Good D&D novels about elves?

[Jeivar]

I say elves, because I've always found it interesting to speculate on the outlook of someone with a much longer lifespan than humans, as well as something that is similar to human, but not quite.

Plus, elves are just kind of cool.

Oh, and I'm aware of the Drizzt books. I read those as a teen, twenty years ago. Aside from that I'm open to looking into just about anything, regardless of setting.

[asda fasda]

Have you tried "Kagonesti" by Douglas Niles from Dragon Lance series?
It has this intriguing structure as this book is in fact a series of shorter stories about different time periods of one Elf clan, although I'm not sure if that's what you are looking for, but it gives you this sense that you are looking on the world from beyond time. Similar is "The Dragons" also by Douglas Niles, but there I think is one dragon through different time periods.

But similar structure of short stories about life of just 1 elf could be also quite fun to read but unfortunately never have heard about one.

[Traab]

The Obsidian trilogy by Mercedes Lackey has a fairly heavy elven influence, even though the main character is human. Books 2 and 3 especially are big on elves. You get a lot of information on their culture, how they think, what they like and dislike, its also a great story imo. Not D&D but still cool.

[warty goblin]

The Obsidian trilogy by Mercedes Lackey has a fairly heavy elven influence, even though the main character is human. Books 2 and 3 especially are big on elves. You get a lot of information on their culture, how they think, what they like and dislike, its also a great story imo. Not D&D but still cool.

Obligatory question about any and all Mercedes Lackey novels; exactly how much telepathic horse sex voyeurism is there?

File that under things you never thought you'd have to ask.

Depending on when you read through them, you may have missed a couple of Drizzt books that get more into elf psychology. The Hunter's Blades trilogy spends quite a bit of time on the ramifications of outliving basically everyone you know. It's also one of the better chunks of dark elf novel, as these things go.

And if we're not just limited to D&D novels, then the Silmarillion is the obvious and necessary reference. Because the style is very high and historical, it's not immediately obvious, but the sheer amount of time that passes, and the way the elven characters move through that time is decidedly non-human. It necessarily gets into the metaphysics of elves in middle earth, but because Tolkien actually cared about such topics and thought about them, its worthwhile. Rather unlike the fly by the seat of your pants don't think about it approach of the D&D cosmology.

[hamishspence]

Evermeet is one of the most elf-centric Forgotten Realms novels. Elaine Cunningham's work is usually fairly good by D&D standards IMO.

[Catullus64]

I know I sound stupid asking this, since it and its associated books are the main source of our contemporary Elves, but... have you read the Silmarillion? Seems like a good start.

[Traab]

Obligatory question about any and all Mercedes Lackey novels; exactly how much telepathic horse sex voyeurism is there?

File that under things you never thought you'd have to ask.

Depending on when you read through them, you may have missed a couple of Drizzt books that get more into elf psychology. The Hunter's Blades trilogy spends quite a bit of time on the ramifications of outliving basically everyone you know. It's also one of the better chunks of dark elf novel, as these things go.

And if we're not just limited to D&D novels, then the Silmarillion is the obvious and necessary reference. Because the style is very high and historical, it's not immediately obvious, but the sheer amount of time that passes, and the way the elven characters move through that time is decidedly non-human. It necessarily gets into the metaphysics of elves in middle earth, but because Tolkien actually cared about such topics and thought about them, its worthwhile. Rather unlike the fly by the seat of your pants don't think about it approach of the D&D cosmology.

Totally different world unconnected to valdemar in any way.

[Psyren]

Evermeet is one of the most elf-centric Forgotten Realms novels. Elaine Cunningham's work is usually fairly good by D&D standards IMO.

Seconding Elaine Cunningham's work, as it gives a *lot* of insight into FR elven culture. In particular I recommend her "Songs & Swords" series, which includes novels such as Elfshadow, Elfsong, and Silver Shadows. In particular you get a lot of perspective on the various elven subraces (e.g. moon and gold) alongside the half-elves who are often seen as perennial outsiders to both their parent cultures.

[hamishspence]

Silver Shadows is especially focused on wild elves - one of the most reclusive of the elven subraces.

[Hopeless]

There was one about an Elf named Arilyn who wielded a Moonblade I think it was a trilogy with Danilo Thann as a side character.

The first book dealt with an assassin killing targets and she's suspected.

[Psyren]

There was one about an Elf named Arilyn who wielded a Moonblade I think it was a trilogy with Danilo Thann as a side character.

The first book dealt with an assassin killing targets and she's suspected.

That's the "Songs and Swords" series I mentioned

[Tarmor]

Lord and Ladies - Terry Pratchett (admittedly, I'm sure its not what you are looking for)

The Dragon in the Stone - Allan J. Scott (Starts in modern Denmark, svartalvar and liosalvar - the dark and light elves)

The Elvenbane, Elvenblood, Elvenborn (trilogy) - Andre Norton & Mercedes Lackey. (Elven society where humans are basically slaves)

None of these are D&D novels. If that's all you want I don't think there's that much to find, except where some of the characters are elves.

