Forgotten Realms Novels...which ones are good?

[naturaltwenty]

Thieves Series, Cleric Series and Erevis Cale

I like them because I don't have to think too hard when I read them. Their like candy to me.

As it says in my title I enjoyed some later series including:

Magehound Trilogy - for some good Halruaa stuff
Thieves Series - for some good low-powered thievery. My current campaign is set in/around Oeble which is featured in The Black Boquet
Cleric Series - hit and miss but not too bad
Scions of Arabar - the third book isn't out yet but it's got some excellent fluff material on trading and mercantilism
Erevis Cale Trilogy - high powered brilliance, adventuring around, through, and past the Realms.

Later,

Greg Volz
Natural Twenty Gaming
www.naturaltwenty.com

 

[Darth K'Trava]

If you can find them, they came out with a Double-Diamond Triangle Saga series of mini-books a few years ago & Greenwood wrote several (they were short & cheep).

Not if you try to get the whole set off ebay...

I really liked the new Ervis Cale books & the Current Year of Rogue Dragons series. I've found the House of Serpants books ok, but not great. The Scions of Arrabar books had one section that was so poorly written I put it down for 2 weeks & only finished it out of stubborn determination.

Overall, go to a bookstore & flip through what they got.

Never read the "Erevis Cale" books (I think I have the 1st one on the shelf) but liked the Year of Rogue Dragons books (DM has my half-dragon paladin going thru a minor version of The Rage), The Scions of Arrabar was pretty good, IMO.

Salvatore: Drizzt in small quantities at a time. Loved the Cleric Quintet series.

Loved Cunningham's Liriel series.

 

[Darth K'Trava]

Crucible: Trial of Cyric the Mad by Troy Denning (also features witch Ruha) from Harpers #1 Parched Sea; Return of Archwizards Trilogy & some others.

Didn't care for it.

Has any other character in any other novel been as screwed over as Adon (esp when you compare it to what every body else in the party got).

Spoilers here:

Lets see:

Midnight becomes god.

Cyric becomes god.

Kelemvor killed (but then becomes god).

Adon, high priest of Sune, goddess of beauty.

1. Hit with ugly stick, hard.

2. Becomes new high priest to friend Midnight (now Mystra).

3. Driven Insane by Cyric so he renounces her & kills himself.

4. Becomes center of afterlife custody battle between Mystra (midnight) at Cyric (god of Torture, Lies Death, at that time) to determine possession of his immortal soul.

Lets see, everybody else becomes a god. Adon gets all his ability scores drained. Sound fair.

Yeah. Poor guy gets shafted so hard... it's not even funny. I'd like to throttle the guys for making him into the "red-shirted loser type". The only good thing it seems he did was to get Torm to "open his eyes" and see the corruption around him in his own church... I dunno if he had been one of Sune's "high priests" or not... But he did become Mystra's high priest.

Methinks he was only there to fill out the "basic 4 party quota" even though, with the gods on the planet, he couldn't use his clerical abilities. And thus became, at least in that bastard Cyric's eyes, worthless.

 

[Darth K'Trava]

Since when has life been fair Fairly accurate portrayal if you ask me of not getting what you deserve but merely getting what you get... "C'est La Vie".

I don't think any character deserved to have been "thrown in" there as basically an afterthought...

Editor 1: Hmm....let's see.... we're gonna make deities out Kelemvor, Mystra and Cyric....
Editor 2: But we need the basic party four! We don't have it! Hey! Let's throw in some loser cleric just to make quota and voila! One party!
Editor 1: ::reads profile on cleric character:: Grumble! Ah, well.... since we're close to deadline, go for it... ::sighs::

Thus we have poor Adon, the most mistreated guy out there.... :\ And not deserving of such a fate.

 

[Wraith Form]

A lot of words you wouldn't think twice about have similarly specific origins. They don't come from nowhere, so it's just a question of which etymologies you know and which you don't. Look at the word poison itself: does it bug you when a non-liquid poison is used, or a poison that isn't drunk? That isn't anachronism, it's just contemporary English, and it really doesn't have anything to do with being a good writer, fantasy or otherwise. (That said, he probably isn't a good writer anyway; I just disagree with the reason you give here.)

