Darkwalker on Moonshae (Forgotten Realms: The Moonshae Trilogy, #1) by Douglas Niles

Darkwalker on Moonshae (Forgotten Realms: The Moonshae Trilogy, #1) Reviews

• 
  Joseph

  The first Forgotten Realms novel published by TSR (although the tenth or eleventh D&D novel, following the first two Dragonlance trilogies and some Greyhawk books; and Quag Keep, if you want to include that). Set on the Moonshae Isles, an archipelago off the west coast of the Forgotten Realms' main continent. The Moonshaes have a distinctly Celtic feel to them -- lots of druids and an Earth Goddess and bards and suchlike.
  
  The basic story won't be anything too shocking -- Kazgoroth, the Beast, has corrupted one of the Moonwells and is influencing an army of Vikings Northmen to sail to, and invade, Caer Corwell on the island of Gwynneth; and just to keep things interesting, there's also an army of Firbolgs (deformed giants) to contend with, and the Beast is also doing his best to take the Lady's champions out of contention.
  
  In opposition: Tristan, the somewhat callow heir to the throne, Robyn, raised as a ward of the crown, a particularly memorable mastiff, a faerie dragon, and a not-unexpected assortment of halflings, elves and dwarves, all given a pleasantly Celtic flavor.
  
  The actual writing is nothing award-winning, but it's certainly less cringe-worthy than other D&D novels I've read -- all in all, a pleasant, nostalgic way to spend an afternoon or two. (And yes, I'll be reading the other two books in the trilogy.)
• 
  Ralph Pulner

  The End of the Beginning of the End
  
  Wizards of the Coast (formerly TSR) have ended their long run of Forgotten Realms novels in 2017. What better way celebrate than attempt to do a full read through of three decades of books?
  
  Does anyone remember walking into a Waldens or B&N in the late eightie's and browsing the fantasy section? It was a veritable wall of Dragonlance novels, as much as the shelves would carry. With the advent of their Red Box, ADnD 2nd edition, Dragonlance modules, Corebooks and novels, TSR was in full swing and was a money making machine.
  Douglas Niles was hired on to create a world for a new branch, TSR UK edition. Thematically, it focused on a mix of druidic, Norse mythology and King Arthur type fantasy. Douglas had a fleshed out world, playable module with a ton of adventure ideas and two half written books, ready to go. For 'reasons' the UK venture was scrapped and his oeuvre became an outlying chain of islands in Ed Greenwood's The Forgotten Realms, for U.S. release. His module was well received and reviewed so his half written books got the green light. The Forgotten Realms novel line was a reality.
  From sparse info on the internet it looks like sales for Darkwalker on Moonshae were a huge success. The book I purchased with the original cover was 12th printing and his books were re-released a few years ago.
  If you read this in a bubble, with passing or no interest in DnD or rpg's and you hated it, I don't fault you. This book was largely written to flesh out his creation of the isles, explore areas and show the possible campaigns one could have by playing his module.
  There's lots of adventure hooks here for people who did play at the time. Druids, bards, thieves, fighters, Elves, Dwarves, Halflings, dragons, giants (Firbolgs), enemy Northeners, animal companions, werewolves, Gods, Champions and BBEG (Big bad evil guy). There's castles, fortresses, all different kinds of terrain options and magic weapons. It practically begs you to buy the adventure.
  I am comfortable with this setting. I love worldbuilding. The laws of this universe feel natural to me because I have played DnD and other RPG on and off for years.
  This was just...average. I give it more praise than I should because of what it represented way back in 87. A few bullet points.
  -Dude, she's your Sister! What is it with characters falling in love with non relatives raised as their siblings? It's one reason I stopped watching The Flash...it's too uncomfortable.
  -Tristan is an antihero, sort of. He's more like a putz and a whiner. He stumbles into notoriety. People dearly sell their life to see he survives but he just can't keep it together. Even when he suceeds, he fails.
  -This book is, at times, graphic and gory. For example, one guy gets turned into a fine mist. I loved these parts.
  - There's a typo, I didn't mark the page (laziness) but terrror is in there somewhere.
  -Douglas Niles originally was a teacher and Gary Gygax' s daughter was a student in his class. He started playing DnD because she gifted him a module. He never told this story during his TSR hiring process.
  
• 
  Brad

  Darkwalker on Moonshae is absolute garbage. In fact, I don't think that is a strong enough condemnation of its crapness.
  
  I read this when it first came out, back when I was sixteen, and for thirty-some years I have remembered it fondly. It's amazing the tricks the mind will play.
  
  I found it last summer at a used bookstore and thought, "This will be fun!" Nope. It was a torturous slog. It represents almost everything that is wrong with the fantasy genre -- from Fantasy's inherent racism to its shallow characterizations to its deus ex machinas to its ridiculous death tolls to its elementary good vs. evil plots -- and to make Darkwalker on Moonshae even worse, it reeks of the D&D campaign turned novel that littered the Fantasy landscape of the late-80s / early-90s.
  
