Forgotten Realms: Sundering Books in Order

The Sundering is a shared Forgotten Realms event series set during a time of upheaval across Faerûn. Gods, nations, and ordinary people are all affected by changes that reshape the world. Erin M. Evans's entry, The Adversary, is the third book in the event and also the third Brimstone Angels novel.

That dual role is important. The Adversary is part of a larger setting-wide story, but its real center is Farideh, the tiefling warlock introduced in Brimstone Angels. Her earlier pact with the devil Lorcan has consequences that have grown harder to control. When she tries to protect her twin sister, Havilar, she agrees to help with a scheme that brings devils, gods, and mortal ambitions into direct conflict.

The problem gets very personal.

Farideh travels to a remote fortress with Dahl, a Harper agent who has no interest in accepting infernal plans at face value. Inside and beyond its walls, they find people caught in a strange and cruel system. Farideh's magic makes her useful to those in charge, but it also forces her to ask what she is helping to uncover, and what it may cost to refuse.

The book's larger backdrop is the Sundering, a crisis that sends tremors through the Forgotten Realms. That scale gives the story weight, but Evans keeps the focus on a smaller group of people making bad choices under pressure. Farideh is not simply trying to save the world. She is trying to keep the people she loves from becoming leverage in a game played by far more powerful beings.

Expect devilish politics, magical intrigue, uneasy alliances, and moral questions that do not come with clean answers. The story spends time with the consequences of pacts and promises. It also puts Farideh and Dahl in a situation where cooperation is necessary, trust is scarce, and escape may not solve the problem.

You can read The Adversary as an entry in The Sundering, but it lands best after Brimstone Angels and Lesser Evils. Those books explain Farideh's relationship with Havilar, Mehen, Lorcan, and the choices that lead her here. Reading them first also makes the emotional stakes much clearer.

For readers following Evans alone, think of this as the middle turn in the Brimstone Angels saga, not a break from it. The world is changing around Farideh. She is changing, too, and neither process is easy to reverse.