Elminster Must Die

"Ed, we're moving the Realms into the 4th edition of Dungeons & Dragons. Elminster must die."

Of course, the Sage of Shadowdale isn't going down without a fight but it sure doesn't look too good for him. It's been 100 years since the goddess of magic, Mystra, was murdered and the Spellplague caused by the Weave's break-down left many practicers of the Art changed, if not dead.

Elminster is of the former, surprisingly enough. Evidently if the god whose Chosen you are dies, you don't instantly drop dead. Even if you are nearly two thousand years old like El. Age is starting to weight him down slowly now but that's not the worst thing; casting a spell makes Elminster lose his sanity and it takes Astorma "Storm" Silverhand to bring him back, draining a magic item's powers in order to do so.

Mystra's death affected the Bard of Shadowdale as well -- she seems to have lost her bard and spellcasting abilities completely. At least she was left physically younger, and sane. Alassra, "The Simbul", another of the Seven Sisters is permanently mad as it happens (not that she was completely stable before) and spending her time in various beast forms. Draining a magic item returns her wits but only temporarily.

Elminsters rummages through the haunted wing of Cormyr's royal palace, hoping to find a permanent solution for "Lass". Cormyr's purple dragons and war wizards don't really appreciate this. Add in the ever-plotting Cormyrean nobles and a certain archvillain who wants Elminster dead, and you have troubles for a trilogy of books.

The villain is Manshoon whose clones caused much trouble at some point in the past. He still likes creating clones but at least they're not active at the same time (if I understood correctly). He refers to himself as vampire, though, and he seems to have control over beholders; a thing his former ally, Fzoul, used to have.

Before I thought that almost none of the big names survived but now it seems that only Fzoul is pretty much the only one gone (?). Of the bad guys anyway; the good guys, pretty much the whole score of Mystra's Chosen, are mostly dead. The book hints multiple times that Laeral (yet again one of the Seven Sisters and Khelben's wife) met her end at the "hands" of the Crown of Horns (an artifact containing Myrkul's essence, presented in the Magic of Faerûn supplement). That and many things made me want to update my knowledge of the Realms. Seriously, Salvatore's occasional references to something are nothing compared to the level of realmslore this book throws about.

The 4E Realms have room for new heroes; for who will guard the Realms now that even the Harpers have disbanded and Mystra's Chosen are gone. But who knows, things might return to a pretty much same state. They did that with Dragonlance's Age of Mortals...

As a novel, Elminster Must Die is typical Greenwood; someone's using a magic item to get rid of his foes, mindcontrol is involved, and there's spell-hurling -- even though Elminster's magicks are a bit limited currently. A century has gone by but as the place is same as in The Sword Never Sleeps and some characters return as ghosts, EMD feels like a sequel. Luckily the new the Sage of Shadowdale trilogy appears to be (at least so far) better -- I don't recall ever laughing out loud when reading the Knights of Myth Drannor. Elminster is lewd as ever. And the new couple of characters -- Amarune and Arclath -- was also much more to my liking.

Killing Elminster has always been (nigh) impossible when Mystra was around but it isn't exactly easy now either. However, Manshoon finally manages to reduce El into a pile of ash. But he continues to exist nevertheless (!) and saves his conciousness by moving to live inside Amarune's mind to wait for a better day.

And then comes the epilogue; Mystra's voice wakes Storm up and asks the former bard to send Elminster to her...

I thought Mystra might come back from the dead; she has done it before after all, but I certainly didn't expect it to happen this soon. To be continued in Bury Elminster Deep and Elminster Enraged...

And as always, I have to comment the cover art. I can't say I'm impressed. I've never heard of this Kekai Kotaki (not conciously at least). His only achievement is apparently knowing that orange and blue contrast each other; the flames don't appear very realistic and Elminster doesn't quite look like how he's been drawn before. The full piece looks better but I don't know who the armored foes are s'posed to be.