  So I am going to focus on that. The D&D campaign in the shape of its "party of adventurers." They are as bad a bunch of D&D characters as I have ever seen in the bad campaigns I have played in over the years.
  
  There's Tristan Kendrick, the spoiled prince of a disapproving father. He whines a lot. Fights a lot. Finds a magic sword that we are told he is worthy of but are never shown he is worthy of. And, of course, he pines for his foster sister, Robyn.
  
  And Robyn? Well, she is about to become the most powerful druidess the islands have ever seen, but she has mystery lineage, so she hasn't figured any of that out yet. She is bossy; she is pissy; she loves Tristan, but keeps him at arm's length; she saves the day. She is both saviour and reason to fight. She is insufferable.
  
  Then there are their companions: Daryth, a foreign man with a scimitar, is a bit of a fighter, a bit of a thief, a bit of competition for Robyn's love (though not at all affectively), and he is a skilled dog handler-trainer. Which matters because another member of the party is Canthus, the biggest, baddest, most well behaved hound in the history of gaming (who will, of course, be instrumental in their ultimate victory over the forces of evil. We also need little folk. So there is Pawldo, a halfling archer who is close friends with Tristan and Robyn, and there is Finnelen, a stereotypically obnoxious dwarf (only this time "she" is the one combing out "her" beard). And the mentor that fills out the party is Keren the Bard. Woohoo! What a crew. What a fucking lame crew.
  
  Not a one of them can muster any depth beyond a midsummer dew. If only more of them had died at the end, perhaps then I could have walked away with a small smile in my heart. Instead, all I could do was grind my way to the last page.
  
  You know, three out of every four books I reread fall to pieces when I return to them. I really need to learn a lesson from that. I won't but I should.
• 
  Nikki ~ The Nocturnal Bookworm

  Good:
  A nice example of high fantasy
  A wonderful beginning to the world of the forgotten realms
  Robyn is awesome
  
  Bad:
  Tristan annoyed the hell out of me
  
  Overall enjoyable and I look forward to reading the rest of the trilogy
  
  Full In-Depth Review Here:
  
  http://nocturnalbookwormnikki.home.bl...
• 
  Merric Blackman

  In May 1987, the first novel set in the new Forgotten Realms world was published. Darkwalker on Moonshae by Douglas Niles was a tremendous book – at least, that’s what I thought when I read it – several times – as a teenager. Today, I finished reading it again for the first time in decades.
  
  The book does not start well, with a fair bit of clumsy writing and very clunky dialogue. However, as I progressed through the book, the writing got better, and the story began to engage me. By the end, I remembered why I enjoyed it so much: because, at its heart, it tells a really good story.
  
  In fact, the most impressive thing about the book is the sheer imagination displayed throughout it. Niles wasn’t content to have just a few interesting things in the book; it’s jam-packed with them. Some of them draw from the existing Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rules – the druids, magic, and a few monsters – but others were created especially for this book. In particular, I enjoyed reading about the three servants of the Earthmother: the Leviathan, the Unicorn, and the Pack, which are very important to the story.
  
  The book tells the tale of Tristan, the prince of a small kingdom on the Moonshae Isles, and his friends as they deal with the rise of a monstrous beast, Kazgaroth, that intends to destroy the land and the Earthmother, the goddess of their people. Tristan doesn’t get along with his father, who sees him as not taking his duties seriously, and part of the tale is his coming of age.
  
  The characterisation in Darkwalker is fairly shallow, but effective enough for the tale it’s telling. The book moves between relating the adventures of Tristan and the actions of the Darkwalker and his minions. Looking back on it, I’m very impressed it doesn’t actually use a plot of “You must find this object to defeat the monster”. Yes, there are powerful artefacts to be found, but they’re found accidentally or willed to the characters instead of being the reward for a quest. The working of the plot is far more subtle than you might initially expect.
  
  Kazgaroth is a fantastic threat, not least because it is able to corrupt many people and animals – including the Pack – to its service. Niles is particularly good at writing the battle scenes, which helps make the climax of the book particularly memorable.
  
  Treated as an introduction to the Forgotten Realms, this is a particularly odd book, because the setting is so unlike the core of the Forgotten Realms. The setting was originally created by Ed Greenwood as a place to write short fiction in, and became the setting he set his campaign of the new Dungeons & Dragons game. Greenwood’s main Realms campaigns centred about Waterdeep, the Dalelands and Cormyr. A set of isles inspired by Celtic mythology? That wasn’t part of the world! In fact Niles had originally written the novel for a completely different setting from TSR UK, but it was retrofitted for the Realms when the original setting product fell through. The actual Forgotten Realms Campaign Set wouldn’t come out until August 1987.
  
  (There’s one element of the book that feels particularly Greyhawk-like to me, and that’s the tension between the druidic faith and the new clerical faiths, as exhibited in The Village of Hommlet. It doesn’t really appear anywhere else in the Realms, as far as I’m aware.)
  
