REALMS OF VALOR. James Lowder, ed. TSR 1-56076-557-7 $4.95

REALMS OF VALOR

James Lowder, ed. TSR 1-56076-557-7 $4. 95

Shared worlds have come a long way since the concept first achieved prominence under the Thieves’ World label back in 1979, branching out from close-knit collections of short sword-and-sorcery adventures into complex “mosaic novels” of superheroics, books full of exotic science fictional world-building, and series in which well-known authors open their own worlds to tales by newer writers. Now the concept comes almost full circle, as this latest FORGOTTEN REALMS® book breathes life back into short sword-and-sorcery fiction.

That’s admirable in and of itself. Apart from DRAGON® Magazine and Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword & Sorceress anthologies (plus her quarterly magazine), there are few reliable sources for short stories in the fantasy-adventure category. But editor James Lowder has done more than simply filling a niche in the fantasy market; Realms of Valor is a collection as entertaining as it is significant.

Strictly speaking, the anthology should be classed as a “shared setting” book rather than a shared-world volume, as there’s little if any interplay between each contributor’s lead characters-we have yet, for instance, to see Ed Greenwood’s Elminster encounter R. A. Salvatore’s Drizzt Do’Urden. We do, however, see both characters individually: Elminster in a half-comic, half-deadly yarn that nicely solves the problem of writing adventures for a nearly invincible wizard, and Drizzt in a first-person tale that finds the dark elf almost but not quite too heavy-handed as a lecturer in ethics.

The liveliest adventure in the collection comes from Elaine Cunningham, who brings back her Harper agents from Elf-shadow in an engaging intrigue where avoiding assassination is as much a matter of superior bargaining skill as superior swordcraft. Scott Ciencin’s “A Virtue by Reflection” features Myrmeen Lhal, ruler of Arabel, in a murder mystery that combines crafty plotting with unexpectedly thoughtful characterization. And Christie

Golden’s reluctant elven vampire, Jander Sunstar, returns in “One Last Drink, ” where Golden delves into her character’s background while retaining a distinctive view of vampiric unlife. Other notable contributions include stories from Douglas Niles, Mark Anthony, and Troy Denning.

A further highlight of the book is Jeff Grubb’s closing essay on the origins and development of the FORGOTTEN REALMS setting. While it’s a little too quick to define writers as gods, it’s a pleasant glimpse behind the scenes of one of fantasy gaming’s most successful universes.

Indeed, Realms of Valor is good enough that it deserves to become more than one of a kind. At the least, its creators should consider producing another collection— and an annual volume of short sword-and-sorcery tales of this caliber, in the Realms or outside them, would be a feather worth chasing to pin on TSR’s literary cap.

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