Title: Twilight Falling
(Erevis Cale Trilogy – Book 1)
Author: Paul S. Kemp
Genre: Dark Fantasy (Forgotten Realms)
Pages: 310
Rating: 3 of 5

This is pretty good for a Forgotten Realms novel. That isn’t high praise, but it was entertaining enough that I’ll be reading the next book in the trilogy rather than abandoning it as the bland, derivative trash with overpowered magic and amateurish plotting that is the majority of FR books I have tried to read.

This trilogy plunges us into the shady underworld of the Forgotten Realms with assassin/priest-turned-butler (though that doesn’t last long) Erevis Cale as our protagonist. Once we clean up some loose ends from a previous book, Erevis and some associates get sucked into a quest that is mostly about vengeance but has a mysterious artifact, some shadowy gods, etc. mixed up in it as well.

The book seems to be primarily a way of assembling the adventuring party and giving them a main objective for the rest of the trilogy. Cale is an interesting character as he serves a shadowy god and has a dark/violent past but generally tries to do what is right…a path that I suspect will become increasingly difficult given events at the end of this book. He doesn’t seem to be a direct ripoff of a well-known character created by J. R. R. Tolkien, Robert E. Howard, or Michael Moorcock, so I appreciate him and am curious to see what happens to him.

There was still some of the usual FR nonsense that could be fixed by a decent editor (quite a few typos, a character taking something in his hands just moments after losing a hand, characters staring into each other’s eyes in magical darkness that we have just been told only one of them can see through, etc.). However, it was decent escapist dark fantasy that I look forward to continuing…thanks to Bookstooge for the recommendation!