Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman did a great job on this trilogy. My favorite book series growing up was Weis and Hickman’s Dragonlance chronicles, so going into this series my bar was set high and they did not disappoint. This trilogy was released in 2009, so its been around for a little while already, but it’s worth the read. It has it all, love, loss, sacrifice, intrigue, betrayal, and its all done so well. I have to give this a well deserved 9 stars. My favorite quote by far that I felt compelled to share with friends and family at the time of reading it is,

“Yet Wolfram believed Ranessa. He didn’t know why. Perhaps because she was crazy and there are many among the peoples of Loerem – the orks, for example – who believed that lunatics are god-touched. Privately Wolfram thought the gods might have been kinder to him and touched her a bit harder -hit her with a hammer, maybe.”

The sovereign stone, a gift from the gods, split into 4 pieces so that each of the races on Loerem Humans, Dwarves, Elves, and Orks will have equal ability to grant the immense power of transformation into a dominion lord to members of their race so that they may keep peace and destroy any foul void beings that would threaten the lives of all the creatures on Loerem.

The first of the trilogy Well of Darkness, follows two young boys, prince Dagnarus, and his whipping boy Gareth. Dagnarus has no love for books or learning often skipping his private tutoring session, and when he does show up he spends his time looking out the window at the soldiers training in the courtyard below him. Despite never being told no, his older half-brother Helmos is the golden child and Dagnarus can’t stand it. Despite being a spoiled brat, he is one of the only people that treats Gareth like an actual person. The authors actually had me rooting for Dagnarus throughout most of this book even with the foreshadowing that the feud between him and Helmos was likely to push Dagnarus down a path of death and destruction. Reading this I kept thinking he’s going to be the villain of this series and I still wanted him to come out on top, well in the first book at least. Meanwhile Gareth is forced to choose between doing the right thing and being like his role model Helmos, or helping his best friend Dagnarus achieve his goals.

The second book Guardians of the Lost takes place roughly 200 years after the events of the first book, the main 4 races may not be at war, but they aren’t really at peace either. The human piece of the sovereign stone are lost and agents of the void are searching everywhere to try and find them for their dark master. A pair of two young men Jessan and Bashae from a tribe of nomads, and a travelling dwarf named Wolfram end up in the middle of a battle between a dominion lord (Gustav) and a void lord fighting over the newly rediscovered human piece of the sovereign stone. After being injured and unable to take the stone to its proper home, Jessan, Bashae, and Wolfram are entrusted to complete his task though none of them know the importance of what they have, or that they’re being followed.

The last book Journey into the Void has Jessan and Bashae continuing their task with a few friends they made along the way, like one baron Shadamehr who can’t take anything seriously even when his life might depend on it. It is realized that the only way to stop the dark lord from taking over is to reunite all the pieces of the sovereign stone in a place known as the portal to the gods, hidden beneath the rubble of the city of Old Vinnengael.

There are so many more layers to this story that I feel including in this review would take away from the experience of reading these books yourself, secret dragons, warmongering lizard people, a giant gnawing on the hand of someone who absolutely deserved it… One of my only complaints with this series is that towards the end, a certain elderly elf orchestrating getting all the pieces of the stones together, happens to miraculously be in all the right places at all the right times. His unexpected return was enjoyed, but felt a little heavy handed.