If you had a problem with me using anachronistic, then 'contemporary English' it is, I'll agree to that.

I don't care what label you attach to it, it's use was awkward and inappropriate in that setting, and really killed my suspension of disbelief. (And darn it, that's important to me!)

To "get a bead on" someone is the specific (yet certainly not the only) example I remember from Lady of Poison. It (and other expressions that Cordell used) just hit me like a slap in the face as being "not fantasy-sounding" (whether you want to use anachronstic or contempoaray or inexperienced fantasy author.... ). Let's face it--that was just me skimming the book in a bookstore...I didn't have to read very far.

Cunningham, Greenwood, Salvatore and Denning (and a few others) somehow manage to avoid that trap, and it's a shame that Cordell, with all his experience and skill at writing D&D rule books, didn't escape it.

To be fair, Cordell certainly isn't the only one who does it, either; many of the TSR/WotC authors used 'contemporary English' and it drives me bonkers.

 

[Willowhaunt]

Thanks for all the help (and please keep it coming!).

All the love seems to be concentrated towards Elaine Cunningham, an author who looks pretty promising to me (I've read one short story by her). I dropped by my local bookstore today to grab a copy of Daughter of the Drow, and I can't wait until I get a chance to start reading (at the moment I have two other books I'm trying to finish reading as well as two D&D campaigns to DM for, one tabletop and one Pbp).

*LONE DROW SPOILER WARNING*

I'm sorry, but after the Lone Drow it's gonna be tough to get me back to Salvatore. I liked the earlier stuff (Icewind Dale and Dark Elf Trilogy, Cleric Quintet) but the new ones make me wonder. Such real world parallels as Bruenor on clerical life support and reading about Wulfgar and Cattie-Brie debating wether to keep said Dwarf king on life support made me cringe. It just feels like so much pulp action and soap opera, I'm starting to feel like the characters are past their fifteen minutes of fame and WotC and Salvatore are just trying to milk them for more material.

*END SPOILER WARNING*

*BEGIN RANT*

Also, the new D&D novels are starting to bug me with the product placement. By that, I mean that I think that the authors are forced to keep the Player's Handbook open on their desks as they write. Mages memorize and cast spells straight out of the PH, many characters have magic items straight out of the DMG, and sometimes classes or feats are directly referenced. I like D&D, but I don't feel that it makes for good writing: rules are for games and artistic license is for artists and writers. I don't know if it is the fault of the authors or (more likely) WotC, but all of this direct rules referencing feels forced and cheapens the wonder and magic aspect that I always thought was vital to fantasy. It feels far too formulaic, and that makes me somewhat sad, as I would love to see more good FR books. I feel like it's the one series of D&D supplements that WotC still supports and prints that is free of the hack and slash-power gamer-rules lawyer mentality that seems to pervade the generic books, and I'm hoping that the novels can stay genuine as well.

*END RANT*

I'm looking forward to reading Cunningham's work. From what little I've read of her, she seems to be among the best Realms authors, and apparently she has many fans on these boards, too. I've got a feeling I'll be one of those fans by the end of Daughter of the Drow.

I've also got Spellfire and Insurrection waiting to be read. I'm about halfway through Dissolution, and I'm liking it more than Forsaken House so far, though when I get to Condemnation (number 3 in the War of the Spider Queen series), I'll give Rich Baker one more chance to impress me.

I like them because I don't have to think too hard when I read them. Their like candy to me.

Agreed. When I want deep thinking, I've always got some classic literature that I've yet to read, but FR books are a lot of fun (and light thinking) as long as they're not so badly written or formulaic that I feel like they are insulting my intelligence. As I said before, Dissolution has been, so far, readable, and I'm looking forward to sampling Greenwood and Cunningham.

-Willowhaunt