[Dfen911]

First - I'm the newbie :) Let the games begin.

Second - I cannot remember a series of books and I am hoping by my brief description you can.

It is a fantasy. I cannot remember how it begins, but one of the characters is a man who is covered in runes. He was born in a labrynith and upon birth the mothers carve the rune of protection over their heart. As the months go by more runes are carved in and as they get older they do their own. These people must fight their way to the surface (although this is not part of the story it was just background on this rune covered man). You learn very little about life below except to say it's brutal and the monsters are horrible.

This man meets up with a wizard. Now the wizard is really interesting as his mind seems very befuddled. He's always muttering about things, in his mind, happened way in the past. But these things very much resemble events that are taking place here now. (When I say now I mean at the time the books were written)

The man also finds a black dog.

Each book puts them at a different realm. The last book I read they were heading towards the tree elves in a balloon.

Thank you for any input you can provide :)

[Yobmod]

Definately The Death Gate Cycle by Weis and Hickman (7 books? first is Dragon Wing).

Not recommended by me though - even if you are a fan of the writers, this story gets way too bogged down in later books with confusing events and pointless characters. However, read their Dragonlance offerings if you like this.

[Dfen911]

Holy cow!!

I am awed and stunned.

Thank you so much! Yes I remember reading the first 3 and as I started reading the 4th book I never finished it.

The only reason I wanted to find it was I dreamt about it of all things.

So totally torked me when I woke up and couldn't remember this book and it's been YEARS since I read it.

Thank you so much!! You have officially saved my sanity!!!:)

[Wizz]

I dunno, i thought it was pretty good. Sure Dragonlance is what Weis and Hickman are really known for, but Death Gate Cycle was a fun romp. I'd take it over any of their other projects (Dragonlance excluded) that's fosho! :cool:

[Etamin]

Coincidently, I just finished rereading the Death Gate novels earlier today and thought they were just as interesting and enchanting as the first time I read them back in high school. Definitely a good, quick, easy-to-read series whose (main ;) ) characters stick with you.

[Eönwë]

Death Gate was a series that struck as sort of like Weis and Hickman's White Album; having achieved astronomical (for the genre) fame and fortune with the Dragonlance novels, they had the freedom to work out all their most bizarre and indulgent notions in this rather long (7 chunky novels) series which was wildly inconsistent but showed distinct flashes of brilliance throughout. Though I found some concepts very interesting (Sartan rune-magic, etc.), Weis and Hickman are at their most self-referential here (Zifnab's antics). Thus I think it'll appeal mostly to fans of their other work.