I first thought that a standalone Forgotten Realms novel would be pretty hard to do since most of the individual storylines in this world are done in trilogies. However this one not only comes off with nicely fleshed out characters, it has a very decent plot attached to it as well. The story starts off a bit in the past in telling how this mercenary lost his friends and his arm due to a traitor in his group. Then it goes to the present and talks about the prejudice he recieved for being a one armed fighter and how he now he hangs out in dives, drinking to forget his past. Then Corin One-Hand meets this chick thief who's being pursued by a thief guild who hires him as her protector. Well one thing leads to another thanks to all the hidden agendas and power factions in the city and hijinks ensue. You get the typical happy ending but that's expected from a Forgotten Realms novel. One thing I like to mentioned is the battle with the beholder. Which wasn't much of a battle considering the Beholder just comes and kills everyone. I always though of beholders as pansy monsters. I mean I've played Dark Alliance and you can pretty much chop down the beholder in that game within a few seconds of sword swinging. But in the novel, the Beholder is ripping up the ground, tossing people around left and right, disintegrating people, turning them to stone, liquefying them. Some pretty intense action.
In conclusion I highly recommend this book to anyone that's a fan of typical D&D type stuff like Dragonlance or Forgotten Realms. Since it's a standalone novel you don't really need a background in the setting since they do explain alot to you with the exception of the Beholder which I'll explain now. A beholder is a big pinky brainy looking thing with one big eye in it and a million tiny eyes hanging on tendrils from the main body. Each of those eyes can do some type of ray that will kill most people instantly. The author has a good sense of pacing throughout the novel. It doesn't really seem to slow down at any moment and the plot lines do make sense with the reader being able to figure out some things by themselves before the story reveals it to them instead of having the story just randomly pull something out of it's butt.
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