Fantasy Novels starring Clerics

[Rajah]

I am looking to buy some books that feature the classic D&D style cleric, armor, big warhammer, divine magic. I am familiar with the Cleric Quintet by Salvatore, but Cadderly is not that kind of cleric.

Any good suggestions for the warpriest, holy warrior type cleric? Thanks!

[thorgrim29]

Closest thing I can think of is the Elenium/Tamuli by David Eddings. The main characters are knights that use divine magic (interestingly not from the god they're actually supposed to worship) but I don't think it's quite what you're looking for.

[Rajah]

That sounds more on the Paladin track but still cool. There are no other D&D books that star clerics as main characters except the Cadderly books? My internet searching is failing me on this.

[Knaight]

That sounds more on the Paladin track but still cool. There are no other D&D books that star clerics as main characters except the Cadderly books? My internet searching is failing me on this.

There's not all that many D&D books in general, at least not official ones. On the other hand, it's not like D&D books tend to be better than fanfiction as a whole anyways, so there's always that option.

[nyjastul69]

The first 2 Dragonlance trilogies feature cleric's prominently, although I wouldn't say they star in them. There are literally hundreds of D&D novels. I'll try to come up with some others.

ETA: Mina, a cleric, is the star of Dragons of Summer Flame and the War of Souls trilogy.

[Thrudd]

The Forgotten Realms Avatar trilogy had a cleric (of the goddess of love) as one of the main characters. Of course, that is the "time of troubles" story, so divine magic is pretty much screwed up whole time.

[Eldariel]

Isn't there some dark elf series about some redeemed drow cleric thingy? Elaine Cunningham's if I remember correctly? I know next to nothing about it though, but I remember hearing about it and the main character being an ex-Priestess of Lulz. Though what she presently is? No clue, perhaps converted to Eilistraee or something?

[KillingAScarab]

The Forgotten Realms Avatar trilogy had a cleric (of the goddess of love) as one of the main characters. Of course, that is the "time of troubles" story, so divine magic is pretty much screwed up whole time.Being a cleric of Sune, Adon is absolutely the dandy (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheDandy), but it is still interesting to see what a cleric does during that weird time. Especially since all three of his fellow party members become deities. He is quite poor at combat, however. Adon isn't what Rajah is seeking.

[Rynjin]

Closest thing I can think of is the Elenium/Tamuli by David Eddings. The main characters are knights that use divine magic (interestingly not from the god they're actually supposed to worship) but I don't think it's quite what you're looking for.

The Belgariad might be a bit closer to what he's looking for.

Here's the thing though...Clerics as you're describing them? Entirely a D&D construct. The subset of a subset of a subset of "Magic user who receives magic directly from a deity but also wears armor and fights" is so ridiculously niche there probably isn't a good non-D&D based novel that exactly fits that description.

If you want things that are close enough, the Belgariad is more like wizards without arcane spell failure, Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory's Obsidian novels (at least the first trilogy) heavily features what could loosely be interpreted as "Clerics of a concept" (that concept being magic as a primal, natural, but vaguely sentient force) and one character is more of a warpriest stye person there, and the series "The Half-Orcs" by David Dalglish could almost be confused for a D&D novel, with several prominent characters acting as Clerics just off the top of my head.

[LongVin]

The War of the spider queen novels features several clerics of lolth in them as major characters.

[Khedrac]

If you want "armoured knight wielding a mace" the selection is very limited.

The old Pool of Radiance novel has one of the characters a cleric (exactly like this) and has some of the parts featuring him quite interesting (there's a nice piece where he becomes a full cleric and discoveres why they wield maces or hammers and not swords - silly, but fun fluff).

Paladin types are easier, but if you want a character who is very much a priest and not a paladin, you could try Jehan from The Hound and the Falcon trilogy by Judith Tarr.
He's not that good a fit (wields a sword, doesn't use magic) but being more of a priest, he might give some ideas (at one point when the crusaders are attacking a city that is not their enemy he doesn't want to kill those only defending their homes, but also won't abandon his comrades - so he goes in with two shields and no weapon).

[Traab]

The Belgariad might be a bit closer to what he's looking for.

Here's the thing though...Clerics as you're describing them? Entirely a D&D construct. The subset of a subset of a subset of "Magic user who receives magic directly from a deity but also wears armor and fights" is so ridiculously niche there probably isn't a good non-D&D based novel that exactly fits that description.

If you want things that are close enough, the Belgariad is more like wizards without arcane spell failure, Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory's Obsidian novels (at least the first trilogy) heavily features what could loosely be interpreted as "Clerics of a concept" (that concept being magic as a primal, natural, but vaguely sentient force) and one character is more of a warpriest stye person there, and the series "The Half-Orcs" by David Dalglish could almost be confused for a D&D novel, with several prominent characters acting as Clerics just off the top of my head.

