Azriel’s Infinite Book Shelf-Condemnation : The War of the Spider Queen Book III

My incredible journey in the Forgotten Realms continue with the third installment of the series War of the Spider Queen, Condemnation.

The search for Lolth continues as the unlikely party that survived the obliteration of Ched Nasad embark on an even more treacherous journey.

The rag tag group comprised by Quenthel Baenre, Pharaun Mizzrym, Jeggred Baenre, Halisstra Melarn, Danifae Yauntyrr, Ryld Argith, and Valas Hune escape thru a portal and find themselves of the surface world, on the ruins of the city Hlaungadath, once a thriving floating city, now the desert is slowly swallowing it.

Destiny’s path brought them there to a priest, Tzirik, acolyte of Vhaerun, the mischievous god of the males Drow. In their desperation to find why the Silence of Lolth still prevails they seek answers in the most treacherous of places.

With the help of a stolen artifact, Tzirik , transport them to the astral plane in which the Spider Queen dwells, the Demonweb Pits. To their surprise the rogue priest has other plans, the destruction of Lolth and the rise of Vhaerun in her stead.

With the odds against them,they barely escape with their lives thanks to the heroics of the body guard Jeggred in the material realm, in which he destroys the physical body of the rogue priest, pulling them abruptly from the astral plane with even more questions about the faith of Lolth.

As the party fights for their very existence a conspiracy brews in Menzoberranzan. The assassin Nimor Imphraezl, part of the brotherhood of Jaezred Chaulssin, comprised by Drow males that are part Shadow Dragons, is plotting to overthrow the ruling matriarch rule of the City of Spiders.

The all out melee descents on Menzoberranzan, as Nimor makes an alliance with the gray dwarf King Horgar Steelshadow and the Half-Demon Kaanyr Vhok. A horde of duergar (gray dwarfs) and tanarukks (orcs tainted by the dark powers) descent on the battle of the Pillars of Woe, an enormous cave just south of the City of Spiders.

Almost one third of the Menzoberranzan army is destroyed, luckily, a small contingent of warriors from House Baenre come to their rescue and cover their retreat. Now, with a decimated army, the faith of the City of Spiders hangs on a treat, as they prepare for the siege and their goddess still remains silent

In this book the nature of the treacherous Drow comes in full swing, the alliances and betrayal shift almost at every turn of the page. You can feel the desperation of the priestess in face of the Silence of Lolth, what was regarded as a problem on the city of Menzoberranzan has now shifted into a cosmic catastrophe, were other deities are taking advantage to move up on the pecking order

My favorite part was the exploration of the Astral Plane, is refreshing to read a more detailed description of the realm from where one of the coolest characters from the whole Realms comes, the mysterious black panther Guenhwyvar, loyal companion of the greatest hero of all time, Drizzt Do’Urden

I’m dying to jump back into the next chapter of this enthralling series, Extinction, let’s hope the title is not a self fulfilling prophecy.

On the cover by artist Brom appears master assassin Nimor Imphraezl

Condemnation : War of the Spider Queen Book III

Author: Richard Baker

No. Of pages: 459

Date of Publishing : May, 2003

29 July, 2026 0

Azriel’s Infinite Book Shelf-Insurrection: The War of the Spider Queen Book II

To continue the journey thru the incredible world of The Forgotten Realms, I read the second installment of the series The War of the Spider Queen, Insurrection .

Picking up where the first book left off, the Drow city of Menzoberranzan stands on the brink of disaster , with the ability of the priestess to summon magic from Lolth gone, the very foundation of the matriarch is crumbling. Now what was a shadow war has erupted into open conflict.

In a desperate effort, Matron Mother Baenre, the supreme ruler of Menzoberranzan, gives the dangerous task of investigating if the silence of the goddess is only manifesting in their city to her daughter, Quenthel. This journey with takes her thru the treacherous tunnels of the Underdark to the trade city of Ched Nasad, the city of the Shimmering Webs.

