TDL’s Sports, Wrestling, & Otherwise

Chronologically written (and actually read by me) before The Dark Elf Trilogy, the The Icewind Dale Trilogy by R.A. Salvatore is the 2nd of the Drizzt trilogies or books 4, 5, and 6 of the Legend of Drizzt series. This trilogy was the series that introduced Drizzt and his compatriots Regis, Catti-brie, Wulfgar, and Bruenor to world.

Reading through this series now it’s not hard to figure out why Drizzt turned out to be the breakout character of this series. Everyone else is honestly kind of one-dimensional and boring. The idea that no one expected this character to be hugely and absurdly popular — and create a generation of fanboys who demanded to play dual-scimitar wielding rangers in their weekly game — is probably one of the reasons TSR is now a sub-subdivision of Hasbro. Take a look at the major characters who are introduced in this series:

Bruenor Battlehammer: The king of this dwarf tribe. He’s a surly, angry, drinking dwarf with a soft side who took in a human girl (Catti-brie) after a goblin raid killed her parents. He also takes in another human boy (Wulfgar) after the barbarian tribes failed attack on Ten Towns in The Crystal Shard (book one). Bruenor, other than his penchant for taking in humans, never does anything to break out of the surly dwarf archetype that exists everywhere from Lord of the Rings on down. In fact, when I mention Bruenor, picture Gimli.

Catti-Brie: The aforementioned human girl whose parents were killed in a goblin raid. How exactly she came to be in Bruenor’s care is never really addressed, just know that she’s 18 and Bruenor is the only father she knows. We’re first introduced to her at the end of the Dark Elf Trilogy and she’s only 13. She is the first human who doesn’t treat Drizzt with mistrust. Her trust and Drizzt’s subsequent rescue of her earns him Bruenor’s trust. Five years later she’s beautiful young woman and a potential love interest for Drizzt. She’s also one of my least favorite characters in any book ever. For whatever reason this character has always seemed a bit lame to me. She always seems like she’s floating around the exterior of the story and inserting herself into everything. Somewhere in the course of this trilogy she goes from “girl who barely carried a shortsword around and was terrorized by an assassin” to “girl who finds a magic longbow and all of the sudden morphs into the worlds most dangerous markswoman.” I’ve never really bought her.

Wulfgar: The first parts of book one involve the barbarian tribes attack on Ten Towns. Bruenor captures one of the younger boys instead of killing him and indentures him to five years of servitude. He raised Wulfgar as a son. Advance five years in The Crystal Shard and Wulfgar is a 6′10″, 300-lbs of muscle fighting machine. Jeez, are he and Catti-brie going to fall in love someday?

Regis: The halfling thief. He’s the hook for both book three, The Halfling’s Gem, and the conduit through which Drizzt will be introduced to his Moriarty. I’d like to think that Regis has points in these books other than to be a troublemaker that leads the friends’ adventures… but he really doesn’t. After this series, he’s rarely around at all. Regis’s most important role in any of these books to force Drizzt to meet his nemesis.

Artemis Entreri: Entreri is supposed to represent Drizzt’s dark half. A man who grew up on the tough streets of Calimshan, Entreri is every bit the fighter that Drizzt is. This is important because we’re supposed to understand that Drizzt is the most impressive fighter to wield two weapons that anyone has ever seen. Entreri is every bit as skilled as Drizzt, but sees himself as superior because he is not hindered by personal relationships. His judgment is never clouded by care for someone else. This character would be better if Salvatore didn’t spend pages and pages of text beating you about the head about how you’re supposed to understand that this guy is Drizzt without the soul and, later, what Drizzt would have become had he not been raised with values by Vierna and Zaknafein.

Most of these characters, other than Drizzt, are kind of boring. In fact, the only reason I don’t doubt that Drizzt wasn’t supposed to be the central character in these books is the complete lack of mention of why the hell there was a drow on the surface. Once we get in to books after this, the roles of Regis, Bruenor, and Catti-brie are far diminished in lieu of the far more interesting conflicts among the drow.

The 2nd half of The Crystal Shard deals with an artifact of the same name and a wizard who gets his hand on said artifact and wants to use it to conquer Ten Towns. The artifact is a tremendously evil item of power that had drawn the balor Errtu to the surface. Unfortunately, a bumbling human wizard had found it first. The artifact uses the human as a vessel and Drizzt and crew vanquish everything.

The 2nd book, Streams of Silver deal with the friend’s adventure across the surface and the rampant racism that Drizzt has to deal with once he leaves his comfort zone in Icewind Dale. This is also the first real mention of Entreri as we find out that he has been tasked with capturing Regis. Regis has a fancy ruby pendant with hypnotic powers that he stole from the master of the Calimshan Thieves’ Guild. This book pretty much contains the entire sequence of events that makes me dislike Cattie-brie. She spends a good portion of this book as one with no skill with a weapon who is terrified of Entreri. By the end of the book, she’s found a bow and is shooting arrows through everything that comes near her. There’s no progression. She just goes from Princess Zelda to Bullseye. It seems like Salvatore had a character map for her, then decided he didn’t need a damsel in distress and just went in another direction without actually retconning what he’d already wrote. It never quite worked out… even though Catti-brie remains as the crazy archer of doom, it never quite rings true. You always have that image of her terrified of Entreri.

The 3rd book, The Halfling’s Gem, deals with what happens after Entreri catches up with the friends. He catches Regis and begins the long trek back to Calimshan. Wulfgar and Drizzt chase after them culminating with Drizzt meeting his dark half in battle.

If the theme of the last trilogy was theology’s effect on society, the theme of this trilogy is the effect of racism on the individual. Most of the good parts of the trilogy are written from Drizzt’s point of view and the fact that, no matter what he does, people will always judge him first on the reputation of his people. One of the biggest internal struggles he faces is when he is given a mask which allows him to appear as a surface elf. Not nearly enough time is spent on this. Drizzt is given the opportunity to literally change his skin but chooses to continue allow the ignorant to judge him how they will. The assumption being if they will judge me on my skin and not my actions that they are not people he would care to associate with.

It’s coming across that I don’t like this series… that isn’t true, although Salvatore’s writing style can also get grating after a while. I do like it but I also know I like the stuff that comes after it better.

If you want to read any of Salvatore’s future Dark Elf works, this trilogy is necessary to get the history and backstory of a lot of the relationships (the rest are addressed in the Dark Elf Trilogy). Other than that, they’re fun one-off fantasy books and nothing more.