Reviews for Forgotten Realms: Elminster Ascending: The Sage of Shadowdale

The average rating for Forgotten Realms: Elminster Ascending: The Sage of Shadowdale based on 2 reviews is 2 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-08-30 00:00:00 Evgeny Kapustin As I read through the three novels collected here, I'll rate and briefly review each individually, both to mark my progress and so that my thoughts on each individual book are captured before I comment on the whole. (Book 1) Elminster: The Making of a Mage - 3 stars The Making of a Mage is a somewhat competently-written, flawed piece of brand-fantasy. It features a young Elminster, who is more commonly known as an Odin- or Merlin-like supreme sorceror in the world of the Forgotten Realms. Multiple years of El's life are depicted here, from a boy who (extremely quickly in the story, I'll add) loses everything, to a thief in the streets of Hastarl, to a gender-swapped version of himself learning from the Elves, and finally to a reawakened Elminster storming the magelords of Athalantar. It's a somewhat trite tale whose cliches are mitigated somewhat by the way in which it is told, in that it is written like a legend. However, this is marred by a notable amount of typographical errors and the excessive amount of scenes Greenwood writes about naked people. Some of the prose, especially the more filler-feeling bits at the end, were also somewhat tough to get through even when not typo-riddled. Regardless, it was an average-enough story with some small twists on the formula, and that's good enough for me to recommend it to a bona-fide Forgotten Realms fan. We'll see if this changes going into book two. (Book 2) Elminster In Myth Drannor - 1 star This novel is atrocious. I almost gave it two stars, since I was able to push myself to finish it, but it truly is abysmal. Meandering, horribly paced drudgery meets the reader at every single turn in this inane, pointless drivel. This novel shouldn't be an Elminster book, and really just shouldn't exist except as a summary in an art book about the Elves of the Forgotten Realms or something. It means nothing to anyone who isn't deeply entrenched in and passionate about Forgotten Realms lore. Regardless, here's a summary of the extremely, appallingly bare-bones 'plot'. Elminster was sent away to Cormanthor, realm of the elves, on some mysterious quest by his deus-ex-machina friend with benefits, Mystra. He's waylaid on the way, tries to save a dying elf, and takes on a 'kiira', a stone that apparently holds a person's memories, and the task of passing it on to the elf's family. Elminster does and promptly becomes of absolutely no real consequence to the plot. The rest of the book is Ed Greenwood painstakingly showing us again and again that elves are extremely, irredeemably fantastical-racist, and nobody should really care about any of them. If you're able to remember a single one of their names and the extremely thin character traits attributed to each, I applaud you. I will reiterate, for complete clarity: this book is basically worthless. The only perspective I could see this novel having any value from is if you really, truly care about Myth Drannor and its (again, extremely dull) history. It meanders, it is pointless, it describes and enumerates and dialogues ad nauseum and it all adds up to nothing. Though I haven't attempted to brave book three of this collection yet, I can near-certainly assure you that you can, and should, just skip this one. (Book Three) The Tempation of Elminster - 2 stars Somewhat thankfully, the third novel in this collection is mostly competent. Again here, Greenwood focuses on far too many characters and events that have nothing really to do with Elminster, and it detracts from the "protagonist"'s story far too much. Yet again, as in the second novel, Greenwood constantly introduces new characters with their own unimportant narratives that I confused with each other on occasion and basically just gave up on following. However, this book actually has a plot structure and the bits with Elminster were somewhat more satisfying than the second. The plot vaguely goes as thus: Elminster is once again sent off for another lesson by his matron goddess/mother-figure/lover/guide/whatever else Mystra. This time, she instructs him not to use magic but to journey the land and, essentially, discover himself. So, he of course frees a land from a tyrant and sleeps with the girl who had just met him for some reason. He proceeds to a magical study tower, which houses some (admittedly charming) side characters in a couple of brotherly mages. From there it's on to different places that mages have died so that Elminster can plant magical artifacts for other mage hopefuls to find. Admittedly, it's not much of a plot and it's heavily dictated by whatever errand Mystra wanted to send the protagonist on for that fifty pages, but it was genuinely much easier to get through than In Myth Drannor. To conclude, this novel is pleasant enough if you don't mind a couple meandering threads. It falls about squarely in the middle in terms of the quality of the three books collected here, but you can easily skip it if the first novel didn't impress you at all. OVERALL: Elminster Ascending As you can see above, I averaged out the star scores of each of the three novels to rate the collection as a whole. Regardless of each individual score, though, Elminster Ascending earns a 2 regardless. A very average opener leads to an abysmal second act, followed by a subpar third. Each, of course, has its own unique quirks that they apparently didn't deign to edit out: the first is riddled with typographical errors, the second is unreadable due to content, and the third wildly varies between single and double dashes for hyphenated words. Additionally, after reading three of his novels in a row many of Greenwood's own writing tics become very apparent. He can't stop writing about and describing nude/naked people, to an almost lecherous degree; there are far too many people shrugging as a response to everything; many 'unshed tears' glisten in characters' eyes... it doesn't sound so bad here, but actually reading these constant same phrasings and descriptions gets quite tiresome once you start to pick up on them. So, finally, here is my recommendation: get the first book, skip the rest. They're not worth it.

Review # 2 was written on 2020-10-04 00:00:00 Teemu Kemppainen 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.