Forgotten Realms: Shadowbred (Twilight War Trilogy #1) Book

The first book of The Twilight War trilogy - picking up where The Erevis Cale trilogy left off - ranks a solid 3.5 for me. There are elements of this book that I've come to really enjoy from Paul's writing: strong characters, engaging battles, and deep Realmslore, but in all honesty, there just wasn't enough of it to warrant a higher rating from me.

The last quarter of the story really picks up the pace and fans of Paul's earlier work in the Realms won't be able to put it down (I couldn't). But know this, the majority of the book deals with the political situation in Sembia, the ramifications on some interesting new developments on Faerun, and the arcs of a number of new characters. There is also a smattering of first person narration, akin to a dream sequence, that Paul weaves into the story which for me, really distracted (one of the reasons I rounded down to three instead of up to four). At the end, readers will find the payoff needed to make sense of it, but even then, it just wasn't to my liking.

Without spoiling things, I will say that Paul really wraps things up well (another one of the elements of his style that I admire), immediately whetting readers' appetites for Shadowstorm (book two). I know... I'm already cracking the spine.