D&D General Best D&D Novels

[Sacrosanct]

Vote as many times as you want. I'm trying to limit super prolific authors like Salvatore to just a few series rather than list all of his books, and you'll notice when possible, I'm grouping by series instead of each book individually due to brevity.

These are D&D novels specifically, so no Deed of Pakenarrion.

 

[humble minion]

Other. Lynn Abbey’s Urik-based Dark Sun quasi-trilogy.

 

[ersatzphil]

As much as I dislike the changes that it made to the setting in retrospect, I did totally love the Prism Pentax Pentad series when I read it back in the day.

edit: I seem to have trained my autocorrect in some oddly specific ways.

 

[Yardiff]

Nevermind. I really liked several D&D LIKE stories like Guardians of the Flame and Quag Keep but they are not D&D specific.

 

[Velderan]

I really enjoyed Richard Knaak's Legend of Huma and the follow-up Kaz the Minotaur.

 

[Shiroiken]

I'd include Evermeet as one of the best FR novels, but the original 6 Dragonlance are pretty much the best.

FYI it's "Saga of Old City," not "Saga of the Old Cities"

 

[SakanaSensei]

I often see… ire? Online for all things Drizzt, but I’ve had to have read Honeland-Sojourn at least 3-4 times since I discovered them in middle school.

 

[Lycurgon]

I haven't read a lot of D&D novels. I only recently read the Dark Elf trilogy and enjoyed it.

As a kid I read the Dragonlance trilogies and a few other Dragonlance books and enjoyed them.
Young me also read Rose Estes' Greyhawk Adventures Trilogy about Mika the Wolf Nomad Shaman (Master Wolf, The price of power, The demon hand). I remember loving them at the time although think they are probably notl very good.

I also remember liking Endless Quest Gamebooks, mostly the early Rose Estes ones, which I guess might not count as novels.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I would vote for The Crystal Shard, but since it's lumped in with a trilogy, and the other books aren't very good, I can't bring myself to do so. Voted other.

Tempted to vote for Spellfire just for the LOLs. It's a shame Ed Wood isn't still alive to make a movie version.

 

[AnotherGuy]

I also enjoyed the Matzica trilogy by Douglas Niles.
There is too much to like but I'd have to go with Chronicles due to the sheer volume of work that surrounds those nostalgic characters - Tales, Preludes, Legends, Raistlin Chronicles, War of Souls etc including Knight of the Black Rose.

 

[HaroldTheHobbit]

I have very fond memories of The Cleric Quintet and Dragonlance Chronicles. Yes, they are UA stuff, but I still occasionally bring them as comfort reading on vacations etc.

 

[aco175]

I cannot remember if it was the Crystal Shard series or the Dragonlance Chronicles that got me into reading D&D books, but I think I read more FR books along the way. I do recall liking Knight of the Black Rose when I read it in the Army.

 

[Grogg of the North]

I often see… ire? Online for all things Drizzt, but I’ve had to have read Honeland-Sojourn at least 3-4 times since I discovered them in middle school.

Now it has been a long time since I've read anything Drizzt, so take everything I'm about to say with a heaping spoonful of salt. But I think there are two main problems, especially in the later books. First, Drizzt seems to have gotten a reputation as a Mary Sue. He's simply the best at everything. 3,872 orcs? That's an easy encounter for our dark elf hero!

Second, is the dice rolling in the background. I noticed this heavily in Road of the Patriarch and it is one of the reasons I stopped reading Salvatore. Just based on the prose, all I could think was "Oh, she's a level 17 monk and he just failed his fort save" which unfortunately drew me out of the narrative.

It looks like he's written a lot since I've stopped reading his works so I cannot comment if the problems have exacerbated or diminished since then.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

First, Drizzt seems to have gotten a reputation as a Mary Sue. He's simply the best at everything. 3,872 orcs? That's an easy encounter for our dark elf hero!

I'm not sure if it was the original source for this, but the Baldur's Gate CRPG included a Drizzt cameo in which he slaughters dozens of gnolls whilst the low level player character and their party are still on their first one. It's kind of like the Black Widow/Happy scene in Iron Man 2.

 

[Ibrandul]

Finder's Stone trilogy, Songs and Swords series, Brimstone Angels series, Erevis Cale series

 

[Bedrockgames]

Mine was always Knight of the Black Rose

 

[DarkCrisis]

Spellfire

Don't @ me.

 

[Zardnaar]

Other. Lynn Abbey’s Urik-based Dark Sun quasi-trilogy.

This just plain Pavek.

Elaine Cunningham FR novels as well.

 

[Zardnaar]

As much as I dislike the changes that it made to the setting in retrospect, I did totally love the Prism Pentax Pentad series when I read it back in the day.

edit: I seem to have trained my autocorrect in some oddly specific ways.

Good read bad for setting.

 

[jeffh]

Good read bad for setting.

Dark Sun was probably the first thing I ever became curmudgeonly about. They created this setting with all these intriguing plot seeds DMs could do all sorts of things with, then in the first licensed series meant to introduce the setting to people they destroyed a huge chunk of them. Killing Kalak off in the first book was fine, that changed the setting in a way that made it more interesting for PCs, but by the end they'd revealed WAY too much initially-mysterious backstory, killed off "The" Dragon and a few too many other key characters, altered the political situation beyond recognition (rather than just throwing a single interesting spanner in it as the first book did), shown us quite a bit of what lay outside the Tablelands (only a little of which was all that interesting)... I would have been much happier if they'd ended that series after a lot less than five books.

I don't agree that they were that good of books, either. The first two or three were very enjoyable for what they are, but the last one in particular I didn't like at all. Of course, it's hard to view them now as I would have at the time, with so much hindsight on both how the Prism Pentad itself ended and Denning's later atrocities against the Star Wars expanded universe. (Star by Star is probably the best piece of fiction he ever wrote, though it's damning with faint praise to some extent - it's post-NJO that my objections start in earnest.) That no doubt colours my recollections of his earlier books.