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Band of Four #5
The Silent House: Library Edition
"The Silvertree Stronghold is more than just the family estate of the feared and awed Silvertree dynasty, whose wizardly powers and political cunning have survived through many generations." "With their powers comes a curse." "A curse more terrifying than rival warlords or the mystical threats of the dreaded faceless - an inward corruption of the soul that binds one's powers to a downward spiral of madness and magic." "The Stronghold goes by the name of The Silent House. It is a soul repository for the dynasty. Two daring treasure hunters hope to profit by unlocking the secrets of its past and harvesting the powers of its bounty...but unbeknownst to them an observer watches their every move and waits to make his presence know from the halls of eternity." The Silent House is a Chronicle of Aglirta, the multigenerational tale of a powerful and feared wizardly dynasty.
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First published June 1, 2004
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About the author
Ed Greenwood
364 books884 followersEd Greenwood is the creator of the Forgotten Realms fantasy world, which became the setting for his home D&D game in 1975. Play still continues in this long-running campaign, and Ed also keeps busy producing Realmslore for various TSR publications.
Ed has published over two hundred articles in Dragon magazine and Polyhedron newszine, is a lifetime charter member of the Role Playing Game Associaton (RPGA) network, has written over thirty books and modules for TSR, and been Gen Con Game Fair guest of honor several times.
In addition to all these activities, Ed works as a library clerk and has edited over a dozen small press magazines.
Invented the character Elminster from the popular Forgotten Realms RPG series. Currently resides in an old farmhouse in the countryside of Ontario, Canada.
Ed has published over two hundred articles in Dragon magazine and Polyhedron newszine, is a lifetime charter member of the Role Playing Game Associaton (RPGA) network, has written over thirty books and modules for TSR, and been Gen Con Game Fair guest of honor several times.
In addition to all these activities, Ed works as a library clerk and has edited over a dozen small press magazines.
Invented the character Elminster from the popular Forgotten Realms RPG series. Currently resides in an old farmhouse in the countryside of Ontario, Canada.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
February 9, 2017
The Silent House
For Sale: One stronghold. Contains ??? bathrooms, ??? bedrooms, and a bunch of magical death eels.
First of all, I just want to admit that I have not read any of Ed Greenwood's books prior to this, and especially not any of the Band of Four novels, so I went into this universe blind. The Band of Four are barely in this anyways and I didn't feel "lost" in this writing, so while my enjoyment probably would've been greater if I knew Aglirta better, I could get through the story just fine.
This book reminds me of one of those expensive cartoon souffles. With careful precision and the best of ingredients, the frazzled chef makes something that should appeal to the senses and send everyone who takes a bite out of the dish into a taste sensation worthy of the gods. Then, it happens. A noise that causes the souffle to deflate and you're left with a puddle of edible ooze. Wah wah waaaaah.
And that's what I felt reading this, because this has everything it needs to be to be this massive sprawling epic (Curses! Sorcerers! Shapeshifting tentacle monsters! A metamorphosing house! A cult that worships a giant snake man! All told through centuries of descendants of the same family!) that takes place across two millennia with and you're just left with something that's just "alright I guess" level and took forever to read.
I'm not disappointed. I just...felt it could've way better than what it was.
I will give the book credit for its biggest strong point; the Koglaur/Faceless are a pretty amazing species of monster. The Koglaur are a race of human that is more long lived and with some incredible shapeshifting powers, and boy, did this writer know how to write some body horror with these guys that would fit right in with Parasyte. Some of the best descriptions come from when a Koglaur is on the page just from their strange physiology and morphing. The cover of this book does this story a great disservice by depicting a skeleton war (that never actually happens) instead of humans sprouting forests of tentacles with eyestalks and fang-lined mouths running down them, features smoothing out into rubbery faceless masks as they seek to put tentacles into people's ears in order to make their heads explode. Despite the lack of explanation involving a great deal of their plans (What caused humans to suddenly become these things? How do Koglaur reproduce? Why haven't they overrun Aglirta by now? Why do they suddenly just stop becoming a threat midway through the book? How could they not already be the del facto ruler of everything when they're the embodiment of nightmare fuel?), they were incredibly cool and were one of the greatest points in the novel.
