which they edited.

I gather (and my apologies if I have misremembered the story) that
there was a falling out between Weis and Hickman and TSR.  Further
Dragonlance books, detailing the earlier exploits of the
characters in the first books and related tales, have been written
by other authors, and though they have kept to the spirit of the
earlier books, I was pleased to see Weis and Hickman coming back
with fresh series under another publisher. The first was the Dark
Sword Trilogy (excellent) and the second The Rose of the Prophet
Series (not yet read).

Now they've brought out the start of a new collection, the Death
Gate Series; just two books at the time of writing but with the
promise of more to come ... and they're brilliant.

Where Weis and Hickman excel is in their creation of believable
realms populated by equally-believable characters with good
attention to detail in both the text and the accompanying maps.
In this series, the worlds described are very different from our
own and the authors have taken a lot of time working out their
topography, history and customs, down to the smallest detail.

The first book, Dragon Wing, introduces us to Haplo and his dog.
Haplo is a member of a race skilled in magic, known as the Patryn.
Their arch enemies, the Sartan, also skilled sorcerers, imprisoned
the Patryn in a dangerous region called the Labyrinth. This
imprisonment was meant to be for a relatively short time to try to
break the Patryn of their overwhelming ambition and cruel nature,
but something went wrong. The Sartan vanished and the Patryn found
themselves condemned to live their lives in the Labyrinth, unless
they could find a way out.

Centuries passed until one resourceful individual did escape,
risking losing his life on many occasions as he attempted to
traverse the series of gates which separate the Labyrinth from the
outside world.  Once outside, he found a wondrous land and city
called the Nexus, clearly designed for the Patryn to inhabit once
their imprisonment was over. Summoning all his remaining strength
and courage, he took it upon himself to re-enter the Labyrinth
time and time again, encouraging more Patryn to reach the Nexus.
One of these was Haplo.

The main thing that gave the Patryn the will to live and the
impetus to escape the Labyrinth, was to revenge themselves upon
the Sartan. But where were their enemies? Vanished? Or hiding?
Before their disappearance, the Sartan had divided the world into
four worlds of sky, sea, stone and fire. Maybe they, or some of
them, were hiding in one of these realms, taking refuge amongst
the local populations of humans, elves and dwarves? Haplo is
charged with two tasks; to visit the four worlds in turn, stir up
unrest against the Sartan and to bring back a disciple from the
first world who his Lord, the first to escape the Labyrinth,
could use in his plans to re-unite the four worlds and further
confound the Sartan's plans. But he must be careful not to let his
true nature become known in case it alerts the Sartan to the fact
that their prisoners have, finally, escaped.

Dragon Wing takes place in Arianus, the World of Sky, which Haplo
(not forgetting his dog) travels to via the Death Gate. There he
finds a strange place made up of islands floating in the sky on
different levels (High Realm, Middle Realm and Low Realm). Travel
between them is by means of dragon-back or in dragon ships. The
elves are the richest section of the population, controlling the
world's water supply. The humans live in a medieval society in the
same realm, Mid Realm, so conflict is inevitable. As for the
dwarves, these poor creatures (now known as Gegs) inhabit the Low
Realm where they tend a gigantic machine called the
Kicksey-winsey, its purpose unknown to them, which was created
many years before by superior beings called the Mangers who are
deified, together with the Kicksey-winsey, in a building called
the Factree. And above the High Realm, past an 'uncrossable'
region known as the Firmament lies .... well, wait and see.

Stir into this mixture several great characters such as Limbeck,
one of the Gegs who has dared to ask the question 'Why?' - 'Why
does the Kicksey-winsey do this when we press that button?', 'Why
was it built?', 'Why did the Mangers leave?' - alienating the
higher ranking Gegs but making the workers think a bit more about
their lives, an assassin called Hugh the Hand who is about to be
executed right at the beginning of the book but is reprieved, only
to be asked to undertake a most unusual assignment, and various
other humans, Gegs and elves (or Welves as the Gegs call them) and
you've got the basis for a gripping tale.

The second book, Elven Star, takes Haplo (and dog) to Equilian,
the World of Fire. A place of steaming jungle, strange creatures
and, surprise, humans, elves and dwarves in conflict. Again the
elves are the richest group, mainly due to their ability to
construct magical weapons which the other factions can use against
each other. Haplo's arrival is heralded by death and destruction
in the region which serve to bring the three groups together, at
least superficially. The main characters this time are an elf
called Paithan and his family, two humans named Roland and Rega
who are brother and sister but are pretending to be husband and
wife in an attempt to blackmail Paithan and a dwarf called Drugar.
An additional character, a wizard named Zifnab, will be familiar
to readers of the Dragonlance series where he was known as Fizban.
Fizban was one of my favourite characters in the Dragonlance books
and its great to see his reappearance, as confused and funny as
ever, with his hat falling down over his eyes. This time he is
accompanied by a dragon under a very dodgy spell of compulsion
which it keeps breaking out of. The dragon acts like a cross
between a butler and Fizban's mother, continually warning him to
eat well and wrap up warm.

The humour shines through in both books, but most especially in
the second. I found both of them almost impossible to put down and
I relished the time I could spend curled up with them, being all
too sorry when I finished them. I hope the next book in the series
won't be too long coming.
                                                  Sue

@~If you've read a book or series, SF, fantasy or any related
@~subject suitable for inclusion here, why not write in and tell
@~other SynTax readers about it? From conversations I've had, by
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