You can tell Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman spent a lot of time thinking about the worlds that they chronicle in The Death Gate Cycle. While most authors would be content with building a single world, Weis and Hickman conjure up four; and while most authors are happy with just a map of their fictional creations, Weis and Hickman go all out with maps, footnotes, mini-treatises on history and magic, and even musical scores for all the songs that appear in their books. About the only thing they don't do is invent their own language--but then, I haven't read all seven books of the Cycle yet.

Dragon Wing is the first book of the Death Gate Cycle, and, unfortunately, an inauspicious start for the series. Although I have nothing but praise for Weis and Hickman's sheer inventiveness, the execution of their ideas is awkward and heavy-handed.

Arianus, the world in which Dragon Wing occurs, consists of a series of islands all floating above the Malestrom, an awe-inspiring and deadly storm. If you're acrophobic, Arianus is the ultimate nightmare world: peeking over the edge of each island will give you a glimpse of the long, long way you can fall toward the mouth of the Malestrom. But the residents of Arianus aren't really that concerned with falling off their islands. The assassin Hugh the Hand, for instance, has more weighty matters on his mind: like how to assassinate the son of a king in such a way that a war will break out between the humans. Further down in Arianus, near the tempestuous edges of the Malestrom, a "Geg" (dwarf) named Limbeck is quietly starting his own war of rebellion against the Geg's conservative authorities. And then there is the mysterious visitor who suddenly materializes in the Geg's world--and claims to know the gods.

A list of Dragon Wing's more serious problems: It suffers from jarring passages of clunky exposition. The stakes are never particularly compelling, in large part because you never care very much about the characters, nor do you ever feel that they are in great danger. The characters themselves are flat, almost simplistic; Weis and Hickman cannot effectively communicate their characters' emotions. And the plot just sort of creaks along; the action almost never reaches a fever pitch or builds in excitement. Indeed, much of the book feels just like a vehicle for slowly transmitting the ideas and backstory that Weis and Hickman spent the most time on.

That being said, I greatly enjoyed the chapters on the Gegs. Although much about those chapters should have been annoying (the Gegs' cutsey names, their obstinate ignorance, their general clownishness), I could tell that Weis and Hickman weren't being serious, and that made those chapters easy to swallow and fun to read.

Were it not for the fascinating world-building ideas (and an increasingly interesting backstory) that are constantly introduced by Weis and Hickman (though often in exceedingly clumsy expository passages), Dragon Wing would be a pretty poor novel. As it is, it's worth reading to see if you'll like the rest of the Death Gate Cycle--but, unless things get better, if you don't like this book, you shouldn't go on.

Copyright © 2002 Steven Wu