This story is kind of a difficult one to appropriately pin down (and because the summary blurb on the back of the book tells you practically nothing). In the kingdom of Aglirta, there is a massive haunted mansion called The Silvertree House. It's a magical, accursed place full of booby traps, monsters, ghouls, and riches. Not only does the house itself change in size and shape due to the rock-moving maedra (which, according to the given description, look like grey Trogdors but without any consummate v's) that infest its halls, but there's a living Curse that drives any man of the Silvertree line to madness and ghosts that suck the lifeforce out of the living. For eons, sorcerers and barons have tried to reclaim this house but have failed. Nothing but death comes to those who enter these gates.
And yet we still have our two treasure hunters rooting around in these halls for gems and mysterious artifacts regardless. These sorts of things are adventurer magnets, okay?
Our book is divided across three different types of storytelling. The first one is a ghostly visitor who has first-person snippets scattered throughout the book where he basically hates the living and reminisces about past mistakes and how he wishes he weren't so dead. These don't show up that often and I found myself forgetting about them. The second one takes place in the present day and involves Dlan and Horl, a young upstart thief and a grizzled old man with a secret as they explore the ruined husk of Silvertree House in search of great fortune. Their part in the story can be summed up like so:
Dlan: Man, Horl. This place is a regular death trap. Where are the jewels and riches you promised would be here? Oh hey, a strange marking on a stone-
Horl: Don't touch that! *some strange monster or trap passes by, leaving them both unharmed* That was put there by So-and-so Silvertree!
Dlan: Old man, who is So-and-so Silvertree?
Horl: Why not sit on this slab of rock and listen to my yarn? Also don't find me using you to get into the Silvertree House in order to find something very specific at all suspicious or anything. I'm just a harmless old man. Really.
Which then segways into our third and most important type of storytelling, the Silvertrees. Each one of the Silvertree chapters (and there are a lot of them) averages out to be about 30 pages long, give or take. Some stories, like the woeful tale of one Silvertree who is a wizard's apprentice and basically gets raped, forced to run from an entire legion of wizards naked, and then kills herself in Silvertree by gnawing her hands off in a fit of madness (oh, by the way, this book has loads of brutal and detailed gore, body horror, shapeshifting trauma, mind melting spells, and the occasional rape, including two rape scenes with tentacle monsters. Just as an FYI) only have about 20 pages. Others, like the equally woeful tale of the first Silvertree House resident Ravengar Silvertree and how he fought through loads and loads of Koglaur like the valiant crusader he is before finally meeting his end, are a bit longer. Some Silvertrees are just, some Silvertrees are completely evil creatures that deserved death, some Silvertrees meet their end with dignity, and some die whilst curled in a pile of their own feces. You get a good level of variation even if only about half of them actually are important to the story.
Oh, and each Silvertree chapter opens up like this:
Lord So-and-So Silvertree
940-986 SR
Lord Baron of Blackgult, Silvertree, or Whatever
How a wicked fate befell him. Also he got a big surprise called DEATH.
You know, just so you don't enter the chapter with any expectations that the protagonist will live.
With so many Silvertrees, each of them leading to a grand demise, the level of attachment kind of varies. I almost want to say that after a while you stop caring, knowing that each one of these guys will soon be butchered or stabbed in the eye or eaten by shapeshifting Koglaur, and I certainly felt that way near the middle, but that seems a little unfair. It's just that some Silvertrees just make for more interesting reads than others and a lot of the uninteresting ones take up the middle segment. Because of this, my enjoyment of the book fluctuated wildly from start to finish. There were times where I just wanted to give up and either skip ahead or discard the book entirely, and then there were times where I really enjoyed the writing and was turning pages at a very frantic rate, eager to learn what was going to happen next.
In the end, this is the biggest drawback to the book. With no clear protagonist, no clear story that links everything together (beyond "a curse!"), and no clear progression that's supposed to explain how Silvertree House became an abandoned booby-trapped mess, this almost seems pointless. Is this story meant to be lore development for one of the Band of Four? Is this house really that important?
A very confusing puzzle, this book.
It doesn't help that some plot developments, like the shifting political atmospheres with the Koglaur, the Whispering Mind's descent into madness, and the sudden appearance of the Serpent Priests, hit the book and you're left scratching your head. It's hard to even guess who the main protagonist even is, or why the house has certain booby traps.
I will give props to the author for writing something as complex as this, but what I felt could've been a natural progression of the Silvertree House turning into a haunted manor of sorts ends up becoming "well, the Silvertree House sort of was always like this after Sembril and Ravengar Silvertree. These traps are just there.". The plot is so laden with things leading into other things that don't exactly progress naturally that I found myself backtracking in hopes that something will make the plot developments make more sense.