  Ultimately, despite its flaws, Darkwalker on Moonshae is an entertaining tale, and one I enjoyed rereading.
  
  This year I hope to revisit a lot of the old Forgotten Realms books, including some I’ve never read before. Of course, I’ll be trying to read them in publication order, which means the next book on the list is the one that sent the popularity of the Realms skyrocketing: The Crystal Shard.
  
• 
  Jason Taylor

  This book takes a lot of abuse from people I know who've read it. I think it's because I build it up too much. "Darkwalker" is a simple read with an uncomplicated plot and shallow character developments.
  
  That said, it's a really good story. It has all of the elements of classic fantasy, and it moves very well. It has two of the great battle scenes in fantasy. Admittedly, the ending is kind of weak as it is anticlimactic. The climatic battle at the keep is much more interesting.
  
  I think that Darkwalker would be a great movie script. Imagine a legion of beautiful female knights, a Viking horde, a gigantic hound, a massive firbolg, and a majestic unicorn, and Gavan being reworked as a minotaur. I'd pay to watch it.
• 
  Luke Scull

  In the kingdom of Moonshae, a terrible struggle is about to ensue. The evil beast Kazgoroth has awakened. Drawing power from a corrupted Moonwell – a source of power sacred to the Goddess – it roams the land, amassing its followers and spreading darkness throughout the isles. Prince Tristan must rally his people against the threat of this ancient evil even as the Goddess sends her own children to combat the threat.
  
  The first Forgotten Realms novel ever published, Darkwalker on Moonshae draws on Celtic-inspired mythology. Located a hundred miles off the western coast of the Forgotten Realms, the Moonshae isles have scant little to do with the mainland Forgotten Realms setting. Apparently the novel was originally written for a different setting and the refitted to the Realms, and it shows. The people of Moonshae exclusively worship the Mother (later revealed as an aspect of the goddess Chauntea), who has for centuries been venerated by the local druids. The clerics of the “new gods,” as the Realms pantheon are known, are a recent curiosity. There’s a definite feeling of the old ways slowly giving way to the new. This sense of the unknown encroaching upon a very familiar Celtic setting acts as an effective portal for new readers into this vast world.
  
  The story is standard fare, as are the characters. Tristan is notable only for his remarkably quick transition from feckless disappointment to his father, to inspirational leader and expert fighter. This occurs in the space of few dozen pages and seems mainly down to him finding a magical sword. Of slightly more interest is Robyn, Tristan’s young ward of mysterious parentage who quickly discovers she possesses druidic powers. Tristan spends much of the book fretting over how Robyn feels for him. New friends (and potential love rivals) include Daryth, a thief hailing from the Arabian Nights-inspired setting of Calimshan, and the famous bard Keren. Filling out the party are a halfling named Pawldo and, perhaps my favourite character, a moorhound named Canthus, who truly is a Good Boy.
  
  The writing is by, and large, fine. There are some clunky passages and dialogue, at least early on, but Niles writes combat well and paints a vivid picture of a beautiful land beset by evil. In places it’s surprisingly violent for a Forgotten Realms novel, with whole villages being put to the sword and rape alluded to, if not described. There are also some old-fashioned word choices - Daryth is introduced as “swarthy" - that are probably par for the course for an 80s fantasy novel.
  
  There’s little in the way of female representation - Robyn is the only female character of any real note - but the sexism is mostly confined to Tristan’s attitude towards Robyn. His worship of her maidenhood jars a little with his own background of drinking and carefree wenching. Still, rather than dwell on this kind of thing – which would make this Great Realms Read-through very tedious indeed! – let’s just acknowledge it exists. It’s not as though Robyn is introduced with a silk shawl straining against her breasts…. (Ahem.)
  
  My favourite parts of the book were those describing the children of the Goddess and their bloody encounters with the wicked servants of Kazgoroth. It’s not often we get to read about a thousand-feet long leviathan doing battle with a gigantic fleet of northmen, or a unicorn goring the hilariously inept Firbolg. By the way, the Firbolg as described in Darkwalker on Moonshae are more like verbeeg or ogres than the magically powerful giant-kin described in the second edition Monstrous Manual. So dumb and hapless are they that Kazgoroth eventually decides to eviscerate its own giant minions, probably to save itself the pain of having to deal with them again. The highlight of the novel for me was a tense showdown between the moorhound Canthus and a werewolf for leadership of the Pack – a vast gathering of wolves that have been subverted by Kazgoroth.
  
  Though not terribly well written or greatly original, Darkwalker on Moonshae is a very successful entry point to the Forgotten Realms courtesy of its vivid worldbuilding and the sheer sense of mythology that permeates the novel. It captures the imagination and is easily recommended both to younger readers looking for a stepping stone into fantasy fiction and older readers keen to revisit a high fantasy setting where good and evil are very definite concepts.
  
