Evermeet: Island of Elves

Evermeet: Island of Elves is an ambitious novel and an entertaining one. In it, Elaine Cunningham relates stories that take place during thousands of years of Elvish history. The novel contains much that is entertaining, exciting, engaging, and intriguing. Readers are witness to everything from the early strivings of the Elvish gods to the millennia-later decline of the realm of Evermeet. There are many fabulous stories in this book; there are fierce and bloody battles with many fell monsters, there are delicate scenes of moonlit beauty with unicorns and palaces, there is much magic, and there is much more as well. Evermeet is an ambitious book and it is executed well. It is mostly entertaining through its almost 500-page length. This reader only felt a bit bogged down during some of the tales of Elvish politics and court intrigue. Elvish names, for the most part, are long and complicated and it was not always easy to sort out who was allied with whom, and it was not always easy to keep track of family lineages. Otherwise, this long novel contains a wide range of stories, presented as a history being compiled by a scholar, that were thrilling, magical, and fun. Even though Evermeet is a Dungeons and Dragons novel that takes place in the Forgotten Realms setting, it also stands outside of this gaming connection as a thrilling and well-crafted novel of high fantasy.