Not as detailed nor as useful as advertised
|
The history of the Forgotten Realms fantasy world is long and complex. Since the Realms first appeared in print in 1987, with the novel Darkwalker on Moonshae and the original first edition of the Forgotten Realms boxed setting, over 210 novels and dozens of game products have been published, each adding to the canon and history of the world. This doesn't include the extensive history and backstory built up by creator Ed Greenwood whilst he ran the Realms as his own private creation for the twenty years prior to that. The story and history of the Realms have become somewhat convoluted in the forty years they have existed.
According to the blurb, The Grand History of the Realms is supposed to detail the complete history of the Realms as explained in the novels, computer games and RPG products previously published. That claim has to be taken with a grain of salt the size of Lake Michigan. It's a suspiciously slim tome for such a grand endeavour, and indeed the events of many novels, sourcebooks, computer games and adventure modules go completely unmentioned in the book, making its worth somewhat dubious. More irritatingly, the book also fails to mention the sources for its dates and events. What is new material and what is old? What comes from existing game products and what comes from the novels? Combined with the lack of an index, this even further lessens the value of the book. Reading up on the Tuigan Invasion is cool, but if you want to delve further into the events, what novels do you read? What game products do you look up? The book doesn't give you any help on that score.
Of course, what makes this all the more irritating is that the original, free version of the book (assembled by Brian R. James when he was just a fan providing a resource to candlekeep.com) does annotate all of its dates with the source in question. And, seperately, other sourcebooks and Dragon magazine articles have provided dates for all of the novels. Combining these sources into the book and providing a more substantial tome would have been more useful.
Unfortunately, the book's biggest hindrance is that it is simply a timeline, not a narrative history, so if you want to read up on the history of Elminster, for example, you have to trawl through the entire book and pick up his story as you go (this is made all the more difficult as, ridiculously, Elminster's birth date is not mentioned either). A narrative history would put together Elminster's history in one chapter and set it in context among the greater history of the world. This book singularly fails to do that. There is also the issue that where certain dating contorversies have emerged, rather than come to some conclusion about each one, the writers have sometimes put in both conflicting dates. As a result some notable historical figures die in a civil war, only to die again in exactly the same civil war fourteen years later. Right.
The next problem is that the transition of the Dungeons and Dragons game from 3rd to 4th Edition, including the adoption of a completely new system of magic, means that the Realms have also got to change and rather than simply retcon the transition (as they did between 2nd and 3rd Edition) the game designers have decided to nuke the Realms by killing the Goddess of Magic (along with about fifty other deities), disrupting the magic system for the planet, nuking an entire continent for no logical reason and devastating several of the others (including Faerun, the main Realms continent). They've also advanced the timeline by 104 years (meaning that about half the characters and NPCs in the Realms that fans are familiar with are suddenly dead of old age). Needless to say, many Realms fans aren't happy about this.
Finally, on the criticism front, the book uses a ton of recycled art, sometimes with wrong or incorrect captions, and some of it is from completely different settings with no relevance to the Realms (the unexplained presence of a warforged - a sort of killer robotic golem - from Eberron being a clear example).
The book does have some saving graces, however. A few loose ends left dangling from 2nd Edition in areas that were not addressed in 3rd (such as the outcome of the Sythillisian War between an empire of ogres and the human merchant kingdom of Amn) are finally resolved, and the timeline advances the current history of the Realms forward by about ten years (before the centry-long leap into 4th Edition), making it slightly easier for Dungeon Masters running games advancing in real time to keep track of what is going on. There's also some fine new pieces of Realmslore, such as the first-ever maps of the Imaskar Empire and the Kingdom of Jhaamdath, and an interesting map depicting the landmasses of Toril when they were just one huge supercontinent. Also, since the book doesn't introduce any new rules, it can be used happily by those who are playing either 3rd or 4th Edition, or even the die-hards still using older systems. That said, although the writers have gone to some lengths not to make it an obvious gaming product (no D&D logo anywhere on the book, encouraging sales to bookshops as well as gaming hobby stores), its worth for non-gamer fans of the Realms, such as perhaps readers of RA Salvatore's Drizzt Do'Urden novels or Paul S. Kemp's Erevis Cale books, is virtually nil due to the lack of focus on many of the events in the novels.