  The sequel to Darkwalker on Moonshae, Black Wizards, was released in 1988 and is the third book on this epic journey across the Realms. First, though, Icewind Dale awaits….
• 
  B.K.

  Darkwalker on Moonshae, although it is a D&D book in the Forgotten Realms world, stands out as a brilliant modern re-imagining of Celtic myth and legend.
  
  The Moonshaes are an archipelago populated by two human civilizations: the Fflolk who resemble an amalgamation of ancient Irish, Scottish, and Welsh cultures; and the northmen, who are basically Vikings. The book focuses entirely on this region, specifically one country on one of the larger islands. As such, it reads much more like a stand-alone fantasy than part of a D&D world.
  
  The story is a great mirror of the old spoken legends like Beowulf. There is a dominant theme of good versus evil personified by the earthmother goddess and the beast Kazgaroth. There are dwarves, elves, giants, druids, and more; but they are portrayed as almost mythical beings as opposed to the D&D norm of them being commonplace.
  
  In all, this is a wonderful read full of adventure, heart-warming companionship, danger, triumph, and loss. I would recommend it to any fantasy fan, especially if you are interested in old Celtic myth. Ignore the D&D trademarks on the cover; this is a story everybody can enjoy!
• 
  Elizabeth

  No, it's not fine literature... but if you're reading Forgotten Realms novels, that's not what you're looking for anyway. Chances are you're looking for high fantasy set in a familiar setting, with characters who fill a designated role in an adventure where their very familiar abilities matter more than their motives. I'd wager that most people who read Forgotten Realms novels are gamers, either of the traditional tabletop variety where this campaign began, or of the videogamer sort who cut their teeth on Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, or Icewind Dale - all of which arose from this same setting. For readers who don't fall in that category, I reckon they picked up a Drizzt book at some point on the advice of a friend, or by sheer coincidence. Perhaps a curiosity to see the very beginning of that world drove you to this book, which I understand even predated the D&D campaign module, or maybe you just think unicorns are kickass. Whatever the reason, as long as you're not looking for life changing prose or opposed to nerdy escapist fantasy in general, you probably won't regret reading this.
  
  Probably.
• 
  Raechel

  A fun, trope-y fantasy novel about a prince with a magic sword and an evil... something threatening the land. This book is good for what it is, but by modern fantasy standards it's not that great.
  
  Tristan is annoying, although he does get a little better. Robyn is honestly too good for him.
  
  There's some serious issues with grammar and details in the book (spelling mistakes, the king's name changes, the symbol on a banner changes, etc). But if you're looking for a classic D&D adventure, this is a good place to start.
• 
  Rhonda

  Very well written, easy to follow storyline. A treat.
• 
  Kelly Furniss

  4.5 stars
  I picked this because it is the first book written in the Forgotten Realms and I wanted good gateway and what better to start right at the very beginning.
  This book his about Prince Tristan who is prince of a small kingdom on the Moonshae Isles.
  His Father, who he struggles to please is injured through War and to prove himself and his worth he and his army of friends, halflings, dwarves, sister knights, bards, druids, leviathan, a unicorn and pack of giant hunting hounds go to battle with Kazgaroth the monstrous beast who incarnates and his clan of giant Firbolgs and blood riders who intend to destroy the land and the Earthmother, the goddess of their people and spread evil and darkness, phew!.
  This is at it's core a great fantasy tale of good verses evil with a love story running through it.
  Plenty of bloody battles, heroics, romance, attention to detail and a vast array of engaging characters to keep the interest and suit many tastes. I especially enjoyed that of the Newt the humorous faerie dragon, the dwarves and elves.
  A good fun adventure and perfect beginning to this huge epic fantasy series.
  
• 
  Adam

  Mostly a 2.5 the majority of the time.
  
  TW: Way too many dogs die in this book.
  
  This is the first novel written as a tie-in for the tabletop RPG game Forgotten Realms. Forgotten Realms is a game setting originally created by TSR using the system from Dungeons & Dragons. Most anyone picking up books in the Forgotten Realms setting likely knows all this information, but due to massive repressing's and TSR being purchased by Wizards of the Coast many years later, some of the original TSR material might come across as disordered or lost to new comers of the genre. Back in the 80's and 90's TSR expanded the world of Dungeons & Dragons into various settings. Dragonlance is probably the most popular other setting to come from the publisher. Prior to these two extremely popular settings D&D worked within a setting of Greyhawk quite a bit in the 70's and you can even find very old fantasy novels written by the legendary creator Gary Gygax. They tried to re-launch interest in the Greyhawk setting in the 90's and wrote several new novels there, but nothing compared to the popularity of Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms. Not every setting developed by TSR got a novel companion, Al-Qadim, for example, never had one and none of their sci-fi IP's really had novels. When Wizards of the Coast took over TSR they repressed the old Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms books, but never looked at the other settings much. A small attempt to re-launch Dark Sun was made, but that never took off. Eventually the whole novel publishing sequence collapsed and now it appears we won't be getting anything close to what we used to read in the original forms. Only a handful of authors continue to write in these settings, but their novels are published by other publishers at this point and Wizards of the Coast seems to have dropped the publishing of novels altogether.
  
