Forgotten Realms: The Harpers

     The Harpers was one of my favorite book series of all time. Its no secret: Im a AD&D junkie from way back. An ultra nerd if you will. I played every campagin you can think of, and no setting was off limits. The Forgotten Realms paved the way for my imagination and addiction to High Fantasy. It was not until just this year I got all 16 of The Harpers in one place, including the very well known Finders Trilogy. (or Finders Quartet!)
    

 

    So basically every well known Forgotten Realms author got a crack at writing a Harpers novel, the opoular ones were reprinted, and the later ones were reprinted as stand alone novels. (12-16) The copies I have from 12-16 are the reprinted ones. The list of the books are located here. Hard to find all these books in one place, for sale or otherwise. Now to the good bits.

 

    

     Some of the better books in the Forgotten Realms universe are some of the firsts. The Azure Bonds trilogy written by Kate Novak and Jeff Grub, employees of TSR and co-creators of the universe itself, was arguably the better of most fantasy books written at the time. Several popular video games were made about this series in the 80's and early 90's. The fourth book in the series, The Masquerades was written many years later when the original authors had 'a crack' at writing a Harpers novel. It's what the fans wanted, and was the perfect ending to a perfect series within-a-series.

Screen shot of the computer game, with Alias' tattoo. I did not take this picture obviously.

 

The Tattoo as depicted in the book. 

 

 I love maps, so took a few pictures of the maps on the first page.