The Blog Fantastic 010: Streams of Silver review

The first book in the Icewind Dale Trilogy (which was retroactively renumbered as being the fourth part of the Legend of Drizzt series) wasn’t a masterpiece of the fantasy genre but it was clear to me why it has its fan. R. A. Salvatore’s first published novel, it had a simple story but it also had familiar characters interacting in a familiar setting. That sense of familiarity can be very comforting when starting a new book depending on your reading habits and the mood you’re in. The problem familiar settings and familiar characters is that they often lead to familiar stories and that’s exactly what the first book was.

The first book also served as an introduction to Salvatore’s corner of the Forgotten Realms. Salvatore’s mark on Forgotten Realms isn’t based on an actual geographical corner of the map of that world but on the characters he introduced to it. It’s the popular characters such as Drizzt the dark elf and Wulfgar the barbarian that made the book what it was. The events that take place only do so to provide adversaries for the heroes to fight against. The fights serve another purpose which is to entertain the reader with increasingly ludicrous fight scenes that make the heroes look invincible.

I’m getting pretty negative but everything that I enjoy about the first book has disappeared from the second and everything I didn’t enjoy in the first book can be found on nearly every page. The story is even less important than it was in the first because it’s a simply quest to find a hidden kingdom of dwarves, Mithril Hall. What that really means is that the heroes will go on a long adventure which will give Salvatore many opportunities to have Drizzt and his companions fight all sorts of different monsters frequently found in the fantasy genre. Despite all of that, the book could still have been enjoyable had it been written particularly well or if the characterization of the protagonists was above average. Unfortunately, it wasn’t. The characters do not progress any further than they did in the first book. They do a lot, they travel far and wide and fight many foes, but it doesn’t mean anything to either of them. They’re not changed or affected by it in any meaningful way.

That’s the first problem I had with Stream of Silver. The second was that the story feels incredibly familiar because any fan of fantasy literature knows it forward and backward. The story here is essentially a slightly modified version of the Mines of Moria chapters from The Lord of the Rings. It’s incredibly problematic because Tolkien did it so much better. Obviously Salvatore isn’t the first to closely revisit the stories of Tolkien in his own body of work, but like most that have come before him; he does it with adding anything to the story. In fact, he does so by reducing the story to be a poor imitation of the original story. There was nothing new here and it was boring and also frustrating because if I wanted to read about the Mines of Moria I would pick up my copy of The Lord of the Rings and reread it.

My third biggest problem with the second volume of the Icewind Dale Trilogy was the action scenes and the fighting. Fans of Salvatore will tell anybody who is willing to listen that he writes some of the best fight scenes in fantasy fiction. They’ve clearly only read fantasy books by a select few fantasy writers. Salvatore does write a good fight scene, but only in his description of action to action events. He does a poor job contextualizing the action in the story. Bruenor, Wulfgar and Drizzt fight people, monsters and dragons because enough pages have passed since the last fight and it’s time for another battle. Worse than that, they’re always grossly outnumbered and the odds are always ridiculously stacked against them and they always vanquish seemingly without any real effort. There is absolutely no sense of danger or even a sense of threat in any of the fights. If you want good battles, whether it’s one on one type or armies versus armies, look no further than books written by David Gemmell. He makes Salvatore look amateurish.

I after reading and enjoying The Crystal Shard, which was a good debut but nothing spectacular, I was hoping for something more out of Streams of Silver. That’s exactly what I got. I got more of everything I didn’t particularly enjoy in the first book. I got more Drizzt, more battle magic used constantly and without effort. I also got more villains, but generic villains without any personality with the exception maybe of Artemis Entreri. I like my magic to come with a price, I like it to be hard earned. It shouldn’t be easy. That’s why I didn’t like this book. It felt easy, there was no effort made by the characters when it came to accomplishing their deeds because they can do superhuman feats without batting an eyelash and, if that’s not enough, they’re aided by magical weapons a plenty. Worst of all, I feel like Salvatore didn’t make much of an effort with his follow up novel. The story has been told many times before, the characters are cookie cutter fantasy heroes and the prose, the pacing and the villains in the novel, none of them feel fresh or even polished. I like to be challenged as a reader or, at the very least, engaged. I would even accept angry at a book, but nothing makes me feel worse than being bored and that’s exactly how I felt while reading Streams of Silver. On a final note, why does Bruenor talk like a pirate? Infuriating.

