Author: Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman
Published: August 1986

This review will likely be shorter than usual because there’s simply less to review. Test of the Twins is noticeably shorter than the other two books in the Legends trilogy, coming in at only about two-thirds the length of Time of the Twins. So many of the outstanding plot threads were resolved at the end of the previous novel that they had to really work to pad this one out — and that’s forcing me, in turn, to pad this review out as best I can. Truly, a critic’s lot is a woeful one.  But is it actually a good book in its own rights or just an overgrown novella with delusions of grandeur? Let’s dive in and see.

Plot

Test of the Twins picks up right where War of the Twins left off, with Caramon and Tasslehoff using Par-Salian’s magic macguffin to transport themselves from the past back to their own time. Things go dreadfully wrong, though, and they find themselves in a blasted post-apocalyptic wasteland two years later than their intended arrival date. It’s a good way to establish the stakes. We see first-hand what will happen if Raistlin is allowed to succeed, and since the entire world is too big and nebulous a thing to protect, we’re shown Caramon’s and Tas’ emotional reactions to finding their hometown destroyed and all their friends and family dead.

It’s all described in a way that’s very reminiscent of the popular nuclear annihilation media of the 1980s, with destructive storms and showers of burning ash blotting out the sun. It’s hard to explain to people born after the Cold War just how pervasive and omnipresent the fear of nuclear war was back then, but anyone who lived through that time will immediately recognize this as belonging to the same zeitgeist that spawned works like On the Beach and The Day After. In particular, the scene where Tas gets violently ill after drinking contaminated rainwater gave me flashbacks to being scarred as a child by reading When the Wind Blows at much too young an age.

The heroes find further proof that this is the worst possible timeline when they come across Bupu’s corpse, since the Raistlin we knew would never have allowed harm to come to her if he’d been able to help it. But in the future Raistlin has become a mad evil overlord who thinks of nothing but his own power, and he’ll destroy the world as part of his apotheosis. The rest of the novel, minus the occasional subplot detour, will be about trying to stop that future from coming to pass by any means necessary. It’s a great setup, but this entire first third of the book feels extremely padded out. The authors try to stretch a few chapters’ worth of tension across six chapters, so the heroes do lots of recapping the events of the past two books, looking at the ruined landscape, and wandering through a spooky forest, but they don’t do much to advance the plot. It’s such a relief when they finally get to the Tower of High Sorcery and get some exposition about what’s going on.

All of this is played super dark. The world is dying and every remaining living thing is suffering. The heroes follow the sound of tortured screaming through a dark, dying forest. They have a conversation with Par-Salian while he’s burning to death:

The wizard’s eyes were melting. His mouth was a gaping hole in the black formless mass that was his face. But his dying words struck Caramon like another bolt of lightning, to be burned into his mind forever.
“Raistlin must not be allowed to leave the Abyss!”

“It really doesn’t get much gothier than that,” I was thinking… and then we get a point-of-view chapter from Lord Soth, Kitiara’s tragic undead sidekick, as he broods upon his dark throne. Guess I spoke too soon! And thus begins the subplot that pads this book out from novella to novel: Lord Soth, hoping to claim Kitiara as his undead bride, foments a war between her and the city of Palanthas. But first we have to sit through an entire chapter devoted to Soth’s origin story, which feels like completely extraneous padding, especially since we already got plenty of his backstory in Dragons of Spring Dawning. It just goes on and on, and practically none of it is relevant to the plot of this book.

Tanis finally re-enters the story when he’s summoned to Palanthas by Dalamar. It’s another character-driven chapter where everything is portentous and atmospheric, but little of relevance is actually said. Much of it is just a recap of the events of the last two books, where a bunch of returning characters say to each other “Boy, we sure are in trouble now!”. Still, it’s good to have a new point of view — we get a glimpse of what the world is like after the War of the Lance and establish two simultaneous threats to ramp up the tension: Raistlin ending the world and Kitiara attacking Palanthas. For all that the attack on Palanthas and Tanis’ involvement come out of nowhere, the authors do a good job of tying it into Raistlin’s plotline. It’s genuinely tense and well-paced, and it gives us a much-needed break from the Raistlin and Caramon Show that we’ve been watching for the last two books. That vein is pretty well tapped out by this point.