  Okay, well that's history out of the way for anyone curious abut what you're getting into when you pick up Forgotten Realms, know there are a lot of books to dive into! Forgotten Realms is a setting developed by Ed Greenwood and the basic concept is that at one point in time the Realms were closely related to Earth, but over time they became more and more separated and "forgotten". So, essentially, Forgotten Realms is basically Earth-ish, with magic available.
  
  "Darkwalker on Moonshae" kicks off the epic journey through the Realms and new author Douglas Niles was picked to write the book. Now, when you go into this book realize this is Niles' first book ever, so I'm going to cut him a bit of slack in that regard. I have read future books by Douglas Niles and they were great, but after reading this book, I am only going to expect so much out of this first trilogy. Even R.A. Salvatore's first trilogy in Forgotten Realms was just okay to me. I think the main problem I had with this book is that "Darkwalker on Moonshae" came out a couple years after
  Dragons of Autumn Twilight in the Dragonlance setting and I was expecting something to be on par with that. Unfortunately, this book never even touched Dragonlance in quality as far as I'm concerned. One of the things that I liked about these old TSR publications is that they would have pictures and drawings throughout the book, a little detail that I really just enjoyed overall. This later fell out of vogue, but while it was there, I liked it quite a bit. Even a lot of 80's sci-fi books did this, Battletech novels come to mind off the top of my head. So, it was with some level of disappointment that I thought the art was rather poor when compared to what Dragonlance had put out. It would have been one thing if the art was the same, but two years later and your art is worse? That's just strange to me...
  
  Unfortunately, I'm going to write a chunk of this review through the lens comparing the different TSR settings, so bear with me. One major thing Dragonlance did right, to me, was it made me feel like I was in a different world very early on. There was just a lot of different things that made me feel like I wasn't on some facsimile of Earth in medieval times that happened to have elves or something. While the Lord of the Rings influence in high fantasy is unavoidable, I did feel like Dragonlance was different to a degree. Dragonlance got better about this as it went on. However, Forgotten Realms suffers mightily from two major issues when this was first launched. First, Greyhawk already existed and if I remember correctly was set on Oerth, so basically... Earth, but with Orcs and other mythological creatures. Then TSR creates Forgotten Realms... it just feels like Oerth again. Like, this isn't really a different place in the least. Worst of all, it just feels an awful lot like Middle Earth with some creatures switched out here and there. "Darkwalker on Moonshae" is even worse in this regard, because it's literally just a Medieval Celtic tale where they eventually fight the Vikings! They throw in some elves and dwarves to make it feel like "this is different," but it's just not. It's a Celtic version of Middle Earth and that's about all this is. As I was reading this, I just felt like Douglas Niles wanted to write a different book. He just wanted to write a historical fiction story about the Celts fighting off a Viking horde, that's it. It really just seemed like he had already written this book, and then TSR commissioned him and he was like "oh, we can just change around a few character types in this other thing I wrote and we'll have a Forgotten Realms book!" It turns out... that's exactly what happened.
  
  I think what was really going on is Gygax was having issues with the company at the time. D&D's default setting was Greyhawk, and so they needed a newer "default setting" to work with if Gygax was out... so enter Ed Greenwood with his Forgotten Realms. It's similar to Greyhawk, but different enough etc. It certainly didn't help matters that Douglas Niles' book was published before the actual setting was launched, so who knows how much game design was really fit into this. On top of that, since Forgotten Realms was supposed to be "closely related to Earth," it was an easy cop out to just modify Niles' Celtic series of books and rebrand them.
  
  Well... that was a lot of historical baggage out of the way. Let's dive into the actual book. This book follows the tale of Tristan the Prince of Corwell, whose your sort of stock character prince that is spoiled, but has something prove. In that regard this ends up being the overly told coming of age story about a prince becoming what it means to be a king. You can basically imagine being Scotland or Ireland throughout this entire book in terms of the overall setting. It has the RPG feel where Tristan has a few friends like Pawldo the Halfling, but then meets a new friend from an amusing confrontation in Daryth the Calishite. I actually really liked the Daryth character throughout the book and sorely wished the book was more about him. Tristan has an adopted "sister," that needs to be in quotes, because this definitely goes down the road of the future anime/manga tropes of the "oh we're not brother/sister, one of us is adopted, so it's okay for us to get married." Anyway, his "sister" Robyn has druidic powers and pretty strong and commanding overall. I liked her character quite a bit as well and even though Tristan spends a good deal of time hitting on her, she rebukes him. So, when they confess their love eventually, it sort of came out of nowhere and I sorely wished they hadn't ever gotten together... but books need "romance" right? Eventually, they run into a bard named Keren and that rounds out the adventure party. All men and a token female... standard 1980's D&D setup.
  
