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Title: Darkwalker on Moonshae
Series: Forgotten Realms: Moonshae #1
Author: Douglas Niles
Rating: 1 of 5 Stars
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 351/110
Words: 121.5K/40K
| Synopsis: |
DNF’d at 29%
| My Thoughts: |
I haven’t read a Forgotten Realms book in almost 3 years. My tastes had matured enough that I simply could not enjoy them anymore. So rather than rage or rag on them for being what they are, I simply stopped. Then, as has seemed to happen several times this year, I allowed myself to be convinced by another book enthusiast that this one might be a cut above the herd. A really fat juicy cow amongst a herd of starving and anemic animals. Verily, Pharoah himself would have dreamed of this cow and Joseph would have delighted in interpreting it. Well, as a modern day Joseph, I’m declaring that this cow was ugly and bony, more ugly and bony than any cow ever seen in the entire land of Egypt!
I dnf’d this at the 29% mark because I couldn’t take any more. It was trope’ish, written at the level of a 12-15 year old and was EVERYTHING that made me stop reading Forgotten Realms books in the first place. I have to admit, I was pretty disappointed. I had had hopes that this just might be enjoyable.
So I quit and began looking for some higher quality covers, as the ones on amazon were blown up to the 500xwhatever from old 165pix. Turns out, this book was written in the late 80’s and was either the first FR book, or one of the first. Which explains a lot.
In all fairness, this really isn’t worse than all the other FR books I’ve read in the past. Don’t let that 1star fool you into thinking it’s somehow worse than them. It is on the exact same level as all the others and that 1star represents my disappointment that it wasn’t a big fat juicy cow that exploded into steaks and then served themselves to me. Douglas Adams would have been disappointed too!
This does not look promising. Thank you for not reading it for me, so that I don’t have to not read it for myself. It’s time for forget the forgotten realms, even though I never remembered them in the first place.
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Glad to help out 😀
Sadly, I think you are correct that it is time to forget the forgotten realms. maybe 25 years ago they would have besotted me, but now? It’s like looking at a box of store brand macaroni and cheese
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Could you post a review of the box of Mac and cheese? For comparison purposes?
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Well, I did review Mac n Cheese for one of my survival saturday posts. It wouldn’t be fair to compare that though, as we made lots of mistakes.
But maybe I’ll do a food post sometime comparing various brands of boxed mac and cheese. Sure to be a winner with the discerning audience that follows me 🙂
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As part of that audience, I’d be keen to read more reviews of household products, and I’m sure everyone else would be just as keen.
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Well, if Fraggle can get reactions with a garlic press, I don’t see why I can’t go big with some lint or maybe a dust bunny or two.
Then I could write subliminal Product Placement posts and insert amazon referral codes and retire rich in just one week!
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As if money, rather than art, was important to you and I…
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Oh right, yes, of course. AAAAARRRRRRT.
I have just thought of a great idea. I’ll deal with the money side of things and let you deal with the art. That way you won’t get distracted from the important stuff and I’ll build character by sacrificing on the altar of AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRT.
Deal?
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Great, yes, I’ll need an initial down payment, consecutive notes, no dye packs, money in a suitcase ASAP! Cheers!
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I think you misread that. “I” will deal with the unpleasant money side of things. That way you don’t have to. See? Doesn’t that sound nice?
Just cosign this loan with Psychic Grandma and you’re all set 🙂
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No need for you to have to deal with money if you find it unpleasant. I will drain your bank account completely to spare you the trouble of having to deal with it.
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Now that is mighty thoughtful of you!
If only everyone’s online friends would be so thoughtful and considerate. The world needs more friends like you, Ol’10.
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That’s right, and your money problems are gone forever! Happy to oblige!
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I am definitely going to mention you in my Year in Review post. A shining example of friendship in a dark and covid world….
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Ah, no, sorry, I now own your house, blog, snowplough, you’ll have to pay me to write your blog and run copy past me in advance, ta.
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Phhhttt, (man, Fraggle is a terrible influence. I NEVER would have used that word a year ago), I’m going to live the dream and live on charity. YOUR charity to be precise.
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You can take that cheque to the bank, my friend!
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Sorry, here in America we pronounce it “check”. You can hear the difference 😉
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As the coins rattle as they fall into the tin, you can hear it clearly.
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Pfft! Don’t blame me!
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I totally DO blame you.
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I didn’t even know about Forgotten Realms and now I do I will forget them too. Forgetting things is one of my many superpowers.
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I suspect by the time these came around you were mature enough to not be in the target audience. Plus, really, you’re the wrong gender 😀
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Hmmm.
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If you weren’t such a prolific Nope’er, I’d say I had you stumped. But since you’re the master of the one word response…..
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Quite.
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Did you figure out how to get the high quality covers? I was a little confused about how you worded that . . . 🤠
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Yeah, reading over that, I can see why you were confused.
1) the old digital covers of the original books are only at some Forgotten Realm wiki and are like 165px by whatever.
2) Amazon takes those and blows them up to 500px by whatever, thus introducing massive pixilation.
3) the new digital covers are as lifeless as my can of coke zero vanilla orange.
Thus, I am forced to scour the internet and use such tools as TinEye reverse image search (that is a great chrome plugin by the way).
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Gotcha, I was just going to say that I found a tool to extract the Amazon high definition cover image, if you need that. 🤠
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I actually have a plugin in calibre for getting high-res covers, so I should be covered. Thanks.
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The only FR books I own and plan to read for review some time next year is 4 Ed Greenwood presents: Waterdeep novels. I liked them quite a bit when I did not even knew what FR was when I picked them up back in the day.
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hahahahaa. Better to not know and enjoy than be tainted like me 😀
I’ve got a couple of favorite “old time” FR books that I thought were awesome back in the day. I have a feeling I’ll probably never re-read them, just in case 🙂
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Test, comment, I am going on about it with the WordPress.com people in a more than interesting thread in the .com forums.
So, if you notice, there is a comment where my name link DOES in fact work, but I made that comment on my phone, but the two different working / non-working links both go to the same gravatar account.
I am making this comment through a whole ‘nother browser.
Thanks Mr. Bookstooge for letting me spam your thread with this non-sense. 😀
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No problem.
I swear, the block editor broke their common sense at WP….
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Some books – and series – don’t age well and this seems to suffer from this kind of problem: back then, what we now define as trope might have been shiny and new, so to speak, but now it might very well show how threadbare it’s become…
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It hasn’t been until the last couple of years that I’ve really thought about books aging with me. The good ones do…
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I won’t lie that whenever you cave in and check out a book that some other enthusiastic reviewer promotes only to find yourselves rating it so low, makes me laugh inside. 😛 I hope you continue to believe that there are reviewers out there who can actually succeed in making you pick up something that will genuinely impress you someday!!! 😀
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I will keep on trying. If only to keep myself from becoming a closed cage of insularity
I am finding that easier and easier to do and that’s not a direction I want…
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haha love the cow metaphor! Guess I won’t be rushing to dine on this series any time soon (I’ve had a lot of recs but always been uncertain of it).
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I’d be real leery of any Forgotten Realms books now.
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