[Mechalich]

There was a trilogy of Dragonlance novels about the origins of its Elven kingdoms called the Elven Nations Trilogy (Firstborn, The Kinslayer Wars, and Qualinesti) by Douglas Niles. Since I read them long ago in high school I refuse to make any judgments regarding their quality though.

Elminster in Myth Drannor is actually a very elf-centric FR novel since aside from the titular self-insert essentially all the characters are elves. While the novel is very much an Ed Greenwood writing Elminster novel (with all the issues attached to that), it's probably one of the better one's in the bunch and it conveys a fairly solid picture of what a D&D elven civilization at the height of its power is intended to look like.

Vampire of the Mists, the first Ravenloft novel, by Christie Golden, is about an elven vampire, Jander Sunstar, and is serviceable in quality, Golden being a perfectly tolerable franchise fiction author.

[M1982]

Just be warned that sun elves in FR novels are usually portrayed as such racist *$#@! that it makes you wonder whether their longer lifespan is just to make up for the time lost each day not being able to decide between their SS uniform or their klan robe.

From just about any novel featuring sun elves it seems that it would be easier counting non-members of the Eldreth Veluuthra rather than trying to identify members

[hamishspence]

Personally I thought the protagonist of the The Last Mythal trilogy was a pretty good example of a non-racist sun elf (with high magic at that).

[Traab]

There are elves in the war gods own trilogy but not really as characters, more as a part of world building. Its a fairly unique setting in that elves arent a natural race, they chose to be created. Way back in ancient history, 10,000 years ago, there was a type of magical that had innate abilities that required not raining to access. These were considered dangerous to peace so the king at the time offered to tie their life spans to the magic field and in return they are unaging but can cast no spells. They are basically all near suicidality depressed because they have lived through the worst apocalypse type scenarios where the dark gods won crushing victories and murdered millions and everyone else has the life span of mayflies so they mostly keep themselves segregated to avoid attachments to those who will die in the blink of an eye.

Another different take on elves is Dennis L. McKiernan. He is pretty clearly a huge tolkien fan, but he has his own subtle changes to the various races and how they behave and their culture. For example, his version of hobbits actually tend to be adventurous to an extent. They are excellent archers and slingers, not so good at swordplay considering they are so short. They live in their own land protected by what amounts to a giant hedge of brambles around their lands roughly tree high and interwoven so thickly even little birds have trouble getting through. Anyways, on to the elves. In this setting there are three main worlds, and elves come from the heaven type world. Mithgar is the middle realm where all the stories take place, and this settings version of golbins and orcs and such come from the third world ruled by the evil god. Elves are immortal. They flat out stop aging at adulthood. They have an interesting take on life. basically, every day is the first day of the rest of their lives. They spend their immortal lives learning trades, taking on different jobs, sometimes going on adventures to experience new things. If they ever get bored with what they are doing, they stop, take a century or two to do something else, then maybe come back to their original job. They cant reproduce on Mithgar, only on their home realm, and even then its super rare. They are generally friendly to the other non evil races. Due to book events I wont spoil, they cant travel back and forth between realms for the majority of this universes books. If they leave midgar they cant come back, so many choose to stay and its considered a sad day when they give up and go back home. I cant really suggest any specific books as a lot of them involve elves in one form or another, and honestly I read them all out of order. Its honestly fun because I would read a series set later in the timeline, then go and read ones from earlier and bump into elven characters that were around for all these big events. Maybe start with Into The Forge and Into The Fire. It actually involves two of the hobbits as main characters but they do work with elves at various points and its fairly early in the timeline (which covers thousands of years so dont stress too much about spoilers)

[Tarmor]

Another different take on elves is Dennis L. McKiernan. He is pretty clearly a huge tolkien fan, but he has his own subtle changes to the various races and how they behave and their culture.

He writes "not-LotR" books: He wanted to write sequels/continuations to Tolkiens work, but couldn't get a license to do so, which is why they are like LotR, but slightly different. He had to make changes to have them published. They are good though; I read a few.

[Traab]

He writes "not-LotR" books: He wanted to write sequels/continuations to Tolkiens work, but couldn't get a license to do so, which is why they are like LotR, but slightly different. He had to make changes to have them published. They are good though; I read a few.

Honestly its only really bad in his iron tower series where he liberally rips off the mines of moria to a disgusting degree. For the most part the rest of his stuff is different enough that it doesnt bother me. Im just glad that wasnt my first exposure to his work or else it might have killed my enjoyment early. Ive read a ton of his works and dont regret a moment of it. I like his world building, I enjoy how he sprinkles easter eggs throughout his books that you only really notice if you read the specific book it refers to. I also enjoy the excellent set of mysteries that dont get answered in the books they come up in, sometimes not at all.