The Grand History of the Realms (**½) is therefore a failure, albeit an ambitious one.
|
|
Not especially useful
|
This book is an interesting resource and has it's uses but it's not as helpful as you might expect. According to the introduction the grand history started life as a fan compiled resource, as such it would be an impressive resource. Unfortunately as a book it is of questionable value. It's a bit hit and miss what events are recorded and what are skipped. There is no index which makes it a poor resource for reference. At the same time it's a bit too dry to be much fun to flick through. About the only way to use the book is to read through it which is a very dry experience. In addition it doesn't give references for the resource information originates from so if you want to read further then you need to look it up elsewhere. Brian R. James' unauthorised fan version is actually still available and it is a much more useful resource, it's searchable and it does reference the source of information.
The amount of artwork recycled from else where is shocking, in fact about the only piece of artwork I'm sure isn't recycled is the cover. The book is about 50% sidebars, which are actually pretty interesting but of very marginal use.
About the only reason I can see for this book existing is to pad the schedule before fourth edition is released. Interestingly this book isn't actually under the D&D banner while it is Forgotten Realms branded and is formatted in the same style as other third edition Forgotten Realms books. It has no rules or system related material. I suppose it's sole merit is the it is equally useful (useless) a resource for Fourth Edition.
It's an entertaining oddity but it fails to be a useful resource. Get the unauthorised version for free. If you a hardcore Forgotten Realms fan and the idea of this book appeals then clearly it has some value but even then get the original unauthorised version too.
|
|
A good but flawed history book
|
First off, if you're not interested in the Forgotten Realms world then this book isn't for you. It has no rules, monsters, feats, spells or anything else that you can use in your own campaign setting. What it has is 160 pages of timeline entries, essays & excerpts of historical lore, and a compiled listing of the rulers through the ages of Faerun's various nations.
As a history book this is very useful to any DM wanting to set his game in the Realms, as it makes it easier (but still not particularly easy as the book lacks an index) to find mention of events and the sequence in which they occured. Some of this is fascinating reading, and at times (if you know how events turn out) there is the sense of impending doom as each entry leads towards some unfortunate event (Annihilation of Jhaamdath, Fall of Netheril etc).
The book however suffers from several flaws that whuile they by no means ruin the work, they do lessen it considerably. I've already mentioned the lack of an index, but I'll add to that that the timeline is far from complete and there are many events in novels and sourcebooks that aren't listed here (the destruction of the city of Cursrah in -6048DR for example). Also while the book features some (but not nearly enough) new maps, it uses almost entirely recycled artwork from other works, many of which are not paticularly well suited to what they are used to represent (the most obvious being the Warforged from the Eberron setting).
In short if you run or are planning to run a campaign in the Forgotten Realms then get this book, but don't expect it to hold all the answers or for you to be easily able to find those answers it does hold.
|
|
|
Very nice book
|
I just got this book as a gift for my birthday. I have played many games in the realms and I love to read the literature set in them. As anther review has said this book has very little to interest players and it will only help a DM if they need want to know the order of events. But I do have one gripe, this book uses pictures published in other books, one instance has a character on horse back with a shield with the logo of the Halfling god from the core books. I didn't consider this so bad but it also contains images of Warforged from Eberron which seemed just an excuse not to get new art drawn. This comment is not to moan but to explain why I gave it only four stars.
|
|
|
Good History Book!!
|
If your interested in the history of the Realms, meaning what happened, this is the book for you. According to me any FR fan should have this book as it is something that hasn't ever been printed before. Needles to say you won't be using this book in your games if at all. Maybe a DM if he likes to be chronologically accurate impressing his players with extra knowledge and thus flavor.
Its interesting if you have read many FR literature books and want to find out when (and in relation to other event) very important events took place. If you are a collector its nice to have. if you are an obscure FR knowledge freak its mandatory to have. If you are an occasional player/reader and do not care much about the Toril happenings this isn't the book for you!
Overall its well enough planned, with some good art and an impressive cover and a lot of data. However I was looking for index of events and was disappointed.
|
|
|
United States | 
United Kingdom | 
Canada