The Blog Fantastic 009: The Crystal Shard review

There's just something so great about hand painted
covers. Digital painting often rubs me the wrong way.

I’ve read a handful of books by R. A. Salvatore. I read them in my teen years and I thought they were quite good. His books were never my favourite fantasy novels and he was never one of my favourite authors but I’ve always enjoyed them. A friend of mine lent me The Silent Blade and The Spine of the World when I was in high school and since then I’ve always wanted to go back and read Salvatore’s Forgotten Realms books from the start. I attempted to do this during my university years by reading Homeland which is only the first book chronologically. I didn’t like it because I don’t like Drizzt. I find him incredibly boring. He’s the Superman of Forgotten Realms and Salvatore (and thousands of fans) like him way more than they ever should have because he’s such a boring character. Drizzt can do basically anything and survive any challenge, danger and adventure. It sucks out all the romance and allure out of the series.

I thought that the Blog Fantastic project on the blog would be a great opportunity to revisit Salvatore’s Forgotten Realms series. I wanted to read about the origins of the band of heroes I first read about in The Silent Blade. That’s one of the great disappointments of Homeland. I think Drizzt isn’t interesting enough to support his own book, never mind his own trilogy or series of books that’s well into the double digits. I decided to give start with the chronological beginning by reading The Crystal Shard, volume one in the Icewind Dale Trilogy. I liked it more than Homeland but there are still quite a few problems with Salvatore’s first published work.

There are many relatively easy critiques you could make of The Crystal Shard and of Salvatore’s Forgotten Realms novels as a whole but there is quite a bit to really enjoy in this first book. Sure, Salvatore wears his influences on his sleeves (Tolkien!) but his influences have also influenced so many others. There’s the little halfling thief Regis who’s got hairy feet, likes to laze around and eat several large meals a day. There’s also many elements of the dwarfs that very closely resembles the dwarves to be found in The Lord of the Rings and other books by Tolkien. Mithral Hall is nothing but another author’s appropriation of Moria. None of that matters though, not with this book and not with any other Forgotten Realms book.

The full cover to my edition of the book. I quite like it, even for a digitally painted cover.

The Crystal Shard and every other Forgotten Realms of Salvatore’s that I’ve read have a different purpose and it’s something pretty close to America’s version of Shonen manga. These books are about friendship, growing up, getting strong, defeating evil, fulfilling quests and surmounting impossible odds with an unbeatably positive attitude. The characters in this book, Wulfar the barbarian, Bruenor the dwarven leader of the dwarves of Icewind Dale, Drizzt the drow elf and even little Regis are entertaining (though some more than others) and it’s there interactions with each other and the rest of the characters that make these books memorable. The Crystal Shard is a book filled with fast paced action peppered with character development and that’s why I think they’re so popular. That’s why I enjoyed it.

Salvatore has a reputation for writing excellent battle scenes. It’s pretty evident even in his first published work. He’s only good at one-on-one or small battles, though. He fails miserably at writing a siege battle with any real skill. It’s kind of a mess and it took away from the climatic chapters of the book. Instead of dealing with the siege we get little segments of what the main heroes are doing and of course every one of their fights was decisive in the grand scheme of things.

I really like this bit about Salvatore's dwarves. Sorry about the crappy picture.

All in all Salvatore writes an entertaining sword and sorcery novel. That’s really what this is. It’s not an epic fantasy novel like The Lord of the Rings nor is it grand in scope as another type of “shonen fantasy” like Dragonlance (which I love) and it bears just a passing resemblance to today’s fantasy publications. It’s not unique, it’s actually pretty filled with fantasy literature clichés, and parts of it are just dreadful. A good example of that is the villain which only serves as a justifiable target for our heroes fury. For every bad element included in the book there is a good one. My personal favourite is that every dwarf smithy of great skill will produce one legendary weapon in their lifetime. I think it’s a great idea and Salvatore writes the forging of Aegis-fang rather well. I’m not overly impressed by The Crystal Shard but I’m far from disappointed. It was a quick read fill with action and interesting and likeable characters that just begs for me to read the second book and I’ll do just that. Hopefully Salvatore improved on all the weak elements of the book and continued to improve on the good stuff. I’m really hoping that Streams of Silver has a better plot, a better villain and better large scale action sequences.