Joining her to this seemingly impossible task are a couple of familiar faces from the previous book, the arrogant sorcerer Pharaun Mizzrym and the weapon master Ryle Argith.

To round this ragtag party down Jeggred Baenre, a draegloth (half-Demon/half-Drow) that serves as bodyguard to Quenthel, and the scout mercenary Valas Hune, expert tracker and knows every nook and cranny of the Underdark, embark as the small party to try to unravel the mystery of Lolth silence.

The perilous journey is tenfold due to the lack of assistance from the spider queen’s magic, this disadvantage is exploited from the very creatures of the Underdark and the other Drow factions roaming around the dark tunnels.

The most interesting part is the reaction of the society of the Drow, in the wake of such a catastrophic disaster of the integral part of their way of life is removed, all the backstabbing, power grabbing, conspiracies and manipulation become enhance is the face of a shattering paradigm.

The characters become conflicted in whether to continue with the mission, abandon the party, or seize the opportunity to take power into their own hands.

Their arrival to the Shimmering Webs city only make things worse, a full scale crumbling, literally and figuratively speaking, of the magic that hold all the society together, has collapsed and threatens the Drow world to be casted into oblivion

As with the last book, my favorite part is to dwell more into the mysterious Underdark, particularly seeing a city as Ched Nasad, founded by Menzoberranzan exiles with petrified cobwebs of two giant spiders sent by Lolth, and enhanced with faerie fire that gives it a purple and amber hue.

This volume only makes you want more insight into the mysterious Underdark, fortunately there’s still four more books to go.

On the cover by artist Brom are Quenthel Baenre, high priestess of Lolth, and Jeggred Baenre, draegloth body guard of the priestess

Insurrection: War of the Spider Queen Book II

Author: Thomas M. Reid

No. of pages: 409

Publishing Date: December 2002

11 July, 2026 0

Azriel’s Infinite Book Shelf-Dissolution: The War of the Spider Queen Book I

Welcome to first installment of the new era of my Infinite Book Shelf , and I return to it with a universe very dear to my heart, The Forgotten Realms.

This vast and complex world was created by Ed Greenwood, he use it as a backdrop for his adventures since he was only 8 years old, but the first story was published on the magazine The Dragon in 1982 titled the Assassin’s Run.

My first encounter with this mesmerizing world was thru the now classic tales of the Drow Elf Drizzt Do’Urden, brilliantly crafted by the great R.A. Salvatore, from the 39 books of the Legend of Drizzt, I have gone thru 35, and I intent to catch up with what is my favorite series of all time in this trek thru The Forgotten Realms.

To start off the amazing journey, I picked a six book series, The War of the Spider Queen, that R.A Salvatore lead as a creative overseer but leaving the writing to six different authors to play in the Underdark .

We start the series with Dissolution, we journey back to the incredible city of Menzoberranzan, the black heart of the Drow Society, to find that catastrophe has struck, Lolth, the spider queen, has stop answering the calls of her priestesses, and with that, all the magic has been cut off.

The matriarchs of the major houses try to keep Lolth’s silence secret and pin the fault of the scorn of their beloved Queen on some dissident Drow males that escape the city and the hunt begins to bring them back and put things right.

Much of the story is followed thru the eyes of three characters Pharaun Mizzrym, a master wizard, Ryld Argith, a master from the legendary Melee Maghere school of combat, and Quentel Baenre, the main mistress of the Arach-Tinilith, the school of sorcery for the acolytes of Lolth, tasked with unveiling the mystery of the Spider Queen silence

As you will expect with a story involving the backdrop of the Drow Society, the intricacies of their political and treacherous nature are on the main stage of the story, but with the treat of a total collapse of their way of life becomes more evident, this plethora of highly different characters converge to find answers, leaving behind their conniving secret plans and uniting to save their very existence.

