Saving Solace by Douglas Clark is the first book in a series of stand alone novels in the Champions series. I believe this is Mr. Clark's first novel in the Dragonlance universe and he proves to be a quick study of all things Dragonlance.
The plot of this book is pretty straight forward and has few twists and turns. The book starts off with the town of Solace discovering a murder, who happens to be their sheriff. Palin Majere the town mayor sends for the only man he thinks can take over the sheriff's job, Gerard uth Mondar. The book centers of Gerard quest to find out who murdered the sheriff. Of course along the way there are some hurdles he has to get across, but in typical fashion, in the end everything is resolved in a nice tight package. If you are a fan of Dragonlance books, which I am, this book has everything you have come to expect from one. Some Dragonlance books written in the past few years have started deviating from the style that makes Dragonlance so popular; well have no fear here, Mr. Clark writes a traditional Dragonlance book here, and writes it well I may add.
Some of the characters in this book are carry-overs from the War of Souls trilogy. Gerard, Palin, Laura, and a few others. This gives Clark a chance to jump right into the story as the characters have already been developed. However, the one complaint about this book is that there is very little true character development. In fact, I would even venture to say that the Gerard that is written about in Saving Solace doesn't resemble the Gerard written about the War of Souls. In WoS Gerard is a gruff, quiet, introspective soldier. Ye in this book he dances, cracks jokes and does things that he never did before. A minor continuity problem from book to book is all.
In you are looking for a traditional Dragonlance book that is a light easy read, have no fear and jump into this one. If, however, you are looking for a deep plot with lots of character development, you may be disappointed by this one. Yet, in the end scheme of things I would recommend this book to most fantasy genre fans. I enjoyed this book and it is good to see that the Dragonlance setting is getting back to what I know and loved about it before. Well done Mr. Clark!