  The real conflict starts out with the fact that the Goddess of the land is losing her power, because she has been sabotaged by a great evil. The book never says what the evil creature is, in fact, it is this amorphous thing. It starts by infiltrating human settlements and it can shape shift into all kinds of different things, corrupting everything it touches. The strange part is, it is never named what kind of creature this is, which makes sense because the setting of Forgotten Realms might not have been fully hammered out by the time this book was made and since this amorphous evil was a huge part of this story, it was hard to go back and just make it up. It actually reminded me an awful lot of the evil goo that killed Tasha Yar at the end of the first Star Trek: The Next Generation series. Eventually it finds its way to a band of Vikings amassing an army to take over the lands where Corwell is. So, our heroes must prepare for war. Some parts of the book were quite good, such as when the bard is kidnapped and the rest of the adventurers need to save him from these creatures called the Firbolgs which are being controlled by the evil presence. Their infiltration of the Firbolg stronghold felt like a proper D&D dungeon crawl complete with treasure finding and everything else. That was probably the best part of the book to be honest. They also picked up a female dwarven companion, who was also a great character, but sort of bounced in and out of the story unfortunately.
  
  At some point, it almost seemed like Niles realized he only had two women in the story and in order to rectify that he introduced a band of Elven warriors that were all female. They were summoned by the goddess (loosely) to help fight against the Viking threat. I don't know how much they were just inserted into the story to make it a Forgotten Realms tale, but after they're introduced they sort of fall in and out of the story as well, just like the dwarves. For most of the final battle they're gone, until the Bloodriders appear and now they're back! I don't know, it just felt kind of weird and unfocused towards the end of the book.
  
  In the end, this was not a very strong start to the new setting. It certainly doesn't help when you kind of hate the main character. Tristan is typically insufferable and unworthy of the things he has, despite the author telling us he is. I am curious if the other books stay like this, since based on what I read about this series it seemed like Niles had written the entire trilogy before adapting it into a Forgotten Realms book. However, fear not, even if this trilogy is not very good, I have read future releases in this setting and I think they are excellent books. By the time R.A. Salvatore enters the picture I think they had gotten a more serious hold on what the setting was like, so he was able to write his books in a far more cohesive fashion. At this point, I think "Darkwalker on Moonshae" is going to wind up being a historical curiosity in the history of TSR for me. I'm glad I read it, and I will certainly read the other two novels in this trilogy as I like to try and get a really good historical perspective on these franchises I've enjoyed so much throughout my life, the good and the bad moments.
• 
  Alex

  My erratic reading patterns stopped me enjoying this book as much as it deserved, although it wasn’t deserving enough that I ever wanted to drop what I was doing to pick up the tale in favour of something else. It’s bleary-eyed daily commute fodder alright, but has pretensions to being a bit smarter about it,as our classic band of heroes tale and cookie cutter romance (and my God, does main character Tristan have a hard-on for his sister. But that’s ok, I’m a liberal afterall) is constantly broken up with italicized sections outlining the antics of several monsters that are minions to a good Goddess whose power is waning thanks to the machinations of nasty beast Kazgaroth, who is running around killing said minions. The interjections are nice, though too frequent and fragmented and Niles really struggles to balance the different elements of his story and ends up throwing in all but the kitchen sink, evidently desperate to please; everything ends up suffering until we get all out warfare from nowhere for nearly 100 pages. It’s a weird book and a weird experience and I feel disappointed that I didn’t come to love the characters all that much or that their adventures never felt that engaging, and I don’t yet feel at home in the Forgotten Realms setting.
• 
  Lena_en_libros

  Hay varias sagas ambientadas dentro del mundo de Los Reinos Olvidados, donde están las islas Moonshaes y lo que allí acontece.
  
  En este caso, Tristan, príncipe y futuro rey de Caer Corwell, ha de luchar contra una temible Bestia que amenaza con destruirlo todo. Por supuesto, ayudado de sus inseparables amigos, su novia (una druída de gran poder) y de la Madre, la Diosa del Bien, que enviará a todos sus Hijos para luchar contra el Mal.
  
  El libro es entretenido, pero le falta sustancia. No llegamos a empatizar con ningún personaje ni siquiera con alguno de los más mágicos o más divertidos.
  
  Como nunca dejo una saga a medias (a no ser que la aborrezca) seguiré con ella para ver si mejora o todo va a peor (ya sabemos que en las sagas lo peor son los finales, casi siempre).
• 
  Sean Guynes

  Absolute shit. Boring, lackluster writing, useless and annoying characters, and a hilariously obvious plot that tries to give itself depth by alluding to Celtic mythology, but really only does so in its use of vaguely Celtic place names, making the whole book an utter waste of several hours of my life. Here I was trying to do a D&D novel reread and it's novels like this that make me think such a reread is not worth my time.
• 
  Sean Humphrey

  Much more war and the kinds of scenes that usually come with than I typically look for in a book, but definitely enjoyable and leaves me wanting to read the next books in this trilogy.
• 
  Kurt

