City of the Dead

Forgotten Realms: Ed Greenwood Presents Waterdeep, Book 4

By: Rosemary Jones

Narrated by: James Patrick Cronin

Length: 9 hrs and 51 mins

Publisher's summary

A haunting adventure hand-picked by Ed Greenwood...

Something is causing trouble in the City of the Dead, and Sophraea Carver, born and bred next to the historic graveyard, is determined to solve the mystery before it places all of Waterdeep in peril.

Set in the classic City of Splendors and presented by Forgotten Realms® campaign setting creator and celebrated author Ed Greenwood, you don't want to miss out on this exciting glimpse into what the latest edition of the Realms has to offer.

©2009 Wizards of the Coast LLC (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

best of the series

So far, the best of the whole series. great voice acting and engaging characters. Kept me wanting more.

Best WaterDeep story I have read

Waterdeep, the City of Splendors, is a remarkable place. The fact that ordinary people live on top of an underground dungeon in a city so magical is just incredible. This book is thoroughly enjoyable to read and helps explain how the citizens of Waterdeep live in a city they love so much.

It is incredible.

Took some getting used to, but I was spellbound

So in preparation of the new DDAL Waterdeep mods and trying to fill in some backstory for my Season 8 Character I listened to City of the Dead on audible. By the end of the book I could really relate to several of the characters, especially the main character. Sometimes I also undervalue myself and I think this is something a lot of people can identify with.

Cosy view into a commoner's life in a weird place.

"City of the Dead" is a cute, small story of the type where despite the threat of the narrative being hypothetically catastrophic, at the end of the story, no one but the protagonists barely even noticed anything having happened at all. Everything is resolved, and almost everything goes back to normal.

These sorts of stories can feel somewhat pointless, but they allow their main focus being on other things than the narrative itself. In the case of "City of the Dead" the focus is instead on an in-depth exploration of a particular section of the city of Waterdeep and on an exploration of what it is like to live in a city as fantastical as Waterdeep is for the commoners.
Unlike so many other Realms-books, the protagonist of this book is a true commoner. Other books give the reader protagonists who are somewhat normal, but typically still practice magic or similarly more character-defining pursuits.
In "City of the Dead" however, the protagonist is just a normal girl from a somewhat-respected worker family. She has no special skills, and her most fantastical dreams are initially nothing more than becoming a seamstress.

This setup of the story allows for the book to simply focus on how the protagonist views her world, and how, to her, the fantastical nature of her home-city is nothing but natural and obvious.

For a casual listener/reader, this might not mean much, and indeed, the result is a narrative that feels like it drags on a little longer than it really needs to. But for someone already intimately familiar with the setting of Waterdeep, this book offers a truly intriguing character-study into the minds of the citizens of the city.




TL;DR - This book is truly simple and charming, and doesn't really offer anything else unless a listener is very familiar with the setting. That however, could be plenty for some.