This is easily the worst of the Elminster books. In general, Greenwood's (never more than adequate) writing has been deteriorating in his last few books. The story jumps around, the plot is difficult to follow and the characters are more and more caricatures. This is even worse in this book. The interaction between demon and Elminster switches between boring, unbelievable and disgusting (awful torture scenes that do little to impair Elminster). The resolution is a complete, unexpected and unbeli...

This is unquestionably the best book I have ever read. The torture scenes really stood out to me- they were outstanding, particularly how El got completely destroyed! I only wish they were longer! My favourite part was when he got his tongue ripped out.

Elminster in Hell by Ed Greenwood, another D&D Forgotten Realms novel about the mighty mage, is a weird book. Elminster finds himself trapped in Hell and this novel chronicles what he underwent there and the various attempts of his friends and colleagues to rescue him. The framing device is strange, hopping back and forth between the thoughts of Elminster and those of the arch-fiend Nergal who has captured him. The rest of the novel moves back and forth between Elminster's sometimes fragmentary

The cover lied to me. I was promised dragon punching and instead there was graphic torture, infuriatingly flaccid threats, overuse of the word 'diabolical' and whole sections where the author gave up on complete sentences.I am so disappointed. the cover promised such great things.... if I could give this 0 stars I would

This was one of my least favourite AD&D and Forgotten Realms novels ever. The memory scenes were often well written and the only thing that kept me reading, in fat some of them could have been fleshed out to really good novels. The scenes with Elminster and the devil lord were simply boring and pointless.

I listened to this in audio book format. Since Goodreads still doesn't support audiobook versions, I tried to get as close as possible. The narration was quite good. The narrator did a good job of making the characters' voices different. I do suspect that paragraph notations would have made this easier to understand in a non-audio format, since the story does jump about both betwen characters and in space and time, since it deals a great deal in memories and how those memories interact with what...

I imagine the reader would be best served with more background knowledge of Elminster, the Sage of Shadowdale, and of the lore/history of Faerun before delving into this book. As my experience with these topics was rather limited, I spent the first 100 pages or so thoroughly confused. Eventually I got over that and just rolled with the storyline. Decent read and, as with all Wizards of the Coast material, good inspiration for crafting adventures of one's own design.

My favorite in the elminster series.

I don’t think even young adults will like this... couldn’t make it pass 10%

I feel like it's important to say that the four star rating is relative. I'm rating this book against other books by Ed Greenwood, not judging it on the same level as, say, Tolkien...or any other fantasy author for that matter... It's been a long time since I gave Greenwood a four star review, but in this book he actually played up his strong points...he told a VERY nonliner story through Elminster's memories. He jumped from point of view to point of view. There were at least five climaxes and n...

an utterly baffling failure of a novel. full of odd artistic choices that render the thing close to a train wreck; its hard at times to distinguish between the "memories"/short stories, and the "current day"/related to main plot, despite the use of bold font to try to let the reader know. an ineffective & confusing choice of distinction - should have used italics (which is what el's internal dialogue w nergal uses). intercut are hilariously gruesome scenes of our hero elminster being tortured th...

Not as good as I thought it would be. The writing was good but the story wasn’t. I expected something different so that might be the issue. Ed is a good storyteller for sure, this one just wasn’t his best work.

Ed Greenwood, perpetrator of the biggest Mary Sue saga outside of the Anita Blake series, hits new levels of awful in this one. Oh. Wait. I am mistaken. There’s going to be a sequel, so new levels or depths will have a chance. I'm fine with Elminister being a hairy, sexy beast that only the hottest of scantily clad avatars of magical power can't help falling in love with. But at least keep track of your plot, Greenwood. And make it fun, not a bore.

As I read the reviews for this book, I thought to myself that it couldnt possibly be as bad as people thought. In fact, I quite enjoyed the confusing mass that was the first couple chapters. However, upon reaching the 5th chapter and the 106th use of the word diabolical, I realized they were not incorrect. This was such an atrocious conglomerate of discombobulated and terribly written chaos.If you can avoid this book, do so. It made absolutely no sense. May Mystra grant sense to this balderdash

"No friend is worth dying for - when your detah isn't going to help him.""Time not spent is not saved.""Only fools know all the answers.""Rumor...runs like a yapping dog; the truth creeps like a silent snail in its wake."

Horrible.

I remember being profoundly confused by this book, but somehow impressed with the scope, & the sheer torment thrust upon ol' Elminster. This was the first (& at this point, still, only) book I've read about him. Which is a pretty freakin' stupid way to go about things, but hey, I was 14 & didn't know any better. I'm not sure I will ever nerd out enough to read 6-9 more books about his earlier exploits to warrant re-reading this book, but it is an unlikely possibility.

Love itI have read this book several times now and I laugh and cry every single time I have read it

You do start in the middle of the action in this book. A bit more lead in would have been nice. I haven't read any of the other Elfminister books, so this was probably not the best for me to start on. But this is the first one the library had, so . I did find it mostly easy to tell when he and the devil were communicating, and when Elminister was giving up a memory. It got complicated when the devil's buddies started showing up. Who was who, and where did you come from again? But that was on the...

I'll write more later but let is suffice for now to say this is awful. Nothing but story fragments strung together by a tedious and annoying frame. The scene at the end reminded of something a 4 year old would tell. This series started out with a great book, continued with a good book that was followed by a mediocre book. Now with book four we have come to awful. I am afraid of what the next book might bring. Things do not bode well.