The Magehound (Forgotten Realms: Counselors and Kings, Book 1)

Reader Reviews
Given the task of writing about a relatively unexplored region of the popular Forgotten Realms setting and letting go of the characters which made her such a popular author, Elaine Cunningham has gone back to what made her original books such critical successes--an intriguing plot, interesting characters, and a knack for revealing just enough to keep her readers hungering for more. This novel takes place in magic-rich Halruaa, where wizards rule as kings and their counselors, the jordaini, are their sworn servants, valuable for their peerless training and resistance to magic. This is a great start to her new trilogy, Kings and Counselors (borrowing a line from the Bible, Job 3:14) and promises to be as defining of Halruaa as her prior work was on elves and as her colleague, Salvatore's, work was on the drow. The development of the Halruaan society meshed flawlessly with the plot, with few passages of sheer (and oftentimes boring) description. Rather, instead of telling her readers, Cunningham shows her readers what she needs them to know about the setting. Magic is plentiful, and almost mundane to the characters, but never to the readers, a trap that many Realms authors seem to fall into when describing the fantastic. The ending seemed a little rushed, perhaps due to space constraints, but that is more a fault, I think, of the limited number of pages that TSR dedicates to every novel, and not a fault of Cunningham's otherwise superb storytelling.