Forsaken House: The Last Mythal, Book I

by Richard Baker

Book Overview

Araevin, an elf mage from Evereska, must risk his life and his sanity, as he prepares to battle the House Dlardrageth, an ancient cabal of demon-spawned sun elves who have sworn vengeance against the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0786932600
• Release Date: August 2004
• Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 6.9" x 0.9" x 4.2"

Customer Reviews

Great start to this trilogy

Richard Bakers sets the bar pretty high with this, his first book in the Last Mythal trilogy. This is a very captivating book. The plot is fast paced and moves along at a decent speed while at the same time having very good character development. If you are looking for a hacka nd slash style of book, this is not it. In fact I will even go so far as saying this book breaks away from the normal style of the Forgotten Realms book, but not in a bad way. I was a little sceptical of this series, but those thoughts were quickly stymied in about 20 pages as I became captivated by this book. If you are a fan of Forgotten Realms, or are looking for a book to jump start you in the Realms give this one some serious consideration.

A Beautiful Epic - a solid "A"!

This is a great book, it is a beautiful epic whose true force lies in the fast paced plot, richly detailed setting, all woven into a wonderful tapestry. This is one of the best books done by the Forgotten Realms/Wizards of the Coast, the story is lively and entertaining, the characters are colorful and interesting, and the plot is energetic and spellbinding! OVERALL SCORE: (A) READABILITY: (A), PLOT: (A), CHARATERS: (A), DIALOGUE: (A-), SETTING: (A+), ACTION/COMBAT: (B+), MONSTERS/ANTAGONISTS: (B+), ROMANCE: (B+), SEX: (n/a), AGE LEVEL: (PG13)

Before you review...consult a dictionary!

First off...it is sad that (at present) 7 of 10, and 4 of 6 people have found two reviews "helpful" from people that couldnt even be bothered to take 5 minutes to go to dictionary.com and plug in the word "cwm". One of those reviewers even made the effort to consult the "Elven" dictionary in "Forsaken House" (a great way to determine how to pronounce character's names, btw, and generally a nice feature)...but mysteriously couldnt be bothered to peruse an ENGLISH dictionary. I thought it was fairly standard on the elementary school curriculum to teach people to look up words they didnt know in the dictionary...yet these scholars presume to stand in judgment and criticize this author's work. Shameful. In my opinion, this book was a fine piece of work. I picked it up looking for a "change of pace" from Salvatore's Drizzt novels, and found that I enjoyed it considerably more than many of Salvatore's later works in that storyline...particularly the not-even-mediocre Paths of Darkness series. Spoilers forthcoming...If you scan many of the reviews for Salvatore's books, you find complaints that the "Champions of the Hall" (terrible LotR knockoff, btw) are invincible, even in the face of ridiculously mighty opponents such as dragons and higher demons...yet when the group of principle characters in this book suffer physically from their battles and/or one of them is killed (with appropriate emotional reactions from the remaining members of the band...not sure what that reviewer was talking about)...people come here and complain about _that_. Simply amazing! Anyway, back to the point...I thought this book was great, and I am looking forward to the rest of the trilogy. I am not the biggest fan of the world of the elves, but I enjoy a good story and this book is just that. The author offers a great depiction of fights and larger battles, and even allows for consequence in those confrontations whereby, as I said above...unlike Drizzt and his gang...enemies actually get in a few hits on the "heroes" and do some damage. What a novel concept, eh? My only complaint falls back on the fact that I am not the biggest elven fanboy, and found the names difficult to roll off the tongue...but as I said, the elvish dictionary in the back of the book helps with that immensely. I thought this was a very solid book and a fine addition to the universe of Forgotten Realms, and wholeheartedly recommend it to like-minded fans of the genre.

Great Book

This book, in my opinion, is one of the finest realms books to date. If you like books about faerie, this is for you. We finally begin to delve into the mysterious Elven High Magic. I like the characters, and am excited by the direction the book takes at the end; could we possibly see the rebirth of Myth Drannor? I only hope, and can't wait for the rest of the trilogy to come out. A MUST BUY!!!

Richard Baker is unmatched! Phenomenal book!

"Forsaken House" by Richard Baker was one of the best Forgotten Realms books I have read in a while. It was original, inovative, and entertaining. There are so many interesting half-blood characters. The enemies in the book are half sun elf blood, half demon blood, which as you can imagine can be pretty powerful and vengeful. There is also a character that is half human blood, half elemental blood. This character did not "bust out" her powers as much as I would've liked, but I'm sure she will in the next two books. There is a lot of battles and skirmishes in this book between the elf faction (of moon elves, sun elves, wood elves, etc) and the demon-elf faction but there is one particular battle that was long and nearly epic in nature. The first battle in the assault be the demon-elves was awesome. There was so much magic, hand to hand combat, and it all seemed original and exciting. One of my favorite scenes in all FR books. Baker writes with such creativity that makes spell casting never get old, and all of the spells seem reasonable and likely to happen unlike some of the FR books that just have convienent magic to get the characters out of tough spots. Baker has such a good writing style, and I'm glad he is authoring the rest of the trilogy. He's got it going on. The last thing I will say is that you can tell that there is an epic buildup of sorts, because I believe that whatever happens throughout the trilogy will more than likely have drastic effects on all of Faerun or Evermeet, or both. Read this book if you like fantasy, Forgotten Realms, or elves. This book rocks the house!