Customer Reviews

Forsaken House: The Last Mythal, Book I

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

"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!

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.

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.

The short answer is that this book reads like a game adventure module and I'll try to keep being brief in what follows:

- Good
1) He has a nice way of scenery descriptions. The battles use dramatic similies that are clear and fun (except for the one about flying dwarf's being "like a NINEPIN"??? Oh com'mon!! I expect to see a Bowling supplement for sporting games played in Forgotten Realms!)).
2) Dialogue was decent and writing was clear, concise and direct.
3) The Telkiira and Selukiira, even the Mythal are great seeds for a story.
4) I like the demonfae conceptually, but hated the execution in the book.

- Not so Good
1) The Demonfae concept is cool. I wish Richard stuck with them and ONE demon who helps to spawn them. Demonfae should have been the only ones supplementing the orc army, not the zoo that was in the book. This multi-legged, would-eat-their-'master'-as-soon-as-serve-her hodgepodge of random monsters was just the last straw for me, after suffering through a laborous allusion to a "delayed blast fireball." It was like reading the results of a horrible dice roll on a random monster generation table. To those questioning why I have a problem with this armies' make-up, never mind why. The reasons should be obvious and are just too long to go into here. So let's just say that Noah had fewer critters in the Ark than this army had surreally cooperative chaotic evil races.
2) The descriptions of spells and the inner thoughts of the main character are a tad too much like a game module. Spells were named out of the book or described as if out of the major arcana and battle with the Iron Golem played out like a player fought the automoton, not that a wizard encountered a living machination.

I'm not a codger or a purist or a libarian. I'm just a guy looking to find something good to read and tried out this trilogy. In general my impression is this... I own the second book and am having to search for reasons to read it. Not because Richard isn't an inadequate writer, but because with his ability and creativity, the story could be so very much better than it was.

This book, in my opinion, is one of the finest realms books to date. If you like books about faerie, this is for you. We finally begin to delve into the mysterious Elven High Magic. I like the characters, and am excited by the direction the book takes at the end; could we possibly see the rebirth of Myth Drannor? I only hope, and can't wait for the rest of the trilogy to come out. A MUST BUY!!!

Most of the dungeon masters and players hate power play in their games and for this reason they cannot stand Salvatore's Drizzt novels in which the characters are perfect and matchless. However, Richard Baker's Araevin Teshurr is far from being invincible (both physically and mentally). The story is fabulous and Richard Baker has a wonderful writing style. But these are not the only reasons that make this trilogy perfect. Being a game designer, Richard Baker is well aware of the history of Forgotten Realms, races, deities, famous characters, spells and limitations... Hence, he tells his story both as a novelist and a dungeon master.

For the first book of the trilogy Forsaken House, Ed Greenwood said "All-in-all, this is perhaps the best-written Realms novel yet" and I cannot agree more. Moreover, I believe that this is perhaps the best-written Realms trilogy yet. This is a trilogy that you would want to read more than once.

This is a great book, it is a beautiful epic whose true force lies in the fast paced plot, richly detailed setting, all woven into a wonderful tapestry.

This is one of the best books done by the Forgotten Realms/Wizards of the Coast, the story is lively and entertaining, the characters are colorful and interesting, and the plot is energetic and spellbinding!

OVERALL SCORE: (A)
READABILITY: (A), PLOT: (A), CHARATERS: (A), DIALOGUE: (A-), SETTING: (A+), ACTION/COMBAT: (B+), MONSTERS/ANTAGONISTS: (B+), ROMANCE: (B+), SEX: (n/a), AGE LEVEL: (PG13)

The above statement, which is also on the backcover of the book, holds true only if you think of it in terms of, "Oh, the grammar is good, the punctuation is nice, and the spelling is just fine. Plus, the text on the page is readable, yay!"

First, the things I like: the combat sequences are well executed and engaging, befitting the epic scope. Here both sides are believably competent, rather than the one-sided kick-the-elves-to-death in Return of the Archwizards trilogy. But the characterization? It's painful. For all their air time and the length and breadth of their deeds, the characters are strangely... not there. I endeavored to empathize with and like them, but it was an uphill battle that, I regret to say, I lost spectacularly.

Araevin is the protagonist, but somehow, he doesn't feel genuine enough for me. Even his romantic interest in Ilsevelle doesn't feel like a real romance; there's nothing there to convince me that he loves this woman, or that this woman loves him. He shows about as much concern for her as for a pack horse. He lacks a drive, and he falls into the same trap as many, many protagonists do: he doesn't act, but *react.* The tired, tired, tired formula of an adventuring party hurts to read about; all members in the party have roughly the personality of a lump of mud. I still am not sure why Brant was included at all. He has perhaps less than five lines of dialogue, and then he dies. Grayth isn't allowed to develop very much before he dies, either. I'd thought that his death would spur Araevin on a little more, give him some more zeal, but again, no. In fact, to reiterate, Araevin'd have cared more if his horse dies.

Seiveril strikes me as a bit naive and untried for someone of his years and apparent power. He doesn't elicit much from me, although I do think that he has rather more passion than either his daughter or his would-be son-in-law. Fflar is... I'm not sure what I can say about him, since all I remember is that he wields a sword called Keryvian. Actually, his sword may have more personality than he does. Gaerradh and Methrammar: no comment on these, either, because again, I feel there's nothing to, well, feel about them.

In conclusion: bland, bland, bland. It's this kind of novels that gives sneering critics a reason to laugh at escapist, light fantasy like the Forgotten Realms.

I can see the other poster's points about how this book sometimes reads like a tabletop game report. When the genasi character is introduced I swear he just copied the description of air genasi from the FR sourcebook.

Some of the characters are pretty bad, such as the cleric of Lathander, his dialogue was cringe inducing, reminded me of someone trying to roleplay an EverQuest paladin or something.

However this story focuses on elves, and I think it does a good job in that respect. Sometimes I find all the elven names to be difficult to keep track of, but that's not the author's fault.

All in all it kept me interested, and that's all I can ask for.

The conceptual look and feel of the demon elves, i very much so, intrigueing. We are so use to the forgotten realms campaign setting haveing the dark elves as the evil and heridietary race of elves on Faerun, Now truly we have something that is diabiloical and sinister with Richard Bakers infuseing imagination and storetelling. if anyone out their has read elaine cunninghams novels that include; evermeet isaland of the elves, or the starlight and shadow trilogy, this is a must read. Richard baker seems to have an intuitive sense and perceptive taste in writng style, based on his many novelizations i have read I can very well say that, he has the potential to be the next R.A Salvatore of the forgotten reams campaign setting.



the story is very compelling with orc army's controlled by demon lords, and the spells are very descriptive. the story takes place on evermeet, which is essentially the majesty of only remaining elven kingdom still truly standing the test of time in the realms of faerun.


richard baker reminds of ray brabdary, in the sense that writing truly has no rules to it, the only thing that is important is the bottom line, which is story telling. I my opinion I am a very big R.A Salvatore fan, and i think if anyone can appreciate R.A Salvatore's work then they can appreciate Richard Bakers works and this novel as well. this nevell is very impressionable for me, considering I have been reading fatasy novels for over 20 years. This novel is very captivateing, the plot has a great tempo and is continualy non stop. I am sure you will continue to find yourself compelled to keep turning from page to page salivateing as to whats next, and I am perosnally excited to see whats in store for the future of Richard Baker
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