The Hand of Chaos
is a 1993 fantasy novel by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, the fifth in the
seven-volume Death Gate Cycle. Here, Haplo
is sent with Bane back to Arianus to activate the Kicksey-winsey in advance of
a Patryn invasion.
Implausibilities abound as the writers spend the first
seventy pages roughly forcing the story in the direction they want it to go. It’s
mind-boggling that Haplo wouldn’t even try to grab Samah after the events of Serpent Mage – that would have solved
all his problems. And Xar, the “wisest Patryn of all,” is swayed far too easily
by both Bane and the dragon-snakes, above and beyond even what his vast hubris
can account for.
When the story gets going, Haplo is shoved to the margins; The Hand of Chaos is not so much a
sequel to Fire Sea and Serpent Mage as it is Dragon Wing 2, which isn’t exactly what
we were looking for at this point. Nevertheless, this is a reasonably
suspenseful page-turner, and it wraps up the Arianus storylines with a
satisfactory – if shaky – conclusion. The authors also do a fine job of writing
from a half-dozen different viewpoints.
There are some issues, though: Limbeck’s glossed-over
personality shift at the end of Dragon
Wing renders him largely unrecognizable here. We get way too much Iridal
and not nearly enough conflicted Haplo. And there’s little lead-in to the next
book beyond the developments in the first several chapters.
Its problems are not insignificant, but The Hand of Chaos is, ultimately, an engaging and fairly satisfying
novel, even if it often feels like a detour on the way to more pressing (and
more interesting) storylines.
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