War of the Twins (1986)
War of the Twins is a 1986 dragons book written by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman.
Raistlin's spell overshoots. Instead of Istar, he and his companions land a century past the Cataclysm, on an Ansalon reduced to plague, famine, and warlords fighting over ruins. From the Tower of High Sorcery he means to open the Portal and challenge the Dark Queen on her own ground. Crysania's faith and Caramon's loyalty both bend under the strain, and Raistlin begins to sense that his careful plans are folding back on him. The middle Legends book tightens into a study of obsession, where an archmage learns that even mastery carries a cost he did not price.
Quick answers
What is War of the Twins about?
Raistlin's spell overshoots. Instead of Istar, he and his companions land a century past the Cataclysm, on an Ansalon reduced to plague, famine, and warlords fighting over ruins. From the Tower of High Sorcery he means to open the Portal and challenge the Dark Queen on her own ground. Crysania's faith and Caramon's loyalty both bend under the strain, and Raistlin begins to sense that his careful plans are folding back on him. The middle Legends book tightens into a study of obsession, where an archmage learns that even mastery carries a cost he did not price.
When was War of the Twins published?
War of the Twins was published in 1986.
Who made War of the Twins?
War of the Twins was written by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman.
Similar books
Explore War of the Twins guides
War of the Twins in our writing
- Companion guide: Dungeons & Dragons on the PC: From the Gold Box to Baldur's Gate 3
A few thoughts on War of the Twins
Planescape: Torment is the essential next step for anyone gripped by Raistlin's bargain with power and memory, a mage's own past hunting him through a ruined world. For the wasteland-fantasy texture, Dragon Age II sits well. And the doomed-ambition spiral recalls the tragic overreach at the heart of Tyranny.
Games about serving or defying a tyrant
War of the Twins turns Raistlin's hunger for mastery into a cost he cannot fully see yet, and Tyranny puts you on the other side of exactly that bargain, serving power instead of opposing it. Dragon Age II and Planescape: Torment both wring a story out of a broken world and a protagonist who wants more control over it than is safe.
The Dragonlance saga, before and after this book
Weis and Hickman carry the Dragonlance war from its opening in the Chronicles trilogy through Time of the Twins and into Test of the Twins, the same god-versus-mortal stakes War of the Twins sits in the middle of. Champions of Krynn runs the same tabletop rules underneath the whole saga.
Salvatore's corner of the same tabletop multiverse
Salvatore was writing Streams of Silver, The Crystal Shard, and The Halfling's Gem for the same TSR universe War of the Twins belongs to, just a different corner of it. Homeland, Exile, and Sojourn cover Drizzt's own exile, a companion saga running in parallel to Raistlin and Caramon's.
Kingdoms crumbling under warlords and dark power
A century past the Cataclysm, Ansalon is plague-ridden and warlord-run in War of the Twins, and that same picture of a kingdom eaten from within runs through Game of Thrones and Excalibur. Willow and The Witcher both put ordinary people under the boot of a power nobody can quite stop either.