Realms of Valor

A collection of 11 short stories centered around the theme of “valor”. Surprisingly, while I expected the majority of the stories to be borderline interesting, this one actually have more than half of them being very well-written. The high point is of course “Dark Mirror” by R. A. Salvatore, dealing with morality. Other really good ones include “The Curse of Tegea” by Troy Denning (dealing with two clerics of Mystra, one of them being Adon, in a cursed village), “One Last Drink” by Christie Golden (a wonderful tale about Jander Sunstar and vampirism), and “The Bargain” by Elaine Cunningham (tells of Arilyn Moonblade and Danilo Thann and their adventure in Tethyr). “Lord of Lowhill” by Douglas Niles, “Patronage” by David Cook, and “The Family Business” by James Lowder were good enough. The remaining 4 were borderline ok, with the worst 2 being “A Virtue By Reflection” by Scott Ciencin (poorly written and poorly explained murder mystery) and “Elminster at the Magefair” by Ed Greenwood (even though it featured Elmister and Storm Silverhand, it was kind of boring and lacked an actual story, much less “valor”). But overall, this collection is worth it for the good ones alone.