Pool of Radiance by Jane Cooper Hong and Jim Ward

Forgotten Realms
Pool of Radiance
by Jane Cooper Hong and Jim Ward
1989, TSR

A novelization of the 1988 video game, and the most D&D feeling D&D novel I've read yet. Our party meets in a tavern (a spellcaster/warrior, cleric of Tyr, and ranger/thief) and are blackmailed into a series of missions by a crooked councilman to clear out the uncivilized parts of the city.

Our party faces orcs, the undead, and a possessed dragon. In a highlight for me, they clear out a gnoll temple, a human temple defiled like Leatherface redecorated. This is probably the goriest and most violent D&D novel I've read - severed body parts, spurting blood, fat sizzling from lightning spells - which was especially incongruent as the audiobook was read like a children's story.

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Forgotten Realms: Crypt of the Shadowking by Mark Anthony

Forgotten Realms
Crypt of the Shadowking
by Mark Anthony
1993, TSR

A former Harper, a kind of benevolent bard secret society, Caledan Caldorien is brought back into action to stop an evil takeover of a city. Little action and lines so cliché I wondered if this was supposed to be postmodern. To be fair almost none of the story managed to lodge itself in my memory - the only thing I remember from the story is it involved people who can control shadows. There is a monster - a shadevar - which is barely described. I looked it up online, assuming that it wasn't fleshed out because it would already be familiar to D&D players, but they originated with this book.

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