We owe credit to several fantasy novels for inspiring various elements of our campaign world. We include here our reviews of some fine tales that have enriched Hurva, as well as a few others that might add some color to any campaign world.

Although we do rate the books on readability, our comments focus primarily on how the material in the book inspires role-playing. Ideas for characters, villains, magic items, religious institutions, spell-casting systems, plots and even entire realms and worlds can be gleaned from the pages of many books. We'd like to point to some of our favorite examples so that others can also be inspired by these works.

We rate our books on a d20 scale, with a 20 being the best, of course. You'll find a rating both for readability and for their role-playing inspiration level.

Though we've done our best to avoid giving away any important surprises or plot twists, in a few cases we had to give a bit more detail than you'll find on the jacket covers. We couldn't explain the role-playing value of some novels without a few spoilers. Those of you who can't bear the thought of a surprise being ruined may wish to skip the reviews. As for the rest of you, we've been careful not to ruin any major plot points, and we don't think our comments will diminish your enjoyment of these fine stories.

Anyone wishing to give their opinion of these or other fantasy novels, please email the webmaster. We'll post any reviews that we feel add quality information to an existing review or gives insights into any of the hundreds of great fantasy books that we haven't reviewed ourselves yet. One caveat here, we won't include reviews from books that were inspired by gaming sessions or campaign settings so no Dragonlance or Forgotten Realms books here. It's not too difficult to figure out that such works may give you ideas if you're planning on running adventures in the same part of the given campaign world. Also there's really no reason to point out to people that The Hobbitt and the Lord of the Rings trilogy are a source of role-playing inspiration so don't bother to send anything on these or similarly ubiquitous novels. All submitted material may be edited for content, length and to fit our format but you will be duly credited.