Forsaken House: The Last Mythal, Book I [Mass Market Paperback]

Richard Baker (Author)

Book Description

Series: The Last Mythal | Publication Date: August 1, 2004

Half-demon, half-elf monsters infest the glades of the High Forest, the mountains around Evereska, and the very halls of Evermeet itself. They claim a birthright that was taken from them so long ago even the elves who imprisoned them forgot they existed. For millennia the daemonfey army planned, grew, and waited.

Until now...

House Dlardrageth is an ancient cabal of demon-spawned sun elves who burn for vengeance against the elven realms that defeated them long ago.

Araevin is an elf mage from Evereska who discovers Dlardrageth's return and may have to spend his sanity to defeat them.

Ten millennia of hubris, betrayal, failure, and retreat are coming to an end...

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Richad Baker works as a game designer and Managing Developer for the roleplaying game line at Wizards of the Coast, Inc. A New York Times best-selling author with Condemnation, his additional Forgotten Realms novels include The City of Ravens and the forthcoming Last Mythal trilogy.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Wizards of the Coast; First Thus edition (August 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786932600
• ISBN-13: 978-0786932603
• Product Dimensions: 4.2 x 0.9 x 6.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #988,030 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Richard Baker is an award-winning game designer and a best-selling author. He's worked on the DUNGEONS & DRAGONS game lines since 1991. Rich traces his D&D experience back to 1979, when he began playing the DUNGEONS & DRAGONS game as a 7th-grader. He spent a significant amount of his high school and college years playing D&D at every opportunity, and after serving as a surface warfare officer in the United States Navy, Rich decided to take a shot at working on the game he grew up playing - and so he joined the staff of TSR, Inc., and became a game designer. Rich's list of D&D design credits numbers over 50 game products, including the Origins Award-winning BIRTHRIGHT Campaign Setting, the ALTERNITY Science Fiction Roleplaying Game (which he co-designed with Bill Slavicsek), and the newest edition of the DUNGEONS & DRAGONS game. He has also served as creative director for the ALTERNITY and FORGOTTEN REALMS game lines. As an author, Rich has published eight fantasy and science fiction novels, including City of Ravens, Forsaken House, and the New York Times bestseller Condemnation. Rich is currently employed as a senior game designer at Wizards of the Coast, Inc., and works every day on new products for the DUNGEONS & DRAGONS game.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Before you review...consult a dictionary!, October 27, 2004

By 

Geoffrey Horvath (Iraq) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Forsaken House: The Last Mythal, Book I (Mass Market Paperback)

First off...it is sad that (at present) 7 of 10, and 4 of 6 people have found two reviews "helpful" from people that couldnt even be bothered to take 5 minutes to go to dictionary.com and plug in the word "cwm". One of those reviewers even made the effort to consult the "Elven" dictionary in "Forsaken House" (a great way to determine how to pronounce character's names, btw, and generally a nice feature)...but mysteriously couldnt be bothered to peruse an ENGLISH dictionary. I thought it was fairly standard on the elementary school curriculum to teach people to look up words they didnt know in the dictionary...yet these scholars presume to stand in judgment and criticize this author's work. Shameful.

In my opinion, this book was a fine piece of work. I picked it up looking for a "change of pace" from Salvatore's Drizzt novels, and found that I enjoyed it considerably more than many of Salvatore's later works in that storyline...particularly the not-even-mediocre Paths of Darkness series. Spoilers forthcoming...If you scan many of the reviews for Salvatore's books, you find complaints that the "Champions of the Hall" (terrible LotR knockoff, btw) are invincible, even in the face of ridiculously mighty opponents such as dragons and higher demons...yet when the group of principle characters in this book suffer physically from their battles and/or one of them is killed (with appropriate emotional reactions from the remaining members of the band...not sure what that reviewer was talking about)...people come here and complain about _that_. Simply amazing!

Anyway, back to the point...I thought this book was great, and I am looking forward to the rest of the trilogy. I am not the biggest fan of the world of the elves, but I enjoy a good story and this book is just that. The author offers a great depiction of fights and larger battles, and even allows for consequence in those confrontations whereby, as I said above...unlike Drizzt and his gang...enemies actually get in a few hits on the "heroes" and do some damage. What a novel concept, eh? My only complaint falls back on the fact that I am not the biggest elven fanboy, and found the names difficult to roll off the tongue...but as I said, the elvish dictionary in the back of the book helps with that immensely.

I thought this was a very solid book and a fine addition to the universe of Forgotten Realms, and wholeheartedly recommend it to like-minded fans of the genre.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Richard Baker is unmatched! Phenomenal book!, August 7, 2004

By 

J. Stoner "Plants and Books" (Parkville, MO United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Forsaken House: The Last Mythal, Book I (Mass Market Paperback)

"Forsaken House" by Richard Baker was one of the best Forgotten Realms books I have read in a while. It was original, inovative, and entertaining.

There are so many interesting half-blood characters. The enemies in the book are half sun elf blood, half demon blood, which as you can imagine can be pretty powerful and vengeful. There is also a character that is half human blood, half elemental blood. This character did not "bust out" her powers as much as I would've liked, but I'm sure she will in the next two books.

There is a lot of battles and skirmishes in this book between the elf faction (of moon elves, sun elves, wood elves, etc) and the demon-elf faction but there is one particular battle that was long and nearly epic in nature. The first battle in the assault be the demon-elves was awesome. There was so much magic, hand to hand combat, and it all seemed original and exciting. One of my favorite scenes in all FR books. Baker writes with such creativity that makes spell casting never get old, and all of the spells seem reasonable and likely to happen unlike some of the FR books that just have convienent magic to get the characters out of tough spots.

Baker has such a good writing style, and I'm glad he is authoring the rest of the trilogy. He's got it going on. The last thing I will say is that you can tell that there is an epic buildup of sorts, because I believe that whatever happens throughout the trilogy will more than likely have drastic effects on all of Faerun or Evermeet, or both.

Read this book if you like fantasy, Forgotten Realms, or elves. This book rocks the house!

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great start to this trilogy, August 14, 2005

By 

Andrew Gray "Beezer Review" (Minnesota) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Forsaken House: The Last Mythal, Book I (Mass Market Paperback)

Richard Bakers sets the bar pretty high with this, his first book in the Last Mythal trilogy. This is a very captivating book. The plot is fast paced and moves along at a decent speed while at the same time having very good character development.

If you are looking for a hacka nd slash style of book, this is not it. In fact I will even go so far as saying this book breaks away from the normal style of the Forgotten Realms book, but not in a bad way.

I was a little sceptical of this series, but those thoughts were quickly stymied in about 20 pages as I became captivated by this book.

If you are a fan of Forgotten Realms, or are looking for a book to jump start you in the Realms give this one some serious consideration.