However, in the end, I had fun reading this despite it being kind of exhausting, confusing, and full of weird little plot dead ends. The writing itself is incredibly solid, and there are some moments of dry humor where the writing really shines, and I can name some Silvertrees that I enjoyed. They even tie up all three of the storytelling mechanics at the end and the story ties into the Band of Four storyline.
It's just kind of a pain to read.
For Sale: One stronghold. Contains ??? bathrooms, ??? bedrooms, and a bunch of magical death eels.
First of all, I just want to admit that I have not read any of Ed Greenwood's books prior to this, and especially not any of the Band of Four novels, so I went into this universe blind. The Band of Four are barely in this anyways and I didn't feel "lost" in this writing, so while my enjoyment probably would've been greater if I knew Aglirta better, I could get through the story just fine.
This book reminds me of one of those expensive cartoon souffles. With careful precision and the best of ingredients, the frazzled chef makes something that should appeal to the senses and send everyone who takes a bite out of the dish into a taste sensation worthy of the gods. Then, it happens. A noise that causes the souffle to deflate and you're left with a puddle of edible ooze. Wah wah waaaaah.
And that's what I felt reading this, because this has everything it needs to be to be this massive sprawling epic (Curses! Sorcerers! Shapeshifting tentacle monsters! A metamorphosing house! A cult that worships a giant snake man! All told through centuries of descendants of the same family!) that takes place across two millennia with and you're just left with something that's just "alright I guess" level and took forever to read.
I'm not disappointed. I just...felt it could've way better than what it was.
I will give the book credit for its biggest strong point; the Koglaur/Faceless are a pretty amazing species of monster. The Koglaur are a race of human that is more long lived and with some incredible shapeshifting powers, and boy, did this writer know how to write some body horror with these guys that would fit right in with Parasyte. Some of the best descriptions come from when a Koglaur is on the page just from their strange physiology and morphing. The cover of this book does this story a great disservice by depicting a skeleton war (that never actually happens) instead of humans sprouting forests of tentacles with eyestalks and fang-lined mouths running down them, features smoothing out into rubbery faceless masks as they seek to put tentacles into people's ears in order to make their heads explode. Despite the lack of explanation involving a great deal of their plans (What caused humans to suddenly become these things? How do Koglaur reproduce? Why haven't they overrun Aglirta by now? Why do they suddenly just stop becoming a threat midway through the book? How could they not already be the del facto ruler of everything when they're the embodiment of nightmare fuel?), they were incredibly cool and were one of the greatest points in the novel.
This story is kind of a difficult one to appropriately pin down (and because the summary blurb on the back of the book tells you practically nothing). In the kingdom of Aglirta, there is a massive haunted mansion called The Silvertree House. It's a magical, accursed place full of booby traps, monsters, ghouls, and riches. Not only does the house itself change in size and shape due to the rock-moving maedra (which, according to the given description, look like grey Trogdors but without any consummate v's) that infest its halls, but there's a living Curse that drives any man of the Silvertree line to madness and ghosts that suck the lifeforce out of the living. For eons, sorcerers and barons have tried to reclaim this house but have failed. Nothing but death comes to those who enter these gates.
And yet we still have our two treasure hunters rooting around in these halls for gems and mysterious artifacts regardless. These sorts of things are adventurer magnets, okay?
Our book is divided across three different types of storytelling. The first one is a ghostly visitor who has first-person snippets scattered throughout the book where he basically hates the living and reminisces about past mistakes and how he wishes he weren't so dead. These don't show up that often and I found myself forgetting about them. The second one takes place in the present day and involves Dlan and Horl, a young upstart thief and a grizzled old man with a secret as they explore the ruined husk of Silvertree House in search of great fortune. Their part in the story can be summed up like so:
Dlan: Man, Horl. This place is a regular death trap. Where are the jewels and riches you promised would be here? Oh hey, a strange marking on a stone-
Horl: Don't touch that! *some strange monster or trap passes by, leaving them both unharmed* That was put there by So-and-so Silvertree!
Dlan: Old man, who is So-and-so Silvertree?
Horl: Why not sit on this slab of rock and listen to my yarn? Also don't find me using you to get into the Silvertree House in order to find something very specific at all suspicious or anything. I'm just a harmless old man. Really.
