Swords of Eveningstar (Knights of Myth Drannor, Book 1)
By Ed Greenwood
Swords of Eveningstar examines the early years of one of the most famous adventuring parties in the history of Dungeons and Dragons. First, a bit of background, the Knights of Myth Drannor are an adventuring party that have been written about in Forgotten Realms campaign settings, modules, adventures, and novels almost since the beginning based on the player characters in Ed Greenwood’s original campaign that created the Forgotten Realms. This novel tells the story of how they came to be.
The short version of the review is this. If you are a Forgotten Realms geek then it’s essential. If you want to have a better understanding of realm of Cormyr then this is a great way to immerse yourself. If you are looking for casual D&D fantasy then this may not be the perfect novel for you.
The positives are that this novel has a seriously good take on a fantasy culture based on aristocratic knighthood and politics. The characters are well developed, realistic, and engaging. And the building plot is engaging.
But it’s not all bright and shiny. The story seems to happen around the main characters, but not because of the main characters. There are powerful forces in Cormyr constantly manipulating, watching, and plotting around them that are completely beyond their control and usually the forces driving the story are not even known to the main characters.
The story follows the new adventuring party who eventually gain the name the Knights of Myth Drannor at the same time they finally receive their official adventuring charter, a process that takes up several chapters more than needed, but that provides great and lush detail on life in the countryside and an understanding of the culture of people in a D&D world who AREN’T the main characters.
They then go on their first adventure that was both awkward and awesome because it feels like Greenwood is actually describing running a group of players through the old module, The Haunted Halls of Eveningstar. A bit of a stilted way to write a story but it provided a great blast of nostalgia for someone like me who knows that old module well and remembers it fondly.
The party ends up on the run while dodging the agents of the crown, evil agents of Zhentil Keep’s enemy spy organization, and other powerful beings in the world who seem to have taken an interest in them.
It’s astounding how much time and effort the leaders of Cormyr, powerful heroes, and clandestine evils spend dealing with this bunch of wannabe no bodies after a couple of obvious and odd coincidences, but this is the suspension of disbelief that is required.
All in all this was a good book that had amazingly cool cultural detail that you can expect from Greenwood when he’s writing a Realms novel that is not based on Elminster. But the story struggles with pacing and too often happens without the main characters being involved or aware.
Like the beginning of many D&D campaigns Swords of Eveningstar is a book that is a bit awkward and you just have to go with it to get into the rest of the story. It accomplishes it’s goals of describing how the famous Knights of Myth Drannor got together, became a party, and headed off to their first real adventure. And like those campaigns I’m willing to accept having to buy into a few things that would normally be a stretch at the start in order to get to the rest of the story. I know Greenwood as an author and I generally love his work so I’ll be around for the rest of this series and the excitement of the story can only build from here.
A big thank you to Wizards of the Coast for providing the opportunity to review this book.
