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# What a difference 38 years makes
- URL: https://www.adventurousdadanddaughters.com/what-a-difference-38-years-makes/
- Published: 2026-09-24T09:54:27.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-24T14:22:10.000Z
- Description: The new edition of the Forgotten Realms novel Azure Bonds has one major difference on its cover.
- Author: Dad
- Tags: D&D, novels, gaming culture, Hachette D&D Novel Collection

A few years ago, just as the girls were starting to get interested in D&D, we subscribed to [Hachette’s *D&D Adventurer*](https://www.fauxhammer.com/partworks-magazines/dungeons-dragons-adventurer-contents-list-issues-1-80/?ref=adventurousdadanddaughters.com) magazine. Eighty issues, full of everything you need to play, and more dice than any human being should ever possess. Adventures, characters… It was a good way to get the girls deeper into the hobby.

So, when adverts started appearing for a new D&D partwork from them, I was intrigued. This time, it wasn’t rules, setting and dice, [but novels](https://dndnovels.hachettepartworks.com/?ref=adventurousdadanddaughters.com). Two a month, from over 40 years of D&D fiction publishing. This was exciting. They’re good quality hardbacks at a low price by today’s standards, and some of them are books I loved as a child but never returned to, like the *Dragonlance* series. But a substantial chunk of the series are novels I’d heard about but never bothered reading, including everything Drizzt-related and the Brimstone Angels series.

So, I signed up.

## D&D Novel Collection delivery 1

![](https://www.adventurousdadanddaughters.com/content/images/2026/09/IMG_8485.jpeg)

![](https://www.adventurousdadanddaughters.com/content/images/2026/09/IMG_8484.jpeg)

The first delivery had two books: *Homeland*, the first book chronologically in Drizzt’s story (but not the first published) and *Azure Bonds*, the first of a trilogy from the late 80s and early 90s.

The partwork books are largely using the original art from the first publications. Why “largely”? Well, here’s the original 1988 cover of *Azure Bonds*:

![](https://www.adventurousdadanddaughters.com/content/images/2026/09/IMG_1650.jpeg)

And here’s the 2026 reprint:

![](https://www.adventurousdadanddaughters.com/content/images/2026/09/IMG_8461.jpeg)

Still the same 80s vibe. A little cropping, a little shift in the levels of the image.

Oh, and they’ve done away with the boob window completely. But then, 1980s D&D was still a very male-dominated hobby, and female cheesecake images were a more widely accepted part of society. It’s interesting that the publishers thought that tastes had changed so much in the intervening decades that this element of the image needed revising.

My daughters both preferred the revised image, and for anyone that needs to sell books on the magazine racks in 2026, it’s probably the right commercial decision too.

But I thought it was interesting.