  Great read, even 30 years after I've read them for the very first time. Although I do have to say, I am still a much bigger fan of the Dragonlance series, always was and always will be!
• 
  Fco. Salvador

  La serie nos sitúa en unas islas con claro trasfondo céltico (nombres, aspecto, cultura), donde los aspectos mágicos y clericales típicos de D&D parecen no haberse desarrollado, siendo en cierta forma amalgamados en una religión druídica de veneración a la Madre Tierra. Todo eso está destinado a cambiar a lo largo de la serie de novelas, aunque la trama central se aleja de ello para mostrarnos los avances de un noble de una de las islas y de una aprendiz de druida, junto con un bardo y algunos secundarios. Y precisamente son los personajes, a mi parecer, lo más flojo de las novelas: son excesivamente planos, y los conflictos entre ellos están manidos y son tratados de forma muy superficial.
  
  Sin embargo, creo que la ambientación está muy bien tratada, la oscuridad que se va extendiendo por la isla aparece reflejada de una forma muy coherente, y la trama avanza con gran agilidad, mediante una sucesión de puntos de vista que luego ha llegado a ser la norma en la narración. La trilogía de las Moonshaes no cuenta nada del otro mundo, pero tiene puntos de originalidad y rasgos que la convierten en una serie de la parte de arriba del montón.
  
  Y no sabía por qué motivo, eso me extrañaba: para ser novela de franquicia, era bastante buena (a pesar de sus defectos, muy normales si sumamos la inexperiencia de Niles con su velocidad de escritura). Entonces, al finalizar la tercera novela, pude leer esto en la parte de agradecimientos: "(...) debo dar las gracias a un equipo de diseñadores británicos de juegos (...). Aunque el trabajo en que colaboramos nunca llegó a hacerse realidad, algunos de sus ingredientes sirvieron para concebir el Pozo de las Tinieblas. Doy las gracias también a Jeff Grubb y Ed Greenwood, que encontraron un lugar para mis islas en los Reinos Olvidados (...)". Resumiendo, que la trama y la ambientación ya estaban en buena parte en la cabeza de Niles, y no son enteramente un trabajo de franquicia. Eso ya me cuadra más.
• 
  Myrsini Falia

  You'd think that after my misadventure of the Maztica trilogy, I would know better than to try more of Mr. Niles. But being the rather masohistic reader that I am, I picked another one. And I couldn't make it to the end. It follows the exact uncarved, unrefined trope laden path that Maztica followed (and given Maztica was written later, it seems as if the author saw if he could try and rewrite Moonshae on another setting and get away with it). The plot is the usual "rash swordsman boy, his super duper speeeeecial but passive love interest and a bunch of other characters that could end up being INFINITELY more interesting than the protagonists, but don't, make sure to unlock their super special swordsmanship and super special magic respectively to fight back the conveniently monstrous army and conveniently literally-evil-incarnate god that threatens them". A simplistic plot like that could have risen to greatness if the characters moving it were interesting and fully fleshed out, but they seem more like lifeless pawns for the battlefield rather than people. If this had been a DnD campaign to play, I bet that the care me and my fellow players would have given our characters would have made for a much more spirited tale.
• 
  Dan

  This was an exceedingly fun book to read the first time I read it *mumble* *cough* years ago. Rereading it now all these years later I have to admit: it's still a fun story. Sure it's loaded with all the typical high fantasy tropes and the plot is by and large formulaic... but, SFW, it's an entertaining read. I'm glad I reread it because I'd forgotten quite a few of the details, and I decided to give it another go because I never read the other two books in the trilogy and I'm going back to read those now. Definitely a "popcorn and beer book," enjoy this like you'd enjoy a good, mindless movie.
• 
  David

  This was a so-so trilogy, although it should be noted that that I never bothered to get book 3. The characters weren't very interesting - yes, there are some delving into their characters but it wasn't in a complex or interesting way that would make me relate better. They just feel very typical. The plot was a classic one about good versus evil, about an ancient corrupting evil. It was revolves around druids - I'm not entirely a fan of druids so that could've contributed to the lack of enthusiasm about it.
• 
  Bridget

  Forgotten Realms was my D&D universe of choice as a teenager and the associated novels was a big part of my devotion. Re-reading this as an adult, I can understand that dynamic - Darkwalker on Moonshae (the first novel in the Forgotten Realms universe, published in 1987) had all the fantasy components that appealed to me -then and now - elements of low fantasy (aspects of the Realms are like medieval Europe, akin to Game of Thrones), elements of high fantasy (magic! dragons! unicorns!), and all firmly rooted in D&D (clear character classes, well known spells, familiar races).
• 
  Chad

  I liked this book. It was a fun and quick fantasy read. As other reviewers have noted, it is the first book written in the Forgotten Realms setting for Dungeons & Dragons. There were lots of good fight scenes and some pretty good action throughout the story. I'll say that if you are a fan of firbolgs, you won't be disappointed. The story and characters were interesting and there was also a good mix of different races, creatures and personalities.
• 
  Pierre-Olivier

  Well, here it is: the first Forgotten Realms novel. I read it for the first time this past week and... well.. it's okay, I guess. I'm not quite sure what to think of it, to be frank. I especially liked the first 100 pages or so, as it didn't feel like a D&D novel. I was getting some 1980's Stephen King vibes ala It or Pet Sematary. Or alternatively it sometimes felt like The Goonies, somewhat. It carried that 1980's vibe to a T.
  