Nah, belgariad is way off, they are wizards who also worship a god. There is nothing cleric about them. Their power is their own, not gained from prayer. Elenium/Tamuli is paladins with a divinely empowered wizardry as they do very very little healing. Even their "little mother" is a priestess, not a cleric. Geez, ive been thinking and thinking and yeah, aside from cadderly, I honestly cant think of anything more than remotely close to being a cleric in a story as defined by D&D. Does Terry Brooks have any possibilities? Its been way too long since I read his various shannara series and havent really touched much of anything else by him.

Ugh dang, I just looked up something I thought might be close, The Thirty, a band of warrior priests in some of David Gemmels works.
The members of the Order live a monastic life, practice celibacy and follow a strict regime of spiritual and martial study. By the time of Legend, the Thirty are accepted as the finest soldiers and tacticians in the world. The down side of this is that they can only be called upon once. It is accepted that once the order is requested for aid, they will fight until all but one of them has died - the survivor then uses the money earned from the fighting to found a new order. Although it is not made clear in the books, it is suggested that the order has quite a large membership, and the Thirty are selected from the most suitable of the brothers only when they are requested for aid.

Unfortunately, their magical powers are mostly restricted to telepathy with each other that lets them fight as a single unit. I could have sworn they had healing abilities, ah well.

[Rogar Demonblud]

The only ones I can think of that haven't been mentioned is the "Explain 3E" books by 'T.H. Lain'. One of them focused on the cleric class.

[Darth Ultron]

The Pool of Radiance and the Pool of Darkness have Tarl Desanea a very good armed and armored cleric of Tyr. The Pool of Twilight has his son.

Rathan Thentraver and Doust Sulwood are both Knights of Myth Drannor and clerics of Tymora, they can be found in lots of books, like the Knights of Myth Drannor ones.

The Twilight Giants Books had Brianna Burdun a priestess of the giant goddess Hiatea.

The threat from the sea has Laqueel a malenti priestess of Sekolah.

Both Moonshae trilogies have the druid Robyn Kendrick

In Dargonlance :The War of the Twins trilogy has Lady Cassandra, a good cleric. Also there is a whole Kingpreist trilogy full of clerics.

[Rajah]

The Belgariad might be a bit closer to what he's looking for.

Here's the thing though...Clerics as you're describing them? Entirely a D&D construct. The subset of a subset of a subset of "Magic user who receives magic directly from a deity but also wears armor and fights" is so ridiculously niche there probably isn't a good non-D&D based novel that exactly fits that description.

If you want things that are close enough, the Belgariad is more like wizards without arcane spell failure, Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory's Obsidian novels (at least the first trilogy) heavily features what could loosely be interpreted as "Clerics of a concept" (that concept being magic as a primal, natural, but vaguely sentient force) and one character is more of a warpriest stye person there, and the series "The Half-Orcs" by David Dalglish could almost be confused for a D&D novel, with several prominent characters acting as Clerics just off the top of my head.

Excellent. Yes, "close enough" is more than enough in this case since I understand that "D&D Cleric" is an amazingly niche thing. But anything that emulates that to some degree of closeness, I would be interested in checking out.

[random11]

If you don't mind parodies of the D&D cleric, Critical Failures / Robert Bevan.

It's about a group of D&D players (Technically C&C, but whatever) who get stuck in the bodies of their created characters in a fantasy world.
The group has a cleric, and to make things more absurd he is an atheist cleric (didn't bother filling the "deity" section in the character sheet).

Word of warning though: books can be funny, but also contains a lot of immature-mature content.

[pendell]

Nobody remembers the Cleric Quintet (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cleric_Quintet) written by R.A. Salvatore? It seems to be just what the OP is looking for.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[The Glyphstone]

Nobody remembers the Cleric Quintet (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cleric_Quintet) written by R.A. Salvatore? It seems to be just what the OP is looking for.

Respectfully,

Brian P.



I am looking to buy some books that feature the classic D&D style cleric, armor, big warhammer, divine magic. I am familiar with the Cleric Quintet by Salvatore, but Cadderly is not that kind of cleric.

Any good suggestions for the warpriest, holy warrior type cleric? Thanks!

That would be why.

[pendell]

Ooops. Feeling silly.

Well, it's not a novel per se but you might check out Templar Battleforce (http://store.steampowered.com/app/370020/) by the Trese brothers. The Templars are indeed an army of militant clerics, servants of the prophet Shalun, who freed the human race from their enslavement by machines and led them on an Exodus away from the now-lifeless Galactic Core.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[druid91]

The Cycle of Arawn/ Cycle of Galand mostly deals with priests who use magic. Though, that's about where the similarity to D&D clerics end.

[Traab]

Redemption of Althalus is somewhat close as well. The basic gist is, a thief from bronze ages is hired to steal a specific book located at "The End of the World" and instead learns from it. He ends up being a rougish follower of a goddess and doing her bidding and is capable of using magic, though its more a matter of knowing the right words than divinely granted magic. But he is following divine orders so... sorta clericish.

[Irennan]

Isn't there some dark elf series about some redeemed drow cleric thingy? Elaine Cunningham's if I remember correctly? I know next to nothing about it though, but I remember hearing about it and the main character being an ex-Priestess of Lulz. Though what she presently is? No clue, perhaps converted to Eilistraee or something?

