What do You think about Shadowdale (1989)?
The Avatar Trilogy is one of the earlier trilogies of the Realms world not only in publication history but also timeline history. The entire story arc covers a time in the Realms when the gods were kicked out of the heavens by their lord and forced to walk the earth in -you guessed it- avatars.So the premise is that two gods: Bane god of strife and Myrkul god of death, conspired to steal some heavy duty magic items called the Tablets of Fate from their own creator Lord Ao. Lord Ao of course got his knickers in a twist and banished all the gods from their homes in the heavens and hells to take human form and learn a little humility. Apparently before this the gods had been acting like spoiled children and pappa Ao had to ground themSo from book 1-3 (I'm assuming at least since I haven't read 2 or 3 yet...) it's all about finding the Tablets and returning them and the gods to the heavens. We meet up with a sorceress named Midnight who is a servant of the goddess of magic Mystra and is given a portion of the goddess magic to hold in trust; a soft hearted thief named Cyric; a priest named Adon who is a servant of Sune, goddess of love and beauty; and a cursed warrior named Kelemvor.These four get caught in a power struggle between three gods and have to travel to Shadowdale and enlist the help of Elminster the Sage to prevent Bane from returning to the heavens and taking over as king. Hence the name of the title.I'm a little disappointed in this. It had been so long since I read any Realms I was hoping going back basically to the beginning would be good for me but Shadowdale was actually pretty blah for me. I like the characters, much of their development in intriguing, but for some reason everything else around them fell rather flat. It was almost like the characters were what the author cared about, not the story if that makes any sense.This won't stop me from continuing the series or from reading more Realms books, I was just hoping for a lot more from it.
—Forgotten Realms Queen
This book tries to be two things at once. Fortunately, it does one of those things very well: it is a fun action romp that gets you interested in the setting and makes you want to play the D&D adventure of the same name (circa 1988). Unfortunately, it does a fairly poor job of being the first installment of an epic fantasy involving world-changing events. The real let-down, however, is that it fails to even be a serviceable fantasy jaunt with believable character development and an unbroken plot. While the author does a good job of making you believe the world is in chaos and gets you hooked into the characters, he just let's the ball roll downhill once it gets going. Character motivations are one dimensional, as are the cardboard cut-out RPG archetype characters. The most developed backstory is that of Kelemvor, and its such a heavy handed element that the author all but asks for forgiveness for making him act in a completely unbelievable manor. We also must suffer through a journey of rapid character development so unwarranted the characters themselves seem confused by their actions. To make this worse what seems like a few days as you read the book ends up being a journey that spans a month! I won't spoil anything, but suffice it to say the ending of this book is nothing more than a set of contrived excuses to top it off with a large amount of action and makes you feel like everything you read before this should have been squeezed into a prologue. For a trilogy that is supposed to cover one of the most ground-breaking events in the history of the Forgotten Realms, Shadowdale feels too much like a junior high D&D game transcript to do the backstory justice.
—Brian
I recently read (OK, listened to) this book for the first time in twenty years. It's amazing how much nostalgia distorts one's memory, making the mediocre seem better than it was.Such was the case with Shadowdale. The story being told, of the gods being banished to the mortal realm and the chaos that ensues, has the potential to be very good. Unfortunately, the story suffers in the execution. One gets the feeling that the author was handed an AD&D adventure module and told to write a novel to go with it. The author makes frequent use of AD&D terminology in this book, to the point that I wonder just how confusing it would be for a non-gamer.As I mentioned previously, the story being told is actually good, and is quite an important one in the history of the Forgotten Realms. Unfortunately, if you know little of the Realms or if you're not a gamer, you probably won't enjoy this book. This is a 2.5 star book. The extra half star is for the gamers and Forgotten Realms junkies who will be willing to wade through the "converted module" prose to get at the story of the Time of Troubles.
—Ron Gastgeb