My favorite part of the journey was to dive even deeper into the magical and treacherous city of Mezonberranzan, with its stalactite architecture and ever glowing castles, knowing that just beyond this purple glowing of the ethereal spires lie the treat of the Underdark creatures ready to swallow everything into the oblivion of the ever dark.

This series is a great gateway to enter the vast universe of The Forgotten Realms, with more that 300 books published to date, and follow one of the most complex and intriguing characters that modern fantasy has to offer.

On the cover by artist Brom is the master wizard Pharaun Mizzrym

Dissolution: The War of the Spider Queen Book I

Author :Richard Lee Byers

No. of Pages: 457

Publishing Date: July 2002

7 July, 2026 0

The beginning of the Nineteenth Year, and a few more unsettled business

It’s been quite a while since my last post, 135 days to be precise.

A lot has happened in that time , and I do mean a lot. But I’ll start at the beginning.

Year number 18 of my journey finished with two outstanding things, me turning 45 years old, leaving only 5 years to reach the coveted goal of 1,000,000 pages, and the year becoming my best one of reading.

I finished with a whopping 70, 570 total pages, that’s 4,385 more than my best year, which was number 15, consisting from June 2022 to June 2023. This number should be the consistency for the upcoming years, this is if I want to hit my goal on June 2031

To close out the eighteen year of reading and to celebrate my 45th birthday , I was treated by my partner in crime to an incredible road trip to some of my favorite places.

The journey started at the eerily beautiful White Sands National Park, which I have written about in another post. To be completely honest, although I have been several times, it never ceases to amaze.

Coincidentally, this visit marked the first National Park of our new bucket list, the idea is to visit all of the 63 National Park established in the USA, this challenge comes with a guide book to stamp and a water bottle to put sticker on after each visit, but more on that on later posts.

The second destination was the quiet mountain village of Cloudcroft, New Mexico, it’s incredible how one minute you are surrounded by the shifting sands of a white desert and the next, you are walking among some ancient ponderosa pines.

It was a nice change of pace, with really good weather, incredible hiking trails, and some local brews to cap off the celebration. Unfortunately there’s was no Bigfoot sightings, but maybe next time.

The last stop on the road trip, and the second National Park checked off our bucket list, was Carlsbad Caverns National Park, an imposing system of ancient formations 229 meters beneath the desert floor.

According to the studies, it’s believed that the cavern system was formed around 260 million years ago during the Permian era. But the actual state of the system was created due to tectonic movement around 6 million years ago. It’s humbling being surrounded by this majestic formations and know that nature carved one drop at a time.

In all, it was an incredible experience, sometimes you need to disconnect in order to reconnect.

With this fresh start to the year of reading a plan brewed. First, and more importantly to reach the year’s goal, which according to the new calculations would place it at 70,204 pages. Second, return to my second favorite fantasy world, The Forgotten Realms. Here is where the legendary Drizzt Do’Urden roams.

In addition to catch up with the adventures of the Drow Ranger, currently on book 35 of 38, I will also explore the vast range of stories that this magnificent realm has to offer.

To start me off, I’ll go back to the legendary Drow city of Menzoberranzan for the six book series The War of the Spider Queen, where the goddess Lolth goes silent and threatens the very existence of the Drow Society.

I already finished the first book, Dissolution, and the second volume, Insurrection, is about 80% done. Both amazing dynamic stories full of deceit and the nefarious plots, all that you could expect from the infamous dwellers of the Underdark

In the upcoming days, I’ll dive deeper into my journey in these amazing books and post some of my impressions of the start of my adventures in the Forgotten Realms

Thanks to this inspiring start of the year, I’m excited to inform that the total for this first almost month of the nineteenth year of my project is 3,948 pages. And although the projections place the need of pages around 70,000, the true aim is to make this year the first with a total of 100,000 pages. Not the first time I have attempted it, but this time the vibe feels different, and that is something that needs to be pursued and hopefully, conquered.

