The Ultimate Fantasy Series Ranking

Author page

R.A. Salvatore

2 universes Last reviewed 2026-08-21

R. A. Salvatore (born January 20, 1959, in Leominster, Massachusetts) is an American fantasy author best known for The Legend of Drizzt series set in the Forgotten Realms, beginning with his 1988 debut novel The Crystal Shard. He attended Leominster High School and graduated from Fitchburg State University with a Bachelor of Science in communications/media in 1981, later also earning a Bachelor of Arts in English; before writing full-time he worked as a bouncer, an experience he has credited with inspiring the vivid battle scenes in his fiction. He began writing seriously in 1982 and received his first publishing assignment from TSR in 1987. Beyond the Drizzt novels, he created The DemonWars Saga and the Icewind Dale Trilogy, which alone sold over 1.5 million copies for its first two volumes, wrote Vector Prime for the Star Wars: The New Jedi Order series, and served as creative director for the video game Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. He has sold over 15 million books in the United States, with 22 titles reaching New York Times bestseller status, and his novel The Silent Blade won the Origins Award in 1998.

Universe(s)

Forgotten Realms

  • Core Canon books: 40
  • Current rank: #114 in the official ranking
  • Weighted average: 4.20
  • Award recognitions: None recorded

The DemonWars Saga

  • Core Canon books: 7
  • Current rank: #417 in the official ranking
  • Weighted average: 3.99
  • Award recognitions: None recorded

Books

Aggregate across all universes

These are separate, unrelated universes; the totals below are plain sums of already-published per-universe facts, never a blended or averaged score across them. See each universe's own figures above.

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