Novels of a Bygone Era: Forgotten...

I was asked on the THAC0 with Advantage Discord if I had any Forgotten Realms novels I would recommend. I realized that while I had recommendations for previous era sourcebooks, I never talked about novels. My top picks, which may include books that include elements that my brain has buried too deep to consider, would be this:

• Songs & Swords (Elfshadow, Elfsong, Silver Shadows, Thornhold, The Dream Spheres)
• The Finder’s Stone Trilogy (Azure Bonds, The Wyvern’s Spur, Song of the Saurials)
• The Icewind Dale Trilogy (The Crystal Shard, Streams of Silver, The Halfling’s Gem)
• The Dark Elf Trilogy (Homeland, Exile, Sojourn)
• Starlight & Shadows (Daughter of the Drow, Tangled Webs, Windwalker)
• The Sellswords (Servant of the Shard, Promise of the Witch-King, Road of the Patriarch)
• The Erevis Cale Trilogy (Twilight Falling, Dawn of Night, Midnight’s Mask)
• Evermeet: Island of Elves
• Cormyr: A Novel

Those are all books that don’t necessarily show the most important events in the Realms but present what the Realms “feels like” to me. I would recommend the Songs & Swords books above any of the rest of them because Elaine Cunningham is amazing, and her novels are as much why I fell in love with Waterdeep as any of the sourcebooks. The Sellswords may be a little confusing if you jump from the Icewind Dale books to those, but I don’t think it’s too challenging to catch up. 

The Starlight & Shadows books are another series by Elaine Cunningham, but they may be a little confusing without learning more about Menzoberranzan in The Dark Elf trilogy, even though I like them better. Evermeet and Cormyr are both stand alone books on really important places in the Realms. Evermeet is another Elaine Cunningham book. Cormyr was written by Ed Greenwood and Jeff Grubb, and is probably a bit more readable because Jeff Grubb was on board (sorry Ed, but its true).

The Erevis Cale books sit in a weird place. I don’t want to recommend the whole Sembia series that came before it, and I think you can catch up just from reading those books, but there is a bit of a feeling that they bleed into the Twilight War books, which get really muddied in the 4e Realms transition stuff going on.