TDL’s Sports, Wrestling, & Otherwise

Continuing through my Legend of Drizzt chronological quest, I finally got through the first two trilogies and into the individual books. Before Wizards of the Coast got hold of the rights and repackaged the same work into the Legacy of the Drow and the Legend of Drizzt sets, The Legacy was the first stand alone Drizzt Do’Urden book. The original release was in 1992 under TSR. I had to hunt this book down a little. It’s mine, but I’d lent it out so many times that I had no idea who had it. I tend to be far less crazy about getting books back than I do DVDs or CDs. My favorite part of this book is the original cover pictured to the left. They spent six books already teaching us about dark elves. They live beneath the ground and have ebony skin black as night. On the cover: white guy. God bless TSR.

The little bit I remembered about this book was that I didn’t like it. Even when I first read it back in high school, I remember seeing that it was a “best-seller” and assumed it would be a tremendously awesome book. I remember reading (after having read the two trilogies already reviewed on here) and being tremendously disappointed in it. I wanted to see if I remembered correctly or not so I tried to go into it with an open mind.

Turns out that it held up as one of my least favorite books of all time and I still don’t understand why it was received so well and why some people think it’s one of Salvatore’s best works. I question now whether or not any of the people who reviewed it or received it well even read the preceding six books before picking up this one.

I have the very same complaints with the book in the present day that I did fifteen years ago. Salvatore took one of the most important and interesting characters in the entire Dark Elf Trilogy, Drizzt’s sister Vierna, and completely flushed away everything interesting about her. The first child of Zaknafein (and thus Drizzt’s only full sibling), Vierna’s not-quite-evil attitude was given as one of the primary reasons that Drizzt winds up with strong moral character and the ability to think for himself. She didn’t treat him as awful as her other sisters did and didn’t indoctrinate him properly. Drizzt references this in his “writings” that open the book’s parts. He questions “how would I have turned out if wicked Briza had raised me. Would I have turned out just as evil as she?” At the beginning of The Legacy all of those very interesting questions are flushed away.

We pick up in Menzoberranzan some 30 years after Drizzt has left. We’re given no information on what has happened to Vierna in the interim, but she’s returned to us as just another bat-shit crazy priestess of Lloth. In thirty years she’s gone from kinda-not evil to “I’m going to turn one brother into a drider and hunt down and kill the other one for the glory of Lloth” evil. It made no sense to me how a character who never really exhibited many evil tendencies is suddenly as gloriously evil as her sister Briza.

Every bit of this plot, from the absurd set-up (Vierna is told if she kills Drizzt she will be given control of the first ruling house, House Baenre, even though she’s in no way related to the family) to the execution (Vierna turns her brother Dinin into a drider for questioning her mission… something Trilogy Vierna never would have considered) to the resolution (Drizzt unapologetically running his sword through her heart) is weak and senseless. Salvatore was probably going for something along the line of “constant religious fanaticism of an evil deity can drive anyone insane” but it fell totally flat. It was also completely out of Drizzt’s character to coldly kill her because she was reaching for a weapon that he absolutely could have disarmed. The Drizzt everyone has been introduced to through this book would have disarmed Vierna, knocked her out, showed her the non-Lloth world of the surface, and tried to save her. Instead he runs through the only member of his family he ever really cared about. I didn’t buy it then and I don’t buy it now. I have always thought a better story would have been Drizzt trying to save Vierna’s and convert her to Shar or Eilistraee. Instead, she’s used as a weak catalyst (when any high priestess from any house could have been used more believably) to kill off major characters and get Drizzt to attack Menzoberranzan.

On top of that, I really hated Salvatore’s use of “a quick death is just too good for you” moment with Artemis Entreri. Entreri catches up with Drizzt, loses again, and thrown into a cavern by Drizzt. Regis goes out to find him — the same Regis that Entreri has just spent the entirety of three books either chasing, torturing, capturing, or killing — finds him completely helpless, and says “A quick death is just too good for you, I’m going to leave you for the vultures.” Really? When he was just a member of an entire force that attacked your home? No one’s going to come find him? Really? I understand that Salvatore was not finished with character, and that’s fine, just don’t use a stupid and cliche way to keep him alive.

The only good thing about this book was the exploration of Wulfgar trying to learn to deal with a strong-willed woman. In the entirety of the Icewind Dale Trilogy, barbarian women are never seen and it’s suggested they live as slaves to the men. At the end of the trilogy, it’s suggested that Catti-brie and Wulfgar are going to get together and by the beginning of this book there’s a wedding planned. Showing Wulfgar dealing with a wife who won’t kowtow to his wishes is a good character exploration. Unfortunately, most of it is thrown away by simple jealousy. With the use of the ruby pendant, Wulfgar is convinced Drizzt is trying to steal Catti-brie from him and it follows the predictable course from there. This was another crazy character turn that made no sense at all. For most of the preceding trilogy, we’re told that Bruenor raised Wulfgar as his son and imparted his values on him. By this book, Wulfgar is less complex and mostly an angry barbarian. Another pretty silly destruction of a character’s background in the need to give him a tragic flaw.

Just like then, I hated this book because Salvatore spent 1800 pages in the Dark Elf and Icewind Dale Trilogies establishing characters one way and completely derailed them in this book. I found myself just wishing this book was over by halfway through because I wanted to move on because I knew the ending was going to be just as unsatisfying as it was the first time.

Solid recommendation to avoid.