Growing Up With Elminster

I can’t say that I grew up on Forgotten Realms stories, but they became a big part of my reading life through out the years.
I first discovered the world of Abeir-Toril while looking for an easy read. I had spent the previous year tracking down and reading the entire Eternal Champion series by Michael Moorcock. After all the dramatic intrigue and “heavy reading” of a series that spanned the life of Elric, Hawkmoon, Corum and John Smith in a multiverse-wide battle between the forces of Law and Chaos, I was looking to take a little break.
As an elf fan, I decided that I wanted to read something about the pointy-eared race, but there was nothing on the shelf. The Dragonlance series had devolved into slapstick fantasy rote about kenders, gully dwarves and gnomes, so I had given up on that series, and there was a long gap the Shanara series at the time, at least on the bookshelves available to me.
However, there was one book in the fantasy section of K-mart. It was primarily about a barbarian in some icy land, who had a Drow as a sidekick. I wasn’t too sure. D&D-based novels had become a disappointment after the first two trilogies. But, what the Hells! I was desperate.
We now know that the dark elf sidekick became a shooting star that launched the Forgotten Realms into the bestseller lists. Originally, an adventure setting for D&D designer Ed Greenwood, the Realms would become the most successful role-playing setting in the fantasy genre and in RPGs in general.
Going along with the game material were a continuing series of books under the Realms label. Most were trilogies telling the stories of particular heroes like Drizzt or Arilyn Moonblade. A few one shots were here and there, but what really made the Forgotten Realms series a success was its continuity.
While not on the same level as comic books or other series, the Realms books evolved and grew into a chronicling of the Realms, not only in novels, but also in what happened in the game.
When D&D 2nd Edition came out, the Avatar Crisis slew gods and rocked the very foundation of the Realms. Kara-tur brought an Asian invasion to the Realms and when the world was changing again, the return of the Sorcerer ushered in 3rd Edition D&D.
Now, it was not a smooth ride for me as a reader. During the 90s, I swore off most of most of the Realms books after the Harpers series brought me a book where an orc said, “cool” or some such modern slang. I really can’t remember the exact details, but I stopped reading everything Realms, making the Drizzt series my only exception.
But I came back around, and have been a loyal reader of nearly every Realms book that comes out. I’ll admit that I haven’t been able to keep up with them all, but I try to space some out so I have something to read during the long dry spells between releases of other series.
And the one thing I have noticed is the steady evolution of Realms books over the last couple of years. Just as characters in D&D gain level and skill, the quality of novels has increases, as has the level of writing.
In the Everis Cale trilogy, we read about a Chosen of the god of thieves in a dark but still heroic story. In the recent Depths of Madness by Erik Scott de Bie, a party of “old” elves, Halflings and humans is led by a “younger” Elven shadowdancer who uses sex, lies and a bit of ruthlessness not often seen in Realms books to deal with them and the twisted evils they encounter.
It was in reading Depths, that I realized that the Realms have changes. Growing up and adapting to its growing audience of adult readers instead of trying to pander to the young’ens that were like us so many years ago.
Sure these are still high fantasy novels with heroes that have almost comic book lives, with friends and enemies that come back from the dead left and right, but it is nowhere near the painfully bad books that came out in the dark times. There is still a wide range of styles, from the indomitable Elminster to the honorable Drizzt Do’Urden to the shadowy Cale or the dominating Twilight.
If you are a fantasy fan, a Forgotten Realms fan, D&D player or a comic book fan looking for a change of pace, step into the Realms.