City of Splendors (AD&D, 2nd Edition/Forgotten Realms boxed set)

serviceable Forgotten Realms fiction

I'm mostly positive about this book, but much of the positive comes from nostalgia for the setting.

The characterization, like many D&D novels is just on this side of flat, the bad guys are evil for no reason, the good guys angst but erode the enamel on your teeth with their actions and internal monologue.

I applaud the author for avoiding more Elminster deus ex machina, but the overall effect is of hapless low-level antics. If they have magic, why don't they use it? Don't they know any clerics? Forcing drama by ignoring possible solutions is always a problem for intelligent audiences.

The details and Waterdeep references are nice, and the whole book is an easy read. It's probably worth having only if you were going to buy it in the first place.

Not their best...

I was hoping for something great. Ed Greenwood and Elaine Cunningham together... Well, the prologue was awesome and I bought the book.
Chapter after chapter, I was hoping for the story to get interesting... at last... to no avail.
Not everything was bad. I learned some interesting things about the city and got the feel of some places at least.
I will try to forget this book and fondly remember others I enjoyed so much.

dry and unimaginative

being a loyal forgotten realms fan, i was disappointed with greenwood's take on waterdeep. the story line never drew me in and the characters were one dimensional and largely uninteresting. would definitely not recommend this book - thank goodness he didn't write a trilogy.

Great for fans

Im actually surprised by some of the more negative reviews, i found this arguably one of the best d&d based novels i've read, and i have read no small number.

Its a quick fun story with several characters i really enjoyed, the depiction of khelben arunsun in the beginning was better written and painted a more interesting character then the entire blackstaff novel did, though this book does not focus on him. The main characters were amusing and interesting. All in all if your interested in waterdeep, or a fan of the forgotten realms it is worth a read, as mentioned before its become one of my favorite d&d novels.

As for its downside, the primary enemy to me was actually less interesting then the misadventures of the main group, whom manage to in my opinion make up for it, the ending was not my favorite either.

In the end its better then average realms fare, but lacking the epic scope of some of the more famous d&d series, still for a single shot story its fun and provides a interesting look in to the city of splendors.

About average

WATERDEEP: THE CITY OF SPLENDORS is by no means a bad book. It even becomes decent in parts, but at the beginning, it's stifled by mediocrity. The Gemcloaks I find boring, the dialogue I find overblown (with trademark Greenwood vocabulary and phrasing), the narrative nothing special and oh, the character descriptions? They come in info-dumps that tell you what the character looks like from head to toe, a bit about the character's personality, and a bit about the character's background. They are shoved all at once down your throat, and that is never a pleasant experience. It strikes me as amateurish, but then, many other FR novelists do the same. There's even a paragraph consisting of one long, messy run-on. With this and the inconsistencies in other novels (WAR OF THE SPIDER QUEEN's internal factual errors, game products not agreeing with novels, novels not agreeing with novels, factual errors in THE LAST MYTHAL trilogy), it's obvious that WotC has no editing standards whatsover. Is it any wonder that some people consider this line of novels to be laughingstock or hack jobs, even in the fantasy genre?

The storyline meanders a fair bit, and there are probably too many characters. It does start to come together about two-third through the book, though, which is a good thing. I far from oppose this kind of plot: it keeps things unpredictable, even if one has to put up what seems initially to be unfocused and somewhat undisciplined. We have the "New Day" people, with Dyre at the center: at first, again, I found them irritating because it doesn't seem like they'll go anywhere, just old men gibbering about things they'll never get around to. The Gemcloaks are so-so. The Dyrre daughters are all right. For many chapters, I mostly read it for Lark and, of course, for Elaith, a character I've always been fond of in Elaine Cunningham's novels. Mrelder is another character that interested me from early on. All in all, though, I do think that as fantasy characters go, CoS' cast comprises of a fairly atypical mix: an aged master stonemason, his daughters and maidservant, a sorcerer who's not so much evil as... afflicted with issues, and nobles that don't start off being nice and friendly to the common people (a tired device to make them sympathetic. Befriending the kitchen help, and all that; these young men act as those raised opulent and carefree should -- they are brats).

But ultimately, I don't think I cared much for the characters. One Gemcloak dies, but all that came to mind for me was "Oh, yay, we're down with one pointless character!" It's one of the least moving death scenes in fiction I've ever read, and part of that has to do with the fact that Gemcloaks mostly share the same personality. They have a few distinguishing trait and they wear cloaks with different colors, but in most scenes, you can substitute one's name with another and it will still read the same. The characterization, here, is incredibly lazy. I think the book'd have been better off with just three Gemcloaks. The cameo of Asper and Mirt annoyed the living daylight out of me; once again, Mirt pops up to make the same kind of "sly" comments and give "wise" advice, and Asper appears to make men gawk at her (look, she's not only amazing with a blade but also seductive and sexually aggressive -- just like every other Greenwood female character; how refreshing!). Author's darlings, author's darlings. I wish Greenwood would actually develop them or kill them off already. They're just boring and have nothing new to do or say. I swear, even if the Walking Statues had trampled all of Waterdeep into dust, Greenwood's pet characters would still somehow survive.

Elaith's scenes shine. There's an edge to everything he does, though I wish they would drop his angst already. His "conflict with my past! conflict with my morality! I am tortured!" has gone on for a long, long while, and by this point it's become tiresome.

Golskyn's megalomania... came out of the blue. Aren't evil overlord types with insanity a little dated, here? Worse, his madness seems to be a plot device for Mrelder to get out of his father's shadow. It's random and weird. Yes, he's a bit too much "Domination monster domination dominationtion!" from the start, but he started off relatively sane. Why the sudden insanity? What triggered it? Did he get hit by one of those dementia spells?

Still, I liked the overall tone of the ending: not happy, not entirely subdued, but somewhere in the between. Tragic but hopeful, which is, I think, the happy medium. I didn't much care for the action-packed parts, however. Brief action punctuated with "BOOM" gets really old really fast, and if I see the word "BOOM" again, it'll be too soon.