MetalBard said:
It looks like the Waterdeep novel will be in that category when it comes out later this summer. It is written by Ed Greenwood and Elaine Cunningham.
Embarrassingly, I didn't even realize this was being released...but it'll be the first TSR/WotC paperback or hardcover that I'll have purchased in about 1,000 years!
I enjoyed all of Cunningham's work. If it has her name on it, I've liked it.
Greenwood is...quirky...but once you get into it, he's cool. And, of course, he created the Realms so it's "done right".
Salvatore is good, but not in huge doses at one time--I mean, he wrote about 30 books a week for a while there, and it all started to become a repetative blur. Have a saltine to clear the palette between his books (or at least trilogies).
I enjoyed the Harpers series. They're hopelessly out of print, but you might scrounge some up in a used book store. Many were hit & miss, but generally they were enjoyable.
I read Cormyr: A Novel and loved it.
Strangely, I never got into Troy Denning or Mel Odom. (Especially Odom.) Denning wrote the first book in the Harpers series (forgot the name of it...curse you, old age!) which was quite good, but from there he seemed to lose his appeal.
I did skim a few pages of Cordell's
Lady of Poison in the book store. When I read a major character using the phrase "get a bead on the kidnappers" (and other abnormally anachronistic phrases like that) I immediately put the book back on the shelf. He won't be getting my money until he learns how to write. Great gaming rules-related writer, terrible fantasy fiction author....
I tried really hard to enjoy Kemp's Cale series, too, but I found that was also filled with many jarring anachronisms....
Oh well. I'm being picky, I mean they're being published by WotC, not Simon & Schuster or something.