In the broader scope, and with only 1,801 days left until my 50th birthday, the need to put the pedal to the metal has become more evident. The total for the overall project is 652,928 pages. That means that 347,072 pages stand between me and my ultimate goal, quite the gargantuan task, but as always, the plan is to face it head on.

The plan is simple, focus on one step at a time, and set milestones to keep me focused and motivated. Currently the next big step is to reach 700,000 pages, with a good amount of discipline that goal could be reached by October 10 of 2027.

The next milestone will be 750,000 pages, that goal is currently projected for February 17 of 2029, but what makes this particularly important is that holds a very special prize at the end, a road trip of around 2,000 kilometers, 4 national parks visited, and it’s the prelude to the final act.

The 1,000,000 pages milestone, or the whole enchilada, is currently projected for December 2 of 2035. I’m still off by 4 years 5 months and 27 days of the deadline, but much to my delight, this margin keeps getting smaller each and every day.

As you can read, there’s a lot to unpack and this hiatus days have not been in vain, the wheel keeps spinning toward my ultimate goal. And hopefully, as the posts keep on rolling, you can accompany me to the end of this journey, and in less than 5 years, we will be cheering and toasting for the end of this chapter and the beginning of the next phase of my love for the written word.

For now, I’m off to read

Will be needing a lot of that for the foreseeable future

Azriel D

2 July, 2026 0

The Forgotten Realms stories keep on rolling in

I have just finished the four volumes of Forgotten Realms Classics, they quite the treat, some old school , simple art with some adaptation of how the actions work in the table-top game, they call the name of the spells in runes, and you can see the translation in the footer.

Now I’m moving on to some more recent series, yesterday I read Shadow of the Vampire, that much to my surprise, has integrated some of the horror modules from the seminal campaigns of Ravenloft.

Right now I’m working on the next chapter, The Frost Giant’s Fury, and browsing thru what’s available in my Kindle Unlimited membership, I found two other volumes, they’re not directly follows my current read, that would be Evil at Baldur’s Gate and A Darkened Wish.

But I see no problem in reading first Infernal Tides and At the Spine of the World, and then going back to the previous volumes.

In between these amazing graphic novels, I’ll tackle the fourth book of the cataclysmic event known as The Sundering , with Richard Lee Byers’ The Reaver, we follow Anton Marivaldi’s incursions with some unsavory characters, that could have world-changing consequences.

The main for the weekend is to overtake my worst year of reading, I need only 1,602 in the next 13 day. It has become quite the superstitious tradition that if by the first 50 days of reading, if I haven’t reach said milestone, the itch starts to get a hold off me.

With that in mind, Off to read.

azr

15 July, 2022 0

More adventures in the Forgotten Realms

Going thru my digital reading logs, I came to realize, and to be quite serendipitous, that I didn’t finishing reading the line-wide Forgotten Realms event of cataclysmic proportion, in this case, I do mean literally.

I’m talking about the six-part series if The Sundering, following the events after the destruction of the Tablets of Faith, where Chaos ensues, and reality itself becomes unstable.

Each novel is a stand-alone story, but do contain some Easter Eggs making reference to the other stories. This keep roaming in my mind, because it is mentioned quite a lot during the events off my current book, Hero, being Drizzt one of the heroes in those unsettling days.

I will finish reading this book, and I’ll jump into the three volumes left, The Reaver, The Sentinel, and The Herald, just by seeing the authors in charge of each one it’s a guarantee that this will end with a bang.

Off to read.

azr.

10 July, 2022 0

Into strange lands

As another adventure starts alongside the heroic Drow Drizzt Do’Urden, with the thirty third book of this amazing saga, Hero, the last book of the Homecoming trilogy, I feel the urge to find some graphic novels to complement the already amazing journey.

Luckily, I found four volumes on my digital library of the classic series of the Forgotten Realms, penned by the legendary Jeff Grub.

