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Originally posted by Ashe Ravenheart

Over in Ed's thread it was mentioned of Brian Thomsen's passing this weekend.

I thought I'd share some praise for one of his (too) few novels for the Realms, Once Around the Realms. It focused on Volo's being tricked into traveling around Faerūn, in the vein of Around the World in 80 Days.

This was not a novel of serious Realmslore, but of a light hearted look at the world itself, taking the reader to most of the familiar places, like Cormyr and Waterdeep, and the less-familiar, like Maztica and Kara-tur.

Not everyone liked the book (in fact, I believe I'm in a minority), mainly because of Brian's 'borrowing' of pop-culture TV characters to round out the supporting cast of the novel. But I enjoyed it immensely and consider to be one of my favorites. No one else took the challenge of showing off the entire world in a single story and, even with the cheesy nature, it still rang true with the various lands and, most importantly, the hero of Volothamp Geddarm.

Mr. Thomsen was an editor for most of his career and helped a lot of our favorite storytellers get their books to print with their style and 'voice' intact. Which is a feat unto itself.

As Ed saith, "I will raise a book to Brian Thomsen." And so shall I.

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