Here is the tome I'm reading (at home) now.
It is The Annotated Chronicles by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. It has a page count of 1312. It is a big, bulky book. But let's look inside, shall we...
You'll notice that about half of each page is just a margin. On this particular pair of pages (which I have not reached yet) we see two annotations printed in the margins. Would anyone have ever guessed?
What this book is for me is a trip back in time. It is one the first fantasy books/series I ever read, The Dragonlance Chronicles trilogy, annotated by the above mentioned Weis and Hickman (among others). I was introduced to these books by a friend probably in 7th grade. I can't remember how much fantasy I had read before this but it wasn't all that much.
I had certainly read The Hobbit. And I had probably at least tried to read The Fellowship of the Ring. (It took me a couple of tries.) My parents had read The Chronicles of Narnia to my brothers and I as younger children (which was the real beginning of my love of fantasy). And I can't remember if I read The Dragon King Trilogy by Stephen Lawhead (which lead into other novels by him) before or after Dragonlance Chronicles, probably after. Like I said, it wasn't that much. I've read much more since then.
Anyway, I'm about 100 pages into the first book of the trilogy, Dragons of Autumn Twilight. It isn't the greatest prose ever but it is entertaining. And most of the annotations are pretty interesting either giving insight into the authors' thoughts or talking about how they are foreshadowing future events in the series.
I've also started the next book in the Horus Heresy series, Battle for the Abyss. It is actually pretty disappointing so far. One of the interesting things about this series is that each of the books is written by one of a group of authors. The previous book was written by one of the best authors of the series and the drop off to this book is easily apparent. This same author wrote the 3rd book in the series and I don't remember that one being particularly bad. But for some reason this one is just kind of rubbing me the wrong way. I'm about 30% in and hopefully it will pick up soon.
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