Their biggest challenge is the apathy of the people of Palanthas, who have decided that the war is over and everything is back to normal even though it’s only been two years and there are tons of draconians, dragons, and flying citadels about. Tanis spends a lot of time trying to convince them that they need to act, and it’s an uphill struggle. At first I thought it seemed unrealistic that the Palanthians would get so complacent and self-deluded after only two years… but then I took a look around the real world and reconsidered. If I had a dime for every schmuck on social media who says “Remember the pandemic? Man, I’m sure glad that’s over. Anyhow, I wonder why I’m tired all the time and my food tastes weird?”, I could retire and devote myself to this blog full-time. So if Weis and Hickman want to have Lord Gunthar land a dragon on an aircraft carrier behind a banner that says “Mission Accomplished,” well, fair enough.

Meanwhile, Raistlin and Crysania find themselves in the Abyss, having succeeded where Fistandantilus failed. But getting in was the easy part; the hard part will be defeating the legions of evil and surviving to get out again. We see occasional cutaway scenes of their struggle, which mostly involves Crysania protecting Raistlin from his inner demons and becoming increasingly debilitated by poisons and wounds in the process. It works fairly well — instead of a monotonous series of punch-ups against a ton of mooks, the “messing with Raistlin’s head” angle slips some good characterization into the drama and gives him some degree of vulnerability.

There’s an odd little scene where the Knights brace for another battle at the High Clerist’s Tower, but Kitiara skips it entirely by flying over it with her flying citadel. I cannot believe that in the course of two years, nobody has once thought “What if we’re attacked by a flying citadel, just like Kalaman was during the war?” It’s presented as some brilliant masterstroke on Kitiara’s part, but it seems like a fairly straightforward strategy and one that the Knights should have anticipated, given what happened two years ago. They knew that the flying citadels were still out there — why wouldn’t they expect them to be used? And yet Lord Gunthar still seems shocked when it shows up at the High Clerist’s Tower.

Tasslehoff and Caramon got the first quarter of the book to themselves, then disappeared for a long time. I missed Tasslehoff’s blithe, optimistic viewpoint, so it’s good that he shows up just in time to narrate almost all of the Battle of Palanthas. He prevents Tanis from dying at Lord Soth’s hands and joins them in an aerial raid on the flying citadel, where they meet a filthy gully dwarf slave who helps them take control of it. Christ, can’t we go just one novel without any gully dwarves? This one is especially mentally handicapped for comic effect and described as smelling like “rotting garbage.” Sigh. I remember finding this sort of thing funny thirty years ago, but now it just seems pathetic and somewhat mean-spirited.

Palanthas gets mostly destroyed during the big battle, but there’s not a lot of emotional payoff because we haven’t spent much time in the city and almost nobody we know is from there. The destruction of Solace in Dragons of Autumn Twilight was far more effective because we knew the people who were being hurt and we knew how much it meant to the protagonists; next to that, the damage to Palanthas is just set dressing.

Meanwhile, Crysania finally hits the apex of her character arc when Raistlin, having used her to pass through the Abyss unharmed, abandons her to her fate. It hardly comes as a surprise — he said he’d do just that at the end of the last book — but it’s still tragic and well-handled. Well, mostly. Her final realization is that she’d abandoned her quest to redeem Raistlin and I’m like, lady, you just noticed that now? You haven’t even mentioned it for a book and a half, so I didn’t even know that was still relevant to the plot.

In the end, the trilogy’s overarching plotline gets a bittersweet conclusion. Raistlin is a tragic hero who sees all his ambitions come crashing down around him, while Kitiara is betrayed; both meet a fate worse than death. On the other hand, Caramon redeems himself and he, Tasslehoff, and Crysania get to live happily ever after, scarred but wiser. I love it, because the ending wouldn’t have felt real if all the struggle and pain in this fairly dark story had culminated in a happy ending where everyone gets what they want.

Memories flitted about him like the guardians of the Tower, reaching out to touch him with their cold hands. Caramon sneaking food off Flint’s plate while the dwarf had his back turned. Raistlin conjuring up visions of wonder and delight for the children of Flotsam. Kitiara, laughing, throwing her arms around his neck, whispering into his ear. Tanis’s heart shrank within him, the pain brought tears to his eyes.

