| Aerich |
11-19-2005 03:18 AM |
Well, now that you give an endorsement to the new one, I may just read it. I started reading Salvatore at 12 (around the time he finished the Icewind Dale trilogy) and was hooked for a while. However, I've grown a lot as a person since then, as I hope everybody would in a nearly 15-year span, but he hasn't progressed nearly that far as a writer.
I give Salvatore an A (considering the genre) up to the end of Siege of Darkness. I liked his little sidebars of the Crimson Shadow, the Cleric Quintet, Ynis Aielle, and the first three books of the Demon Wars set. I'd have to rank Homeland as probably my favourite Forgotten Realms book.
I appreciate that he has been trying to go in a bit of a different direction since, but he's moved away from his strengths without replacing them with writing that is truly more "literary". I though the Entreri/Jarlaxle combo was promising and their relationship was a throwback to the "small group against the world" structure of his earlier books, but Drizzt has been spinning his wheels for a few books now (swish, lvl 16 drow ranger takes out a few dozen orcs, whoosh, gets into trouble that you know he'll get out of since he's a 16th lvl drow ranger, swish, he fights his way out of trouble again as expected).
For a 45+ year old writer, it's a bit disappointing that much of his stuff doesn't seem very nuanced or developed. His success in the earlier books is largely due to memorable (and uber) characters and interesting set piece skirmishes and battles; unfortunately, his recent attempts to get into the hearts of his characters tend to fall flat, and time spent doing that means he gives scant attention to old favourites, who end up as cardboard caricatures of their former selves using recycled dialogue. He's much better off leaving only hints of larger emotions between his characters, because the "introspection" and dialogue of his characters as they try to deal with the emotional baggage he saddles them with is predominantly forced, shallow, and maudlin; it reads like something written by an adolescent who's read a few censored harlequin tragic romances and watched too many soaps.
I suppose I've been down on him recently because he had so much promise. He has to be considered one of the stronger writers out there who have contributed to the AD&D universe, at least in terms of sales and ideas; I believe the society and culture of the drow and the Underdark in general were mostly the products of his fertile imagination when he was going good, for which he deserves credit. I'm decently satisfied with the War of the Spider Queen series, although like many recent Salvatore efforts it doesn't seem to quite fulfill its potential. However, despite some modest recent successes, it's hard for the genre (or subgenre) to get much respect when one of its most successful writers is as flawed and shallow as Salvatore has occasionally shown himself to be.
Perhaps he hasn't put his best efforts into it because of his dispute with Wizards of the Coast. I heard he had a series deal about Drizzt & Co that he didn't want to honour (probably because they were making an obscene profit off of him without passing much along). His writing doesn't seem effortless anymore. So many of his earlier books were full of visual imagery that could stick with you for days, and I haven't seen much of that from him recently.
I do ramble on, don't I? ;)
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