Let’s see how the weekend plays out, while a trek alongside this unlikely heroes thru the treacherous lands of the Forgotten Realms, maybe there’s some hoard of gold to be found, or better yet, some pages for my bounty.

Off to read.

azr.

8 July, 2022 0

(Y-12) Quarantined Days, Update 15

It has been a week since my last update, I promise to write more often, but it was a week to run errands and stockpile our pantry, and it was crazy busy.

So I’ll just jump right into it.

I have 4,101 pages to reach 40,000, and 29 days to do so, that’s 141 pages per day, I like those odds.

This past week I have read some amazing things.

I continued with Brian Wood’s Vertigo comics series Northlanders, and currently reading the fourth volume, The Plague Widow, and still have another 2 volumes left available on my Kindle Unlimited subscription.

Also, I finished another story arc of Batman written by the amazing Tom King, The Tyrant Wing, What is Bane up to?

But the highlight of the week was the tenth volume of my favorite comic book, Hellboy, which includes a story with the legendary art of Richard Corben, The Crooked Man, exploring some American folklore for the first time in the series.

Today I plan to read the seventh volume of the current run of Detective Comics, Batmen Eternal, written by James Tynion IV, which has become really quickly one of my favorite authors writing on the DC universe.

On the book front, I expect to finish soon with The Adversary, currently on page 436, an start with the next chapter of The Malazan Book of the Fallen, The Bonehunters.

Now concerning my numbers for this year.

I have a total of 35, 339 pages of 41,665 that was my proposed goal for the year, and with 103 days left, I am more that confident that I’ll hit that mark, and according to my projections, and if my current pace holds up, I will finish with around 49,719 pages, more that 2,000 pages more than my best year.

I also made some progress with my date to reach 1,000,000 pages, right now my projected date is December 15 of 2045, which is 5,307 days more than my original plan, but it came down from 5,321 days that I calculated about ten days ago.

That would mean that I would be 64 years 6 months, and 10 days old when I reach my goal, it stills needs work but I have gained ground steadily over the last few months.

With that in mind, I am off to read, because I am not getting any younger.

azr.

2 July, 2020 0

(Y-12) Quarantined Days, Update 14

It has been a week since my last update, I am doing quite fine, but you know sometimes life gets in the way, fortunately, this is not the case with my reading.

I still have 5,125 pages to reach 40,000 pages, and 36 days to do so.

In the book front, I decided to scrap the idea to complete the 49 books in my reading list for the year, I prefer to focus on enjoying the book instead of reaching a goal.

Right now I am on page 256 of 507 of The Adversary, and loving the main character Farideh, the Tiefling Warlock.

On the comic book/graphic novel/manga front, I started the Vertigo comics series Northlanders, written by Brian Wood, and centering on life as a Viking near the year 1000 A.D.

I have finished the first volume, and still have 5 more volumes available in my Kindle Unlimited subscription.

Also. I started reading the first volume of the classic manga Berserk in all its bloody glory, I don’t read that much Manga, but alongside The Lone Wolf this title is one that has been buzzing around my head for quite a while.

For now, I am off to read.

azr.

25 June, 2020 0

(Y-12) Quarantined Days, Update 13

A solid day of reading, my total was 157 pages, and I am 5,911 away from reaching 40,000 pages, this, with 43 days left to do it.

On the book front, I read 45 pages of the third volume of the Forgotten Realms series The Sundering, written by Erin M. Evans, which is a breath of fresh air to read a fantasy book with a female character as the lead, the menacing Farideh, a Tiefling warlock fighting demonic forces who are eager to take advantage of her powerful heritage.

I’ll try to finish it by the weekend, which I don’t doubt I can achieve.

On the graphic novel/comic books front, I started reading the fourth volume of Scott Snyder’s run on the Justice League, The Sixth Dimension, I must confess that I was reluctant to dive into this series, but as always Mr. Snyder delivers and taking on DC Comics Multiverse is no easy task.