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Spellfire (Forgotten Realms: Shandril's Saga, #1)

Ed Greenwood

Start date: January 1, 2021

Finish date: January 28, 2021

Discussion: Forgotten Realms Reading

Why we're reading this: Published July 1988

Schedule:
January 1st - Jan 7th Chapters 1 - 6
Jan 8th - Jan 14th Chapters 7 - 12
Jan 15t…more
[close] Published July 1988

Schedule:
January 1st - Jan 7th Chapters 1 - 6
Jan 8th - Jan 14th Chapters 7 - 12
Jan 15th - Jan 21 Chapter 13 - 18
Jan 22nd - Jan 28th Chapter 19 - End

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What Members Thought

Jun 16, 2022 Liam rated it really liked it · review of another edition

A good Greenwoodian Greenwood story.

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Jan 21, 2021 Raechel rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, forgotten-realms, fiction, rpg

So I've been reading a few Forgotten Realms books and while they all have had problems, they've been enjoyable. Unfortunately, that stops with Spellfire.

This book does hold a lot of D&D tropes that I enjoyed in previous FR books, but compounded with a lot of choices the author made, it just makes it worse.

I'll go over some of the things I liked first: I liked that we had a female protagonist. I liked that we had both good and evil female characters, this hasn't really been a thing in the previou So I've been reading a few Forgotten Realms books and while they all have had problems, they've been enjoyable. Unfortunately, that stops with Spellfire.

This book does hold a lot of D&D tropes that I enjoyed in previous FR books, but compounded with a lot of choices the author made, it just makes it worse.

I'll go over some of the things I liked first: I liked that we had a female protagonist. I liked that we had both good and evil female characters, this hasn't really been a thing in the previous FR books I've read. I liked the depictions of magic. I liked the parties (ie, the Company of the Bright Spear and the Knights. I enjoyed the banter between Torm and Rathan.

Things I didn't like... Elminster. Even if we weren't told that Ed Greenwood invented Elminster, I would have figured that out for myself. Elminster is the Mary Sue of this story. He's so smart and powerful and everyone's heard of him. He's lived for hundreds (thousands?) of years, but even then he's still such a cool guy that the beautiful and lonely Mage Queen totally wants to bang him you guys.

The pacing in this book is bad. There are dozens of named characters and the story is constantly hopping between them. This works when GRRM does it, but not when you introduce, say, a dozen people in the Company of the Bright Spear... and then kill (virtually) all of them a few chapters later. I've spent the last couple chapters trying to learn these different named warriors and bards and mages, and now they're all just dead. Early in the book we spot an elderly mage and a younger man... a couple chapters later a fight almost happens, but an elderly mage and a younger man walk between the two parties. You'd think this would be the same people as before, right? NO! It's an entirely different pair of people. It was so difficult to keep character and location names straight.

Things happen so fast in this book--travel, combat, magic, scheming, FOUR different evil factions are after Shandril while they also discuss the in-fighting and power plays happening within their own ranks. Shandril gets her powers early in the book and is immediately able to take down TWO dracoliches, a regular dragon, Manshoon, and destroy a tower. At the end of the book when a THIRD dracolich was on its way to kill Shandril I had zero worry that she wouldn't be able to handle it.

While I love lore... there are some real Forgotten Realms deep cuts in this book. I know the names Elminster and Manshoon, but I don't know much about them... we're just sort of told they're powerful mages. I was utterly confused about the tentacle mage shapeshifters because we're given no explanation as to who or what they are. We're told the Harpers are a secret society... except for Storm, who is a Harper, and tells everyone she is a Harper. Oh and there are more Harpers in Silverymoon so go there. Also Shandril is pregnant, but it happens so early in her relationship with Narm I legit thought I misread the line until it's brought up again later. So... I guess we'll see more of that in book 2.

There's a lot of great potential in this book but the pacing REALLY kills it for me. So much happened without the plot really moving along. Literally every time Shandril was in danger, someone came to her rescue (usually Elminster who somehow knew).

Also, pet peeve: Shandril and Narm are reassured by the Knights that they're among friends and they can trust them... but then the Knights use a Sleep spell to knock them out, and later drug their tea to knock them out. How can you trust someone who does this?

Why were we repeatedly told how various women were barefoot so often? Like it happens so often I was getting uncomfortable.

Shandril is 16 and constantly sexually harassed by the cook at the Inn she works at and it's just kind of shrugged off.

Look, if you're REaLLY into FR lore you may like this. But this got to be a chore to read for me. ...more

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Jul 26, 2023 David rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This was my first Ed Greenwood novel to read (and his first to write- back in the late 80s!) I was happy to discover that the main character is a young woman and that she becomes a total badass! Lots of action, humor, and even romance, as the reader gets introduced to many places and people in Faerun. Looking forward to reading book 2 of this trilogy.

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Nov 21, 2020 Don Brown rated it it was ok

Shelves: z-2021, fantasy, forgotten-realms

I read the Wizards of the Coast 2005 reprint of Greenwood's Spellfire which adds about thirty pages cut by editors from the original 1988 release. Either printing of Spellfire is a disservice to the Forgotten Realms and to fantasy literature. Its many problems range from its lack of character development, its unchanging formulaic plot, and the poor telling of its story. Spellfire is a relic of the 1980s best avoided.

Greenwood was asked by TSR bosses to "show us the Realms" in this novel. In tha I read the Wizards of the Coast 2005 reprint of Greenwood's Spellfire which adds about thirty pages cut by editors from the original 1988 release. Either printing of Spellfire is a disservice to the Forgotten Realms and to fantasy literature. Its many problems range from its lack of character development, its unchanging formulaic plot, and the poor telling of its story. Spellfire is a relic of the 1980s best avoided.

Greenwood was asked by TSR bosses to "show us the Realms" in this novel. In that he did a good job. The only reason I give this novel two stars is because Spellfire does take the reader on an interesting tour of the Dalelands and the fabled Elven Court and Myth Drannor. For a fan of the Forgotten Realms setting this tour of central, north region of Faerun is fun and offered many Easter eggs to readers. Non-Forgotten Realms fans are introduced to the depth and mysteries of the fabled D&D campaign setting.

Everything else in the novel went terribly and stupidly wrong. Greenwood says, "I shoehorned in scores of monsters and characters ..." and that was a mistake. "Scores of" of characters are indeed "Shoehorned" in and it is a banal parade of random masters of their crafts with no personality. There is no internal dialogue or narrative in Spellfire. We don't know a thing about most of these characters. There are no high stakes, nothing is ever at risk, so there is no tension or drama and no surprises. It's 400 pages of uber powerful characters showing their might, like a bad comic book. Most characters are so shallow, one dimensional, and unlikable I often rooted for the bad guys to end the main characters' lives so the book was just over.

Anything done well in this novel is overshadowed by its perfunctory, predictable and badly formulaic style. That there are two more books published in this series is astonishing. The eager young, male, and inexperienced readers of these early FR novels enabled a bad author and TSR played willing tool in propagating bad fantasy fiction. This unfortunate combination set the stage for decades of terrible novels replete with awful stereotypes, banal and sophomoric fantasy tropes, predictable and boring narratives, and shallow single trick characters that were universally I'll-conceived.

This book has no feeling. It generated no emotions and did not provide any connection to its characters. Again, that Greenwood shows us the Dalelands and the Elven Court prevents me form giving this book one star. It is not for discriminating readers. ...more

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