can anyone tell me a good one to start out on?
The Cleric Quintet 5 novel series by R.A. Salvatore is a good series to start out with. it gives some details about different races and classes in it along with some humor.
Here’s his web site.
http://www.rasalvatore.com/
ok I’ll try that, do all the novels flow into the same continuity and refrence between different authors and between the computer and video games?
the novels may sometimes make reference to other author’s stories. they do not make any reference to video games. the forgotten realms video games are based on some of the novels themselves.
There are lots of authors out there writing about the Realms, I only suggested Salvatore because he’s my favorite.
how about Ebberon or Dragonlance?
Don’t touch Dragonlance with a ten foot pole. I’ve read the original trilogy, supposedly the best of all and it felt like describing the campaign of the writers’ characters (and it sure was). Pitiful characterisation, lot of filler, stupid ending. Very few parts had some interest, mainly those with Raistlin and his powers. You could invest your time much better.
Read Ulysses. Okay, just kidding. The first 6 Salvatore books were good. The next 4 still good but with deteriorating quality and you’d better not touch the next few books after these. Caveeat: I have not read the Orc books, so I can’t talk about those.
well what about books by Ed Greenwood(he created Forgotten Realms before Dungeons and Dragons was invented) or Gary Gygax?
also could you name any titles that take place outside of Faerun?
Haven’t got any experience with those. Haven’t heard anything bad about Ed, Gary’s books are generally regarded as awful.
Any of Salvatore’s books with Drizzt as the main character are spectular. Be careful, though, since he did write some that focus on Wulfgar, and they’re pretty “blah.” Oh, recently he started a series that forcuses on Artemis Entreri, and it’s just as good as the mainline Drizzt books so far.
Dragonlance is a good series as long as you stick to things that Weiss and Hickman wrote (not Dragonlance, but their Death Gate Cycle series is good stuff). I’m going to have to outright disagree with Rigamarole here. One warning, though - W&H have a penchant for not-completely-satisfying endings. Not that they don’t finish, it’s just not the finish you want to see most of the time. That’s the sense I always got when reading them, at least.
I haven’t read much Forgotten Realms aside from Salvatore for years (I’ve recently started to try to get back into it, but so much fantasy seems like worthless shadows after you’ve read Salvatore or any of the other outstanding current stuff), but I do reacall reading a trilogy set on the Moonshae Isles that wasn’t too bad. Then there’s the book that got me into Forgotten Realms in the first place - Spellfire, I think it was. It wasn’t great writing, but it had some kickass cover art of a woman blasting away at a dracolich with pure magic.
Err, yes, in conclusion, a lot of the books in any of the big world fantasy series are rather average, so just try a few different authors out and find one that you like.
Of course RPT’s suggestion to try reading them for yourself, is the only way to find out what you like.
I just read Once Around The Realms by Brian Thomsen and it was a verey good book, so what else has writen?