[Tancred]

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Lord Killjoy:
The icewind dale trilogy is a great set of books but you won't get a feel of the realms from them. even less of a feel from the dark elf they are to confined. If you want to truly experience the realms in all there vastness read the following:

Avatar trilogy (actually 5 books) first 3 then 2 add-ons

Empires trilogy

then start knocking out the harpers books. what are there only 15 or so?

then these:
spellfire, azure bonds, cormyr, elminster

then the other 30 or 40 forty books!

I have about 30 forgotten realms books and love them all.

middle Earth is middle earth and that's it.
Forgotten Realms can't be definded in 3 books there are 50 or 60 books out now and you could write a 100 more on totally different subjects and locales and never hit the same place twice. an actuall large chunk of FR about the size of the US is set aside for just for the development by FASA (an independent writer of gaming material and magazines for D&D) tell me another setting that does that.

as you can see I vote for the Realms.<hr></blockquote>

Um... don't forget the Books of Unfinished Tales, the Silmarillion, the Hobbit and the dozen or so other books written about or around the concept of Middle-Earth. Like it or not, ME IS a world with a creation myth, a gradual evolving of culture, language, architectural styles, a scientifically-plausible geography and an incredible rescource of lore and history. It is a world you can study and study and become an authority on and actually learn something about our ancient world and linguistics and other things that actually apply to real life. FR, alas, isn't like that. It's far more abstract than ME, it's a hodgepodge of different ideas and thoughts, and seems a little... cheaper than Lord of the Rings. It feels too much like it was based on other things; the Drow are Moorcock's Melniboneans, the Halflings, Elves and Dwarves are Tolkien's races, then you have your stock-in-trade christian demons and oddly Greek mythology and your Arabic liches and your fairytale wizards and your steppe barbarians and your knights of valour and your Dungeons and Dragons class-based characters just everywhere. It doesn't feel 'real' enough - I can't imagine living in the Forgotten Realms, there are just too many gaps in the world. To put it succinctly, Middle-Earth was created; the Forgotten Realms were just made up.