Liriel Baenre? I wouldn't call her "redeemed", tho. She wasn't really evil to begin with, and she just chose to take her own path at some point. She had Eilistraee's guidance in her travels in the surface world, and even as one of the coven of Eilistraeean drow rejected her after she (unwillingly) caused the death of many of their people, she could still feel the call of that goddess. However, in the end magic was her true call, so she became a cleric of Mystra (this is said in a short story set after the conclusion of the main 3 books).

However, Liriel definitely isn't what the OP's looking for.

[Rynjin]

Redemption of Althalus is somewhat close as well. The basic gist is, a thief from bronze ages is hired to steal a specific book located at "The End of the World" and instead learns from it. He ends up being a rougish follower of a goddess and doing her bidding and is capable of using magic, though its more a matter of knowing the right words than divinely granted magic. But he is following divine orders so... sorta clericish.

It's also, in my opinion, not a particularly GOOD novel. Not bad, but there are a lot of things about it that are very cliche and most characters are underdeveloped. It covers a LARGE span of time, and none of it in depth.

There is an adversary, they fight him across time, and that's about it.

[Chromascope3D]

Well, The Throne of the Crescent Moon is and Arabic Fantasy novel that stars a divinely-empowered ghoul hunter. While he focuses more on the caster side of clerics more than the martial side, it's hard to really get more cleric than that. Also he has a dervish paladin sidekick, too. :P

[Traab]

It's also, in my opinion, not a particularly GOOD novel. Not bad, but there are a lot of things about it that are very cliche and most characters are underdeveloped. It covers a LARGE span of time, and none of it in depth.

There is an adversary, they fight him across time, and that's about it.

Probably because its a stand alone novel and eddings was used to writing 3-5 book series instead. It would be like asking martin to cover the entire game of thrones in a trilogy. Or jordan and the wheel of time in only 50 books. :smallbiggrin:

[dehro]

Try npcs, by drew hayes.
Ok, it doesn't fit precisely with what you're looking for, but still..it's worth looking into

[Olinser]

A couple of the Dragonlance books had clerics as main characters. In particular the Legends trilogy had a priest, Crysania (spelling?) as one of the main characters. First book was Time of the Twins.

Debatable whether it is sci-fi or fantasy, but the Coldfire Trilogy also features a priest as the main character.

David Eddings series the Elenium and the Tamuli kind of sounds closest to what you want, most of the main characters are basically paladins. One of the secondary main characters even uses a warhammer.

[Fri]

Well, The Throne of the Crescent Moon is and Arabic Fantasy novel that stars a divinely-empowered ghoul hunter. While he focuses more on the caster side of clerics more than the martial side, it's hard to really get more cleric than that. Also he has a dervish paladin sidekick, too. :P

I love the MC of Throne of the Crescent Moon, but I always consider him more of van-helsing style tool-based monster hunter. With 1001 potions, charms, enchanted anti-witch breakfast cereal, and whatnot. I don't remember him being divinely inspired much, he just use simple spells and prepared charms that his order know.

His sidekick is definitely a paladin though.

[archon_huskie]

I would like to suggest Goblin Quest. by Jim C Hines. But the main character doesn't become a cleric until nearer the end of the novel. Also he's a Goblin.

There's at least two sequels though.

[Cheesegear]

Luthor Huss (http://www.blacklibrary.com/all-products/luthor-huss-ebook.html) by Chris Wraight.

[Rynjin]

Debatable whether it is sci-fi or fantasy, but the Coldfire Trilogy also features a priest as the main character.

It also has my go-to example for a Lawful Evil protagonist done oh so right.

[Marlowe]

For an extremely loose definition of "Cleric", you might like to try "The Curse of Chalion" by Lois McMaster Bujold.

[Chromascope3D]

I love the MC of Throne of the Crescent Moon, but I always consider him more of van-helsing style tool-based monster hunter. With 1001 potions, charms, enchanted anti-witch breakfast cereal, and whatnot. I don't remember him being divinely inspired much, he just use simple spells and prepared charms that his order know.

His sidekick is definitely a paladin though.

Yeah, but his spells are powered by invoking God and practicing holy clericky stuff like abstinence. But thinking about it now I suppose he would make more sense as a Pathfinder inquisitor than a straight cleric.

[Pronounceable]

Elantris has a very DnDish cleric in it, complete with fullplate. While he's the antagonist, he gets a third of the book and might as well be called starring. He's also friggin awesome.

Otherwise, DnDish cleric is an extremely narrow niche and you need to accept everything somewhat close to the concept if you want to find them outside of DnD novels.

[Themrys]

The protagonist of "Dragon Bones" by Patricia Briggs is a warrior who also can do magic (which is sometimes powered by the gods, but it is all very mysterious) and has strong morals. Sort of fits?

[Wardog]

Excellent. Yes, "close enough" is more than enough in this case since I understand that "D&D Cleric" is an amazingly niche thing. But anything that emulates that to some degree of closeness, I would be interested in checking out.

Warcraft paladins seem to be pretty close to the D&D cleric niche. Are there any good novels about them?