  It was also refreshing to follow the early adventures of a bunch of low level characters after reading through The Icewind Dale trilogy and its cast of high level badasses. I quite enjoyed the setting, as I was frankly unaware of the existence of the Moonshae Isles prior to reading this; everything in the Realms is about the Sword Coast nowadays. To find myself reading about these people living their entire lives on a set of islands with few mentions of the 'mainland' was really cool. I had a map of the Moonshae Isles up on my tablet and I tried to follow the characters' trek on it. Sadly I think the map I had, which was from 5th edition D&D thus 30 years after Niles wrote Darkwalker on Moonshae, didn't fully jive with what I was reading. The map of Gwynneth included in the book is vertically squished compared to the modern map I had; it felt as if everything was on a West-East plane, and at one point both Caer Corwell and Myrloch Vale are stated to be 'West' of the characters but according to the modern map I was using that made no sense. Halfway through I stopped trying to track their travels, and frankly it did hurt my enjoyment of the book. But I can't really blame Douglas for this; this is literally the first Forgotten Realms novel ever and I imagine that the Moonshae Isles got more and more fleshed out in the subsequent 30+ years.
  
  I have to say that I was surprised at the author's inclusion of women in the book. They are way more present and better characterized than in Salvatore's first trilogy. Robyn, the female lead, is more fleshed out than Catti-Brie, and unlike the latter she is not used in a 'damsel in distress' role much, if at all. She is shown to be the most powerful character in the book at many points. I read elsewhere that women are objectified in this novel, and at points the two male leads do talk about Robyn in a way reminiscent of teenagers arguing about who is going to 'get the girl', however... they are teenagers. Clearly this novel is written through the male gaze, but I was impressed at how much Niles kept that in check considering how old he was when he wrote it (32-33), the book's target audience, and when the book was written.
  
  Past the rather interesting (to me) first 100 pages or so, my interest sharply dropped off. The issue is that once the characters are established, their characterization mostly stops. And it's not like they were that interesting to start with. From that point on the novel truly feels like following a bunch of disparate and rather hollow characters through adventures; that classic D&D novel feel. While it didn't initially feel to me as if I was reading a D&D novel, it increasingly felt as if it was so, and that was a bummer. The characters felt like they were running around the same area constantly. The book was mostly without surprises, there was no big secret to uncover, nothing to really look forward to; everything was stated as is. We knew who the heroes were, who the villains were; they mostly didn't change, there were no great revelations. The battle scenes were pretty good, but the siege of Corwell Castle dragged on for too long.
  
  I give this book 3 stars mainly because it was decently well written, the beginning was strong, I enjoyed the setting, and most importantly: I'm itching to read more. I suppose that that is often the highest praise we can bestow upon a piece of entertainment. The other reason for me giving it 3 stars is that, frankly, I expect many D&D novels to be worse than this and I need to keep my 2 star ratings for those! But, not a terrible start to the Forgotten Realms series of novels.
  
  
• 
  Kirk

  About a month ago I started craving fantasy. I have never been a huge fan of fantasy novels, but I spent 25 years playing MTG and dabbled in D&D when I was younger, so I suppose it was only a matter of time before I dove in.
  
  I started with a few Drizzt graphic novels and then decided
  to order one of the actual novels online. A day later, I needed to start reading something new, but Shards hadn’t arrived yet. So I sprang for a kindle Forgotten Realms book, and conveniently this was the one I chose. It is the first of the Forgotten Realms books.
  
  So yeah, all the tropes are here. All the races and classes folks have come to expect in fantasy. The plot line is pretty straight forward. The characters follow your normal archetypes . . .
  
  But that’s exactly what I fucking wanted when I picked this book up.
  
  I bought and read this book because I wanted to read a fantasy book, and a fantasy book I got.
  
  As a writer, I learned a lot about composing battle scenes. This book had some of the best battle scenes I have ever read. I was very grateful for that. Niles is also a competent wordsmith. You can’t really give this guy a hard time about his writing on any level.
  
  It also juggled all of the characters effectively. They were so distinct in race, class, species, demeanor, that it was hard to mix them up. There were a lot of characters, but in all fairness it was a long book, so it makes sense.
  
  All in all I was really pleased with this. I’m not sure I’m invested enough to read the other books in the trilogy, but I’m ready for more fantasy (high fantasy? This is high fantasy, right?), so thank you, Forgotten Realms and Niles, for being my gateway drug into fantasy novels.