The cover of Realms of Valor. In the background is Elminster, a white-bearded old man smoking a large pipe. In the middle ground is Arilyn, a half-elf with black curly hair, standing dramatically on a rock gazing into the distance. In the foreground is Drizzt, a hooded dark elf holding two scimitars crossed in front of his chest.

Realms of Valor

“The nice thing about a mixed bag like this is that even when you suffer through a badly-written story, you know it’s going to be short and you’ll probably get to a better one soon. Beats slogging through a bad 300-page novel, that’s for sure.”

The cover of The Night Parade. Some sort of weird genie monster crosses his arms in the background. In the foreground, an armored woman with impossibly weird anatomy looks over her shoulder at a weird fleshy humanoid thing. The background is blue-tinged dark clouds.

The Night Parade

“It’s a wild, shambolic farrago which subverts my expectations for a Forgotten Realms novel, a horror story that’s grossly out of place among these heroic fantasy epics and owes more to Stephen King than Tolkien.”

The cover of Tantras. An unshaven, spear-wielding man slouches in a crude throne, surrounded by a pair of armored guards and a pair of barely-dressed harem girls. Two figures in chains, their backs to the viewer, are confronting him.

Tantras

“I’m intrigued by how the author tries to take Shadowdale’s established “peaceful utopia” characterization and twist it into something darker and more cynical. It doesn’t actually work, but it could have if it had been handled more deftly.”

The cover of Shadowdale. Four figures pose dramatically around an outcropping in a forest: a muscular warrior with a bow, a blank-faced young man with a sword, a crouching woman wielding a staff, and a hooded man behind them with a sword.

Shadowdale

“The setting was only two years old at this point — it’s not like it was growing stodgy and needed some sort of shake-up to make it feel fresh again. All it accomplishes is to show you the bones of the tabletop ruleset poking through the fiction like a compound fracture.”