A long epilogue ties up a number of loose ends — Astinus’ book, the fate of the Abyss portal, Caramon’s reconciliation with Tika — and gives the protagonists a satisfying and well-deserved sendoff.

Characters

Raistlin, as the prime mover of the plot, gets further developed here. As he travels through the Abyss we see distorted snippets of his early life which flesh out how he became the person he is, and his eventual fate makes perfect sense for his character. It wouldn’t be believable for him to completely repent at this late date; instead, he’s placed in a situation where the only reasonable option is to sacrifice himself. He does something selfless not because he’s suddenly become a good person, but because it’s the least bad outcome once he realizes he’ll never succeed. But at least he gets to make the choice.

Caramon, on the other hand, has already gone through just about all of his character development over the past two books, so his role in the novel is basically to say a long-awaited goodbye to his brother and tie off their tangled relationship. It takes a lot of work to get them face-to-face at the end, but it’s satisfying once we get there. Until then, though, he’s just sort of gruff and heroic as he plows through the obstacles between him and the twins’ final reunion — not quite bland, per se, but there’s not much left to do with him character-wise.

Tanis finally returns to the trilogy after his brief cameo in Time of the Twins. He’s still the same person he was in the Chronicles trilogy — uncomfortable, socially awkward, occasionally seething with frustration and anger — but a little older and wiser after all his adventures, and still just as quietly heroic. His sections came as a refreshing and necessary break from the story’s laser focus on Raistlin and Caramon, and it’s nice to have a new problem (Kitiara’s attack) that lots of other characters can participate in. Plus, seeing how one of the heroes ended up after the War makes some nice closure for the previous trilogy. No complaints here.

Tasslehoff doesn’t have much in the way of an arc in this book, but he’s a necessary piece of the puzzle. All this sound and fury about the world ending and everyone dying is grim as hell, so we need Tas’ carefree narration to keep the “bad future” and “battle of Palanthas” sections from becoming uncomfortably heavy. His importance to the plot goes beyond just comic relief, though — he ends up saving Tanis’ life single-handedly (not to mention underhandedly) and has a critical part to play in saving the day, so he doesn’t feel like a mere camera watching a story all about other people. The epilogue makes clear how much he’s been changed by his experiences in a bittersweet way — he’s accumulated plenty of un-kender-like wisdom, but paid for it with grief. It works well.

What works a lot less well, though, is this novel’s treatment of its female characters. Both Crysania and Kitiara are entirely without agency: duped, led around, and ultimately abused and betrayed by men they trust. The difference is that we seem to be expected to pity Crysania for her suffering and cheer when she gets saved, but Kitiara’s fate is presented as the inevitable result of her actions and the overall effect is more “well, that’s a shame, I guess.”

When she first enters the story, Kitiara is a hot mess after breaking up with Dalamar. But we never saw much of their relationship, so it’s not clear to me what she saw in him or what she misses about him. Why do Tanis and Dalamar get under her skin while all of her many other lovers don’t? That’s crucial information about her character that we never get. Her outcome, the only story beat in this book that feels wrong to me, is especially gross. She ends up facing eternity as the undead slave of a jealous, possessive man, which is a hell of a thing to do to the most strong-willed, independent woman in the setting. The gods give Raistlin — a much more evil person — a respite from his fate worse than death, but the people closest to Kitiara don’t even try to save her from hers, and she’s more or less forgotten about afterwards. It’s got a misogynistic flavour to it, as if the authors are saying “well, that’s just what she deserves.” Ugh.

Crysania, on the other hand, gets some time to wrap up her trilogy-long storyline of “hard-won wisdom”; she learns about the nature of evil and returns home, blind and forever emotionally scarred but finally capable of being a good leader for the Church of Paladine. The theme of “good people need to make mistakes and be self-aware” has been quite well-handled throughout this trilogy — ostensibly good people with closed minds, like the Kingpriest, end up causing terrible harm, while people who have suffered and survived experiences that forced them to challenge their own beliefs, like Elistan and Crysania, are able to have compassion for people who aren’t like them. I just wish the authors could have put some of Crysania’s character development into the second book rather than introducing her themes in the first book, ignoring her for a long time, and then finally resolving them at the end.

And speaking of Elistan, he dies of some cancer-like progressive illness midway through the novel. It feels like they’re trying to make it a big emotional moment, but the fact is that we haven’t spent enough time with him to be crushed by his passing. He was a minor tag-along character in the last trilogy and has a couple of scenes in this book, and that’s it. Still, he gets more good character moments in this book than he did in all of the Chronicles trilogy combined, so I can’t complain.

All the side characters, from the drunken young knight to random city guardsmen of Palanthas, are vivid and well-rendered. I appreciate how the authors use even the most minor characters as a way to flesh out the setting.

Themes

The theme here is pretty obvious:

“Evil cannot create,” Astinus remarked, “it can only destroy. It turns in upon itself, gnawing itself.”

The fundamental flaw in Raistlin’s plan is that in Krynnish cosmology, evil is purely a force of destruction and cannot create anything by itself. Once he destroys the world, he’s destined to fail at building a new one and will languish alone in an empty cosmos for all eternity. It’s one more way in which you need a balance between good and evil to keep the world functioning, which has been a consistent theme throughout all of the Dragonlance novels so far. (I’m confused about how that squares with the Krynnish creation myth where the evil gods create the ogre races, but that is the least of a great many head-scratchers in Dragonlance’s snarled continuity.)

The theme for War of the Twins also continues into this book, with considerably higher stakes: the protagonists know what’s fated to happen, and the tension is in whether they can change things for the better to prevent the bad bits or whether history will repeat itself. It works well — you know that the authors aren’t going to destroy the world, but you don’t know what it’ll cost the heroes to prevent the bad timeline.

Writing

I have some complaints. Some of the writing is unusually purple, especially in the “apocalyptic future” section:

The boiling black clouds they had been watching mass along the horizon like an army gathering its full strength for the attack surged in just before nightfall, mercifully obliterating the final few moments of the shrunken sun’s existence.

There are a couple of small mistakes, like “trodding” for “treading,” or referring to a dark elf as a “drow.” [1] A handful of comma splices mar otherwise solid sentences. But as with Weis and Hickman’s previous two novels, all of these are just minor nitpicks about an overall strong writing style. Vivid descriptions abound, the narration subtly changes to suit each point-of-view character, and the authors do a good job of getting inside their characters’ heads. All things considered, the quality is generally quite high.

Conclusion

Grade: A–

Sure, it may be short, burdened with a fair amount of padding, and gives short shrift to an important character. But I’m willing to forgive all that. Normally I scoff at books where the stakes are “the world will end!”, but here that’s not the main source of tension — we know the authors aren’t going to destroy the universe. [2] Instead, the stakes are all about the characters: can Raistlin be redeemed? Is Tanis doomed to be killed? How will the complex relationship between the twins play out? Test of the Twins does a great job of wrapping up all of these storylines and character arcs, giving the heroes a well-deserved and hard-won happy ending.

The authors tie everything up with a bow in a rather sweet postscript where they bid farewell to Dragonlance and look forward to exploring other worlds in their future books. Frankly, I wish that the saga of Dragonlance had ended here. All of the major characters’ stories are resolved, either by death or happy domesticity, and the world is at peace. Narratively, this would have been the perfect place to stop. Instead we’re about to enter a long era of diminishing returns where many other authors tried to recapture the magic of the original six books and, for the most part, failed badly.

Footnotes

[1] Regular D&D drow don’t exist in the Dragonlance universe, and “dark elf” just refers to normal elves who have been exiled from elven society for some great crime. Several authors — including Weis and Hickman in at least two instances! — made the mistake of calling dark elves “drow,” so it was later retconned to be a Krynnish synonym for “exiled elf,” to everyone’s great confusion. And then Spelljammer made things even worse by establishing that a colony of actual drow from another plane crash-landed on Krynn and established a colony, so now nobody knows what “drow” is supposed to mean.

[2] Although in the course of writing these articles, I discovered that a Russian theatre troupe did a mid-budget rock opera version of the Dragonlance Legends trilogy, and as you might expect from Russians, they went for the most depressing possible ending where the world does actually get destroyed. It was a lot of fun to watch, despite all the changes and omissions they had to make in the adaptation, but it took a while to get over the bizarre feeling of “I can’t believe I’m seeing people act out this stuff from my childhood on stage.”