New DRAGONLANCE novel confirmed for 2022

We've known it's been coming for a while, but not the final release date. Dragonlance authors Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman have confirmed their new novel in the setting, their first addition to the saga for thirteen years, will be published on 9 August 2022. Dragons of Deceit is the first volume of the Dragonlance Destinies Trilogy and the first Dragonlance novel of any kind since The Fate of Thorbardin by Douglas Niles in 2010.

Dragonlance is a setting for the Dungeons & Dragons table top roleplaying game. The setting was originally launched in 1984 with a series of D&D adventures and the first Dragonlance novel, Dragons of Autumn Twilight. Unlike other D&D settings such as Greyhawk and the later Forgotten Realms, which were both designed around giving the players a world to have many adventures in, Dragonlance focused on a single huge saga. It was effectively D&D's take on The Lord of the Rings, chronicling the adventures of a band of disparate heroes in their efforts to defeat the dark goddess Takhisis. The Dragonlance Chronicles and Dragonlances Legends trilogies sold more than four million copies before the decade was done, making them among the biggest-selling epic fantasy novels of that decade.

The Dragonlance setting was fleshed out by many other authors and game designers, eventually encompassing 203 novels and dozens of game supplements. Weis & Hickman's novels in the setting eventually sold almost 35 million copies. Although the novels continued to sell very well, the game materials were more inconsistent in sales and drifted in and out of print. In 2003 Wizards of the Coast licensed the RPG setting to Margaret Weis's own RPG company, Sovereign Press, and Weis created a version of the setting compatible with D&D 3rd Edition that sold well for many years. In 2008, after the release of the divisive D&D 4th Edition, WotC terminated its contract with Sovereign and brought the game materials back in-house, but surprisingly decided to sit on them rather than use them for anything. There has been no official Dragonlance material released since the last novel in 2010. In fact, the only D&D-branded fiction released since 2018 has been a series of Drizzt Do'Urden novels by R.A. Salvatore and nothing else, leaving an immense amount of money on the table given the massive popularity of D&D at the moment.

Weis and Hickman began working on the new Dragonlance trilogy in 2019. However, editorial disagreements led to the trilogy being cancelled despite the first two books being completed and the first volume fully edited. Weis and Hickman sued Wizards of the Coast for $10 million and breach of contract. Two months later the lawsuit was withdrawn, with both parties claiming an amicable settlement had been reached.

The refreshingly old-skool book cover uses an intriguing new logo, claiming that this is "Classic Dragonlance." There has been no confirmation from WotC if there will be new gaming material for the current D&D 5th Edition to accompany the new book. Two further novels are expected to follow in 2023 and 2024.