Lisa Smedman

Before I begin this review, I'd like to state that I have had a very hit or miss pattern with Forgotten Realms. I've read a couple of [a:Ed Greenwood|20513|Ed Greenwood|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1248120586p2/20513.jpg]'s Elminster books and found them extremely boring. Then I read the War of the Spider Queen series and absolutely loved it. Then, on recommendation from my brother, I started the Drizz't series. That was just awful! Then I found the sequel to the War of the show more Spider Queen, The Lady Penitent trilogy and once again, loved it! Then I tried the Abolethic Sovereignty trilogy and couldn't finish it.

So I'm always leery when trying a Forgotten Realms book/series, as I just don't know what I'll end up with.

I'd heard of Erevis Cale somewhere or other and wanted to see if he was an interesting character, so I dug around and found this to be the first book with him in it. And then I found it was a bunch of short stories centering around the Uskevren family, of whom Erevis was the butler.

I enjoyed the stories, as they introduced me to the city Selgaunt and the area of Sembia [do you know how long it took me to figure out that Selgaunt and Sembia were actually two different places and not just different names for the same place?!?]. I also found that the short story format worked well with each character, as we get a snaphsot of them without the author of said short story showing all their weaknesses by trying to write a full blown novel about that character.

So I just sped through this book, loving it and looking forward to the next. Which I've finished and will be reviewing tomorrow. Man, when Forgotten Realms is good, it is GOOD! show less

I liked the setup for this series, and the characters are all fun. I am extremely predictable in that Q'arlynd is of course my favourite, because I love horrid little wizard men.

Decently strong writing, especially compared to some of the other FR books I've read.

Not necessarily my favourite in the series, but at least a bit nicer of an ending than War of the Spider Queen had. My sample size is small, but it seems to me that 'dnd books' suffer so much from the curse of 'being dnd books' that it takes a lot of strength out of the narrative. Still fun to read!

I think this might be my favourite one of the series - Smedman does an amazing job with the characters arcs in this and the overall quality of the writing is a lot higher.