Which then segways into our third and most important type of storytelling, the Silvertrees. Each one of the Silvertree chapters (and there are a lot of them) averages out to be about 30 pages long, give or take. Some stories, like the woeful tale of one Silvertree who is a wizard's apprentice and basically gets raped, forced to run from an entire legion of wizards naked, and then kills herself in Silvertree by gnawing her hands off in a fit of madness (oh, by the way, this book has loads of brutal and detailed gore, body horror, shapeshifting trauma, mind melting spells, and the occasional rape, including two rape scenes with tentacle monsters. Just as an FYI) only have about 20 pages. Others, like the equally woeful tale of the first Silvertree House resident Ravengar Silvertree and how he fought through loads and loads of Koglaur like the valiant crusader he is before finally meeting his end, are a bit longer. Some Silvertrees are just, some Silvertrees are completely evil creatures that deserved death, some Silvertrees meet their end with dignity, and some die whilst curled in a pile of their own feces. You get a good level of variation even if only about half of them actually are important to the story.
Oh, and each Silvertree chapter opens up like this:
Lord So-and-So Silvertree
940-986 SR
Lord Baron of Blackgult, Silvertree, or Whatever
How a wicked fate befell him. Also he got a big surprise called DEATH.
You know, just so you don't enter the chapter with any expectations that the protagonist will live.
With so many Silvertrees, each of them leading to a grand demise, the level of attachment kind of varies. I almost want to say that after a while you stop caring, knowing that each one of these guys will soon be butchered or stabbed in the eye or eaten by shapeshifting Koglaur, and I certainly felt that way near the middle, but that seems a little unfair. It's just that some Silvertrees just make for more interesting reads than others and a lot of the uninteresting ones take up the middle segment. Because of this, my enjoyment of the book fluctuated wildly from start to finish. There were times where I just wanted to give up and either skip ahead or discard the book entirely, and then there were times where I really enjoyed the writing and was turning pages at a very frantic rate, eager to learn what was going to happen next.
In the end, this is the biggest drawback to the book. With no clear protagonist, no clear story that links everything together (beyond "a curse!"), and no clear progression that's supposed to explain how Silvertree House became an abandoned booby-trapped mess, this almost seems pointless. Is this story meant to be lore development for one of the Band of Four? Is this house really that important?
A very confusing puzzle, this book.
It doesn't help that some plot developments, like the shifting political atmospheres with the Koglaur, the Whispering Mind's descent into madness, and the sudden appearance of the Serpent Priests, hit the book and you're left scratching your head. It's hard to even guess who the main protagonist even is, or why the house has certain booby traps.
I will give props to the author for writing something as complex as this, but what I felt could've been a natural progression of the Silvertree House turning into a haunted manor of sorts ends up becoming "well, the Silvertree House sort of was always like this after Sembril and Ravengar Silvertree. These traps are just there.". The plot is so laden with things leading into other things that don't exactly progress naturally that I found myself backtracking in hopes that something will make the plot developments make more sense.
However, in the end, I had fun reading this despite it being kind of exhausting, confusing, and full of weird little plot dead ends. The writing itself is incredibly solid, and there are some moments of dry humor where the writing really shines, and I can name some Silvertrees that I enjoyed. They even tie up all three of the storytelling mechanics at the end and the story ties into the Band of Four storyline.
It's just kind of a pain to read.
November 29, 2025
No real story just a lot of short tales shoved together then slapped the same framing to make them feel almost cohesive.
March 22, 2023
So many tentacles...
December 20, 2017
Just finished reading this and it was good. I had to look up the monsters in my Dungeons and Dragons monster manual. (which I like to do). Made it an even more entertaining read. I like Ed Greenwood's writing style, it takes a lot of attention to detail in order to remember all the characters and their place in the story. Will definitely read more of his books. Probably all of them eventually.
maybe-later
January 20, 2015I've moved this to my maybe later shelf, but in truth I probably won't go back. I didn't put it on the didn't-finish-and-don't-intend-to shelf because that for books that are so bad and/or disturbing that I hope to warn others off. This wasn't a terrible book, it just never caught my attention and I realized I was only trying to finish it for the sake of finishing.
June 12, 2015
I've tried reading this three times already and it just never really caught my attention. I think I reached chapter seven before I called it quits because there were some passages that were interesting but overall, I did not like it enough to keep trudging on.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews