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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Duncan Haldane" data-source="post: 1870300" data-attributes="member: 514">Realms novels - the good, the bad, the terrible....There are many, many books in the FR, as we all know, with dozens of different authors giving it a try.And the quality varies dramatically too, in my opinion.Some background - until about three years ago I bought all FR novels.  I started buying them in the late 80s, and the first I read was Darkwalker on Moonshaes - the first in the Moonshaes Trilogy by Doug Niles.  The second was the Crystal Shard, by RA Salvatore.I remember that I bought Darkwalker about the same time as I bought the original FR boxed set.  I remember it was all very exciting (both novel and boxed set), and I really loved the feel of this new world.Since that time I've read over one hundred more novels set in the same world, and bought far too many products - I have a nearly-complete set of 2nd ed FR material.Why did I stop buying the FR novels?  Good question...  I spent three months travelling through Europe in 2002, and read a lot in that time.  As most of it was in non-english countries I had to take what books I could get.  I read quite a lot of books, most fantasy but not all, that I had not had time to read when all I could read with my spare time was FR novels.  And I found that I was enjoying these varied titles and styles much more than I had been enjoying FR for a while.  And so I decided to read more books than just FR, and I think it was a good decision.The Good -  Depends on your preference of story...- Major Campaign storylines - Evermeet, Cormyr, Death of the Dragon are all good, important stories.  Prince of Lies and Crucible are also realms-important- Character pieces - Daughter of the Drow, The Homeland/Exile/Sojourn trilogy (quite introspective, looking at the whole creation of Drizzt, and how he came to leave the Underdark and meet his companions of later novels).- Good Stories - The Twilight Giants trilogy by Troy Denning (one comment I have about Denning's works - he seems to have trouble leaving characters behind - we often see his characters from other novels making guest appearances, which I found annoying).  There are also many good stories within the open-ended many-authored groups, such as The Harpers and Nobles.-  Good Fun - Icewind Dale trilogy by Salvatore.  Finder's Stone series by Novak and Grubb.  The Moonshaes trilogy by Niles.The BadEd Greenwoods novels I find unenjoyable most of the time.  This is sad for me to say, as Ed is a really nice guy, but I find I often feel like I am missing something from his scenes, and this is especially true when Elminster is using Magic, as I often find the description of his spells just doesn't let me know what spell has actually been cast, which I find annoying).  I would like to point out that Spellfire was editted to reduce it to the standard 300 (and a bit) pages, and that Ed was extremely unhappy about the hatchet job done with that editting.The Maztica Trilogy - The biggest problem I have with this is the ripping-off of the story of the spanish invading south america.  Of course, it seems that anything that occured in Maztica is no longer of concern to the Realms, it seems to have fallen off the planet.Empires Trilogy - An attempt to like Kara-tur with mainstream FR, and throwing in The Horselords for good measure.  As with Maztica, this suffers, IMO, from the stolen real-world stories problem.  I read fantasy to get something new, not a rehash, sanitised take on history.  And like Maztica, it seems that this part of Faerun has also fallen off the planet.The Cleric Quintet - This was a strange series for me.  I LOVED the first novel - lots of fun adventure, very low-powered characters, interesting battles.  I enjoyed the second book.  The characters had gained some new abilities, met with new allies and faced new opponents.  The third book was ok - the characters were now getting towards mid-levels of power.  The fourth book I didn't enjoy - the characters were now quite powerful.  And the fifth book was awful, IMO.  The characters seemed god-like in their abilities, and I hated every page.For myself I wouldn't bother with Anthologies.  In each that I bought I read a couple of stories from Authors I knew with characters I liked, but most of the stories were unread.  But then, I just don't seem to enjoy books of short stories.The TerribleThe Avatar Trilogy, while a major campaign story for the FR (changing from 1st to 2nd Ed AD&D), was very badly executed, IMO.  The characters felt like that had been created by commitee, with little depth to them, and were quite the stereotypes.  The importance of events occuring during the setting of these books just didn't seem to fit with the significance of the novels themselves.  The novels were listed as being written by Richard Awlinson, which was a pseudonym for three authors (All-In-One), each writing one title.  I think any of them could have written much better if any one of the three authors had written each title.Shadow of the Avatar trilogy - this is a series of events that occur alongside the events in the Avatar trilogy.  I can't really explain how/why, but I just never got these novels.  Throughout all of them I felt like I was missing something that everyone else understood.The Unbelievably bad, the worst books I've read...Anything by Brian Thomsen.  He stole Ed Greenwood's character Volo (Ed had written a number of travel guides by Volo that were excellent material), and put him into other well-known stories.  Journey Around The Realms was just Around The World in Eighty Days, and The Mage in the Iron Mask was just The Man in the Iron Mask.  Both these novels were excrutiating to read.  They were full of very bad puns (worse than Piers Anthony at his worst), and stories that were so unoriginal the author should have been sued.  Brian Thomsen was the editor of FR novels at the time that these were published, and I can only assume he acted as his own editor - I'm sure that no-one else would have allowed these vanity pieces to be published.In conclusion...There are many other FR novels that I haven't mentioned here, and that is no comment on their quality.  PaulKemp, I read the first Evris Cale novel, and he was the most interesting character I had seen introduced in the realms in a long time.  When I have finally depleted my backlog of novels I will probably pick up the next titles.Duncan Haldane</blockquote>

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