The Hand of Chaos
core novel 1993 The Death Gate Cycle
Record
| First published | 1993 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 4.08 (19,381 ratings, collected 2026-09-12) |
| Page count | 464 |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780553563696 |
Synopsis
The Hand of Chaos sends Haplo back to the air world of Arianus, where he must reactivate the Kicksey-winsey, an enormous dormant machine central to the realm's magical and mechanical balance. His mission is complicated by the warring factions he finds waiting there, including dwarves, elves, and mysterious dragon-snakes each pursuing their own agendas amid the fallout of events from earlier in the cycle. As Haplo works to carry out his lord's orders, he also finds himself hunted by former allies who now regard him as a traitor to the Patryn cause, forcing him to balance the machine's reactivation, the shifting loyalties of Arianus's peoples, and his own increasingly uncertain standing within his own people's plans.
Where it sits
- Universe: The Death Gate Cycle
- Series: The Death Gate Cycle core; position 5 of 7 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Margaret Weis
- Author: Tracy Hickman
Notes
- From the series record (The Death Gate Cycle): Complete seven-book sequence, a separate co-authored world from Weis & Hickman's Dragonlance.
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings and are never conflated: a book's place in one says nothing about its place in the other.
- Publication order, within the series The Death Gate Cycle: position 5 of 7: previous Serpent Mage (1992) · next Into the Labyrinth (1993)
Sources
← The Death Gate Cycle dossier · All universes
Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.