Deadhouse Gates

Forgotten Realms is the name of an imaginary fantasy world that exists somewhere beyond our own world. It is a world of strange lands, dangerous creatures, and mighty deities, where magic and seemingly supernatural phenomena are quite real. Unlike our world, the lands of the Forgotten Realms are not all ruled by the human race: the planet Abeir-Toril is shared by humans, dwarves, elves, goblins, orcs, and other, more or less strange peoples and creatures. Technologically, the world of the Forgotten Realms isn’t nearly as advanced as ours; in this respect, it resembles the earth in the 14th or 15th century.

Ostensibly, once upon a time, our Earth and the world of Forgotten Realms were somehow more closely connected. As time passed, we, the inhabitants of planet Earth, have mostly forgotten about the existence of that other world, hence the term “Forgotten Realms”. In case you have seen the original Forgotten Realms logo, the little runic letters in it read “Herein lie the lost lands”. This is another allusion to this connection between the two worlds.

However, in spite of this connection, the world of the Forgotten Realms is in many ways nothing like our world. On the planet Abeir-Toril, the dead sometimes choose to to walk among the living, gods meddle with mortal matters, a desert seems to have a mind of its own, dragons are always a very real threat, and no tale can be too strange to be true. Many wondrous kingdoms and events of the past have been long forgotten, and with every passing year new mysteries arise. In the Forgotten Realms, survival itself can be an epic adventure.

Which novel(s) should I read first?

This is a question that is obviously very difficult to answer. However, there are at least four very good trilogies or series that are particularly easy to get into even if you know nothing about the Forgotten Realms.

• The Avatar Trilogy by Richard Awlinson
• The Moonshae Trilogy by Douglas Niles
• The Dark Elf Trilogy by R.A. Salvatore
• The Elminster Series by Ed Greenwood

If you’d rather start with a self-contained novel, Evermeet: Island of Elves by Elaine Cunningham is a particularly good choice.

Any of the first three anthologies (i.e. Realms of Valor, Realms of Infamy, and Realms of Magic) are also good places to start. They feature stories by many of the most prominent Forgotten Realms writers and introduce you to many important personalities of Faerûn.

For many novices, the novels based on the more recent computer games like Baldur’s Gate and Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn, should prove to be an excellent starting point.