Forgotten Realms: Elminster Ascending: The Sage of Shadowdale Book

I came into this series excited, as I had already read a large portion of the Drizzt Chronicles, and I was interested to explore another facet of the Forgotten Realms. However, while the world was well-built and the story was admittedly interesting, I found that the characters ultimately fell flat for me. As someone who plays Dungeons and Dragons, I found Elminster to be akin to a new player's first character. My biggest issue with the characters was Elminster himself. El had a true drive for revenge against the mages, which I thought was well within reason, and I've never found issue with characters that have to overcome their hatred of something and accept it in order to complete their destiny, but to me, it seemed that Elminster's method of gaining his powers was vainglorious and a bit hard to accept. Elminster became a wizard because the goddess of magic, Mystra took him as her lover. Overall, this greatest of wizards came off as a pervert and a philanderer, and despite the fact that through the majority of the series, he was an old man, everyone seemed to view him as the most desirable man in all the world. There were several references to his surprising "skill and stamina" that left my spine-shivering and a foul taste in my mouth. Some of the side characters were genuinely likable, but by and large, these characters ended up being only side characters that didn't see much depth put into them.
The last two books I read were, in my opinion, the worst of the worst. Elminster in Hell was repetitive, with the format of El gets tortured by a devil, in ways that were a strange combination of gruesome and bland, then we see some memory from his past. Following that memory, the devil says something to the effect of, "Clever mage, showing me these memories that aren't what I desire. Keep this up, and I will kill you." But the devil never followed through on these threats, making them feel extremely empty. I found myself more interested in the side-story presented by Mort the Moneylender and his wife Asper than what was happening with Elminster. Though we got another dose of young woman loves an old man with those two, at least it was believable based on what we saw them experience. The final book, with Narnra, the daughter El didn't know he had was also bland, and the finale didn't really seem like the reconciliation I was hoping for, and I can't blame Narnra for that decision. Elminster was aloof and unlike Scanlan from Critical Role, didn't seem to care about his newfound child.
I would recommend the Drizzt series much more highly than this series, though I'm sure that somebody could find interest in it. There were several short bits that I thought could make very interesting stories if developed more, and I wish Greenwood had spent more time on those characters than his sex-addict old man.