Elminster in Hell

Forgotten Realms: Elminster, Book 4

By: Ed Greenwood

Narrated by: John Pruden

Length: 12 hrs and 59 mins

Publisher's summary

Hell hath such fury...

On the world of his birth he's all but a god, but when an ancient evil banishes him to the depths of the Nine Hells, he's just another lost soul. Elminster, Sage of Shadowdale, Chosen of Mystra, faces his most desperate struggle - to survive, to escape, to cling to his very sanity - and all the forces of the inferno are rallied against him.

©2002 Wizards of the Coast LLC (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

Wasted Potential

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

The story was simple... Elminster is trapped in Hell with a demon ravaging his mind for magic and memories. But, the implementation was awful (maybe because it was audio and you could not see page breaks/paragraph breaks). The first 7 to 10 chapters are rubbish. The demon sifting through El's memories about stories many of us have not heard of... with characters we do not know. I've read just under 40 FR books and this was truly hard to follow.

Only a few chapters progressed the story. It was nice to see how it ended and makes me want to read other books based on some of the characters but damn. This was not good.

Has Elminster in Hell turned you off from other books in this genre?

I will continue to read other FR books but I'm starting to see the trend with Ed Greenwood that so many people have talked about. His style of writing can be tough to take.

Which scene was your favorite?

Last few chapters tied things together. Knowing the characters who are trying to save Elminster and seeing who finally goes down there was pretty cool.

What character would you cut from Elminster in Hell?

Literally, only a few characters you could say are "main characters." So, I would not cut any of them from the book. All the rest are fillers in stories that lead no where.

Any additional comments?

I'm blitzing the 5 books in this series. This book was the worst by far. Be warned... this is not a book about Elminster slaying and a tight story. He's mostly a vegetable hanging on for dear life the entire time.

Way too much of the book was the devil telling Elminster how unhappy he was because El was not giving him memories with magic. Every chapter was El sharing a forgettable story (on purpose) and then the devil saying "quit messing with me stupid human. I'm getting mad." As readers we get the idea after chapter 2... not chapter 22.

horrible storyline

I love all of the Drizzt, Brimstone angels, Sembia, Sundering series and also the previous books in the Elminster series. The storyline was absoluley horrid. It is about Elminster geting caught in hell and a devil trying to extract a spell from Elminsters memories. Elminster trys to distract the devil by projecting useless memories from his past so he doesn't give the spell . Every 5 minutes the devil exlaims stop wasting my time with useless memories! I felt like I was wasting my time listening to small boring incohesive irrelevant snippets of Elminsters memories. Every memoire has a different set of charachters so its like listening to 50 short stories that are bland and dont really connect. Perhaps the stories will make sense in future books, but this was a horrid listen. The reader is great as always, but due the content of this book I have to give it 1 star.

Disappointing offering from a great author

I love Greenwood, but this was painful almost from beginning to end. He abandons his usual flowing style for a weird, broken framing device based on gruesomely detailed physical and mental torture.

The vignettes that are framed are often intriguing, but are all too short, and it's back to the torture, literal and figurative. I was not a huge fan of The Temptation of Elminster, either, but at least it was a single, if broken, narrative, and came to an unexpectedly tight conclusion. I could enjoy the style if not always the content. This book has none of those saving graces.

Sorry, Ed. I wanted to love it, I really did.

Amazing As Always

I loved this book, the build up, the lore, the ending, magnifique! I'm a huge Elminster fan and this book had me reeling and captivated! Simply epic!

Transexual Mary Sue

The Elminster books are the worst books I have listened to in a long time. Elminster is the Transexual Mary Sue. He constantly bubbles into trouble way over his head only to be saved by his goddess over and over throughout the books as he swaps between male and female. The story also jumps all over the place without letting the reader know the scene or time.

Terrible

Worst book I’ve ever read. Much too disjointed and painful to follow. The use of memories mixed with current time is just too difficult to manage. Especially on audio book format.

It was an ok story

My least favorite of the elminster series so far. I was still pretty a good listen

Awesome

I believe Elminster is as great as Drizzit. But it is time to get back to Drizzit. But I will be back soon.

Nergal is my boy.

Story was hard to follow at first but I quickly caught on to what was happening. very similar to how the Witcher books started so wasn't hard to figure out what was going on after that.

Nergal was probably my favorite part of the book by far😂 his banter with El is priceless as you see him actually start liking el and enjoying els stories little by little. the narrator played his part fairly well.

Bad time traveling story

Jumped all over the place and hard to follow timeline. Good ending was the only saving grace.