If you're a fan of the Forgotten Realms I highly recommend this book. It goes over the history of Cormyr.

2nd read.

Good book. The book is a saga, set in the Dungeons and Dragons realm of Faerun, detailing the history of the human kingdom of Cormyr. The book could have used less pages on the buildup and more on the resolution. Had about 10 pages for the climax and falling action, and that felt much too short.

May be my favorite Forgotten Realms novel. Tells the history of Cormyr and its royal & magical dynasty through an ingenious flashback story structure.

This has some very interesting openings.Between dragon and kingdom.Yet prove to be a very frustrating read.It serves as a current storyline for Cormyr.Then at the same time. Provides a historical timeline for the kingdom.Which results in a back and forth tale.One chapter current story. Next chapter short story from the past.It bounces back and forth like this. Through the entire novel.Most past tales single or two chapters.Each introducing new characters. That likely have no bearing on anything....

I enjoyed reading this book. It combined the elements of mystery and fantasy literature very well. The book had me spellbound and sitting at the edge of my seat. It was a real page turner.Unfortunately, this book suffered from two minor flaws. The first flaw was that the book shifted back and forth every chapter between a historic story and the main story. I found myself confused a number of times, thinking that I was reading about one time line, but I was reading about another. The second flaw

Although this book had everything that could make it truly great, I really disliked it. First of all half the book is about a dying king and the conspiracies that develop, nobles trying to grab as much as they can once the king is dead. This was endless pages with politics, intrigues and such. It got very boring, the few times there was some action couldn't save it. Secondly the other part of the book is the whole history of cormyr, told in interrupting chapters with huge time jumps. Why, oh why...

"A poor workman blames his tools.""It was not a meeting they had time for but then it was not a meeting they could afford to miss, either.""a lot of us believe what we want to believe and not what the world shows us to be the truth.""unique method of crashing head-on into problems and wrestling them into submission without ever understanding them"

A fun read, at least if you like the Forgotten Realms books.

An interesting, almost historical look at one of the kingdoms of the Forgotten Realms.

A fascinating history of the land of the Purple Dragon.

I am a sucker, as mentioned, for march through history books in certain fantasy settings - assuming I am already invested in it, of course. A march through history book about Cormyr is cool because Cormyr is cool. You read the setting book and it stands out as a neat flavor kind of place, or at least it did to me.Now it's a tumultuous time and as an aging monarch fades away, the history is related to see how we got here. It's cool and I don't care if it probably sucks, because I was 17 at the ti...

There are some good forgotten realms books, and some bad forgotten realms books. The same can be said of the writings of Ed Greenwood. On both counts, this was a solid one.This first novel in The Cormyr Saga chronicles the history of the Kingdom of Cormyr, and tells the story of the poisoning of King Azoun IV. There are two narratives in this novel. The first is a Edward Rutherford style series of vignettes which highlights important moments in Cormyr's history. The second narrative is a mystery...

Unless you are a AD&D die hard fan... avoid this book at all cost. The plot is UBER repetitive here, basically the history of the Cormyr kingdom thru different generations and all the conspiracies that several noblemen do upon each king. And it is the same again again and again.On parallel there goes the current story about... you guessed it, a conspiracy against king Azoun.I made the mistake of reading another book from Ed Greenwood, this guy should be banned from writing. And I just want to ma...

Imaginary conversation between TSP and Ed Greenwood.TSP -- Ed we want to tap into the D & D market.TSP -- Can you write a history of Comyr and its ruling family.Ed -- Thats a great idea. I'll write a book about the background of a popular D & D game.Thats all this novel really is. Its well written because Greenwood and Grubb are good writers but its not a story per se. Its kind of like McCaffrey writing the story of Robinton's life or Eddings writing about Belgarath and Polgara.

I'm not sure how I missed adding this book review when I read it.I don't recall everything, and I will say that while I've read many of his books and short stories in an attempt to fully immerse myself in Forgotten Realms, I am not a fan of Greenwood's writing. With that said, I recall really enjoying this book. Some of his best work, as it is choke full of history of Cormyr and a great intro to the rest of the series that takes place in this kingdom.If you are going to read anything by Greenwoo...

I just remembered that I read this, back when I was hugely into big, fat fantasy books. However, I don't think I can recall a single character, event, or scene from the whole thing--which is particularly odd for me, since with every other book I've ever read, I at least remember the basic plot and a few choice moments. Clearly this one, beyond all others, was entirely unremarkable.Forgotten Realms indeed.

Not as terrible as I was expecting! Ed Greenwood is a wonderful creator but he needs the "traffic cop" of Jeff Grubb to keep things on track, and I enjoyed this trip through the history of Cormyr.

DNF. This would have been better as a collection of short stories, many not making the final cut.

Although an avid D&D player, I've never actually read any of the fiction surrounding it apart from the Dragonlance Chronicles. This hit the nail on the head in terms of world - place names cropped up I knew, races acted as I expected, the names were utterly unpronouncable, and so on. The book had me gripped until about halfway through.The problem with the ending is that rather than continuing to be a play by play of how epic the world had been up until this point - the trials and tribulations of...