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dark_reader 's review for:
Passage to Dawn
by R.A. Salvatore
Several possible things were at play to produce this lousy book:
Drizzt trained a seal to play fetch. There's that.
Salvatore's writing is cheesy. I don't think this is deniable. It's not necessarily a bad thing, there's plenty to enjoy in his overpowered, melodramatic, sometimes goofy heroic fantasy adventures, if you're in the mood for that. The Drizzt books have been enduringly popular for good reasons. Maybe in the 6 years since I last read one of his books, I've simply become less tolerant of it. Everything is verily this and verily that, "the very ground seemed to erupt" when "the ground erupted" would have accomplished the same, "Drizzt's lavender orbs" like this is Wattpad. That kind of cheesiness.
Salvatore may have phoned this one in. This is entirely possible. After a string of 2-3 Salvatore books published yearly by TSR from 1987-1994, this was his only book in a 4-year span. I discussed his departure from TSR due to the dealings of Brian M. Thomsen in my reviews of Realms of Magic and Realms of the Underdark. For this book to come out during that time, it had to either have been handed in prior, or written afterwards to fulfill a still-extant contract obligation. If the latter, it makes sense that Salvatore would not put his best effort into this one, while also taking pains not to shit on his own legacy. It feels like the plot points necessary to wrap up the Drizzt uberseries were all in place, even when they were poorly delivered. All of the intended drama and peak moments fell flat.
This book may not have had the editing back-and-forth that his books normally would have, for the same reasons. An invested editor with a good author relationship should have indicated parts that needed more development (like the entire final 100 pages in which all the major events were shoved in), and caught copy editing flubs, like the fact that the main party suddenly attributes a mind-controlled dwarf's behavior to Errtu out of the blue when they had come to a completely different conclusion in the prior scene. Or things like, "The tavern was practically empty. It was full of raucous sailors."
I thought this was going to be a refreshing change from the string of awful to occasionally merely tolerable Forgotten Realms novels that I've been reading, for reasons, since 2015. It hurt me personally to discover that it was as much of a drag as the others. The first half of the book is summarized in the prologue: Errtu's plot is to lure Drizzt to a remote island where a witch will deliver a message to him, to further lure Drizzt into Errtu's clutches. The first half of the book is then: Drizzt is lured to a remote island. A witch delivers a message to him. What fun! What a journey!
Was it an interesting journey to that point, at least? It was not. Was there at least a payoff? No. It didn't help that the message was an unnecessarily lengthy cryptic poem, which the characters couldn't even remember and so we get to spend pages reading about them trying to remember various lines and interpret them. Giving the reader knowledge and then forcing to watch characters fumble at lenghts to attain that same knowledge, getting it wrong in the process, does not make for an engaging book.
How about two and a half pages of goofy wizards using a variety of spells against non-threatening monsters, while other characters just stand around? I can read the Player's Handbook on my own, thank you.
All the time spent on barbarian drama? Useless, and handwaved away at the end.
The fight scenes were probably the worst I have yet read of Salvatore's. Boring, with predictable sudden rescues, and without even Drizzt's constant soul-searching to motivate every maneuver. Against mooks, there's no point, because the good guys are so overpowered with magic items and flush with allies there's no doubt about the outcome. Drizzt is basically the Flash with swords at this point, except for the climactic sequences which forgot all about his speedy feet.
TSR was in dire financial straights for, well, ever, but it came to a head during these years when Salvatore had been driven away. When Wizards of the Coast bought the company and rescued D&D, they were able to attract Salvatore (who wrote and sold his first Demonwars trilogy during that time) back, and 1998 saw the next new Drizzt book. At the rate I can tolerate Forgotten Realms novels these days, it will probably be four years before I get to that one. By Tempus, it had better be better by then.
Drizzt trained a seal to play fetch. There's that.
Salvatore's writing is cheesy. I don't think this is deniable. It's not necessarily a bad thing, there's plenty to enjoy in his overpowered, melodramatic, sometimes goofy heroic fantasy adventures, if you're in the mood for that. The Drizzt books have been enduringly popular for good reasons. Maybe in the 6 years since I last read one of his books, I've simply become less tolerant of it. Everything is verily this and verily that, "the very ground seemed to erupt" when "the ground erupted" would have accomplished the same, "Drizzt's lavender orbs" like this is Wattpad. That kind of cheesiness.
Salvatore may have phoned this one in. This is entirely possible. After a string of 2-3 Salvatore books published yearly by TSR from 1987-1994, this was his only book in a 4-year span. I discussed his departure from TSR due to the dealings of Brian M. Thomsen in my reviews of Realms of Magic and Realms of the Underdark. For this book to come out during that time, it had to either have been handed in prior, or written afterwards to fulfill a still-extant contract obligation. If the latter, it makes sense that Salvatore would not put his best effort into this one, while also taking pains not to shit on his own legacy. It feels like the plot points necessary to wrap up the Drizzt uberseries were all in place, even when they were poorly delivered. All of the intended drama and peak moments fell flat.
This book may not have had the editing back-and-forth that his books normally would have, for the same reasons. An invested editor with a good author relationship should have indicated parts that needed more development (like the entire final 100 pages in which all the major events were shoved in), and caught copy editing flubs, like the fact that the main party suddenly attributes a mind-controlled dwarf's behavior to Errtu out of the blue when they had come to a completely different conclusion in the prior scene. Or things like, "The tavern was practically empty. It was full of raucous sailors."
I thought this was going to be a refreshing change from the string of awful to occasionally merely tolerable Forgotten Realms novels that I've been reading, for reasons, since 2015. It hurt me personally to discover that it was as much of a drag as the others. The first half of the book is summarized in the prologue: Errtu's plot is to lure Drizzt to a remote island where a witch will deliver a message to him, to further lure Drizzt into Errtu's clutches. The first half of the book is then: Drizzt is lured to a remote island. A witch delivers a message to him. What fun! What a journey!
Was it an interesting journey to that point, at least? It was not. Was there at least a payoff? No. It didn't help that the message was an unnecessarily lengthy cryptic poem, which the characters couldn't even remember and so we get to spend pages reading about them trying to remember various lines and interpret them. Giving the reader knowledge and then forcing to watch characters fumble at lenghts to attain that same knowledge, getting it wrong in the process, does not make for an engaging book.
How about two and a half pages of goofy wizards using a variety of spells against non-threatening monsters, while other characters just stand around? I can read the Player's Handbook on my own, thank you.
All the time spent on barbarian drama? Useless, and handwaved away at the end.
The fight scenes were probably the worst I have yet read of Salvatore's. Boring, with predictable sudden rescues, and without even Drizzt's constant soul-searching to motivate every maneuver. Against mooks, there's no point, because the good guys are so overpowered with magic items and flush with allies there's no doubt about the outcome. Drizzt is basically the Flash with swords at this point, except for the climactic sequences which forgot all about his speedy feet.
TSR was in dire financial straights for, well, ever, but it came to a head during these years when Salvatore had been driven away. When Wizards of the Coast bought the company and rescued D&D, they were able to attract Salvatore (who wrote and sold his first Demonwars trilogy during that time) back, and 1998 saw the next new Drizzt book. At the rate I can tolerate Forgotten Realms novels these days, it will probably be four years before I get to that one. By Tempus, it had better be better by then.