One New York Life

I considered writing a review for each of these books individually but later decided it was pointless. The TSR trilogies are meant to be taken as one whole. Each book CAN be taken individually but it makes more sense to think about them as a whole rather than three parts. The Dark Elf Trilogy is the prequel to the Icewind Dale trilogy. I read it first as I wanted to do the chronological thing. The Dark Elf Trilogy deals with Drizzt’s birth in Menzoberranzan and how he manages to become a “good guy” while surrounded by nothing but evil.

In the Icewind Dale Trilogy, Drizzt was a supporting character… but it turned out that he a more interesting character than any of the book’s other characters. You can’t just drop a neutral good drow elf on people and expect them not to ask questions. As it happens, the character was popular enough to warrant an entire prequel trilogy. I’d give credit to TSR for realizing that except TSR was apparently one of the crappiest run companies ever.

As it turned out, it went pretty well and Salvatore knocked out three of my favorite books ever. Reading them through, they’ve not only held up but have actually become more relevant in the 20 years since it’s been written.

How? Well, drow society is a strict theocracy. The city’s ruling council is made up of the high priestesses of the top eight houses in the city. Each priestess is very careful to exactly follow the tenets of their goddess Lloth or risk losing her favor. The loss of her favor means the eradication of the house. As such, the followers of Lloth find themselves justified in anything they do. Any mercy is frowned upon. The drow believe that Lloth saved them after the surface elves drove them underground and gave them the gifts needed to survive in underground caves. We even get a taste of the propaganda delivered to young students in school that ensures the hatred of the surface world continues through generations. To Salvatore’s credit, it probably took some work to take creatures that are just handy bad guys and flesh out WHY they’re bad.

What he also gives you is a fictionalization of a theocracy based on hatred of all others who don’t believe like they do. It has everything: the scapegoating of the surface elves, the belief that they are right and everyone else is wrong, a ruler who is believed to be the very voice of their god, “surface raids” that are pretty much terrorist attacks, and the fanatical following of everything deemed proper by their goddess lest they fall out of favor and be sacrificed. 17 years later and this is more relevant now than it was then. Not necessarily because of terrorism abroad, but as a strong cautionary exaggeration of what happens when ANY society is raised with an “us vs. them” mentality.

The best part of this book is that it actually presents a believable chain of events that led to the rearing of a good guy in a world of bad guys. Two characters, his father Zaknafein Do’Urden and his sister Vierna are the two people who have the strongest hand in raising Drizzt. Vierna is described as the least evil of Drizzt’s three sisters and the only other child of Zaknafein and Malice Do’Urden. In drow society, there is no concept of marriage. The matron mother has a normal consort, but she can use whoever she desires in her house when the mood strikes her. The child is raised as she sees fit. Male children are frowned upon and the third living male is sacrificed at birth. Had Drizzt’s eldest brother not been killed by his 2nd eldest brother on the night of his birth, Drizzt would have been killed to appease Lloth. Vierna raises Drizzt for his first ten years and is not as cruel as his other sisters would be given the same job. In fact, she’s often described as the only female in the household who doesn’t exactly accept all of Lloth’s teachings. After the first ten years, Zaknafein takes over to teach Drizzt how to fight. Zaknafein is described as the best fighter in Menzoberranzan and of high moral character in a world where morals are seen as a weakness. Zaknafein instills this strong moral character in Drizzt before he goes into the drow schools. Drizzt, armed with morals from his first twenty years, does not fall for the propaganda machines and quickly learns he can’t live amongst these people. After finding himself unable to kill a surface elf child in a drow raid (and this ultimately brings down his entire family) he runs from Menzoberranzan and tries to find his own way.

Leaving the city he finds other people who help guide him on his path. He meets up with a svirfneblin (the gnome version of the drow) who he spared years before who gives him aid. When he gets to the surface he finds a blind ranger who teaches him the ways of the forest.

Altogether, this story is one of the more uplifting stories I’ve ever read. Drizzt rises above the evil teachings of his homeland to strike out on his own. Outside of Menzoberranzan, he faces nothing but racism because of the terrible reputation of his people but rises above it based on his morals and his actions. It leaves you with a tremendous feeling of hope.

If these books were about people instead of elves, they’d probably be considered a classic study in theology and racism in the modern world. As they are, they’re just tremendous reads.

Strong recommendation.

My descent into true fantasy geekdom can be traced back to one guy. In seventh grade, a buddy of mine (who we’ll refer to by his nickname “Huge”) moved to my school. In eighth grade, he started talking about Dungeons and Dragons. By halfway through eighth grade, I was going over his house pretty regularly to play with a group involving me, Huge, another guy from school, Huge’s uncle, and two of Huge’s cousins. By three-quarters of the way through eighth grade I was looking in the fantasy/role-playing section of Waldenbooks (in those dark, dark days before Barnes and Noble or Borders) for new stuff to buy. I brought my first Player’s Handbook and Dungeon Master’s Guide sometime that year. My mom and dad were really not cool with it at first… the “Dungeons and Dragons makes you commit suicide, rape babies, and kill your parents” stories from the late 80s were still fresh in their minds. Apparently, my 14-year-old diplomacy skills were well-developed enough that I convinced them that Huge’s uncle was, in fact, NOT training me for a life full of Satan and Black Sabbath but was helping me use an imagination which I was often wasting on nothing.

Y’see, I was an only child. I did a lot of things to entertain myself. I played eight-man games of Monopoly by myself and secretly rooted for the dog. I filled a ton of spiral notebooks writing stories about nothing. I picked up a board game called HeroQuest and played through all the quest packs by myself. I’d come up with different backstories for the characters and the bad guys. Playing AD&D was good for me and I appreciate my parents being cool with stuff that was, in retrospect, kinda creepy. “Yeah, dad… I met this kid at school and I’m going over his place to play Dungeons and Dragons with his 40-year-old uncle. That’s cool, right?”

I guess parents in the early 90s hadn’t been conditioned to assume everyone with a penis was out to molest their children.

Anyway… later on after I had all the game books I started drifting over toward the novels. TSR had novels set in all their major worlds: Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, Al-Qadim (!), Greyhawk, and Ravenloft were a few of them. For whatever reason, I went with the Forgotten Realms and I’ve been a fan of the world setting ever since. At 15, I bought the AD&D Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting for 2nd edition. I remember my mom being ticked I’d spend $50 on something like that. I also remember poring through every scrap of stuff in the box set. The box set contained huge maps of the Realms which I’d still be using today if I had a D&D group. I remember taking the adventure they gave you with the setting (designed to take level 1 characters to level 2) and modifying it enough to set up a huge 20-level campaign. I have friends that still tell me it was the best campaign they’ve ever played and that makes me very happy.

The first Forgotten Realms novel I picked up was Elfshadow. This was book 2 (I think) in the Harper’s series. After reading through all the Harpers books I started reading through some of the various trilogies until finally finding the Icewind Dale Trilogy by R.A. Salvatore. The trilogy was about an evil artifact that found its way into the hands of a wizard who was using it for evil. One of the characters in that book was Drizzt Do’Urden, a dark elf who’d thrown off the evil tendencies of his race to become a hero on the surface.

As it turned out, Salvatore struck gold with Drizzt… a character he insists was supposed to be a supporting character in the trilogy. This led to a prequel (The Dark Elf Trilogy) and to date, 14 other books — some of which have cracked the New York Times Bestseller List. As it also turns out, I happened to notice that the New York Library surprisingly has most of them. I decided to go through the Drizzt series chronologically before undertaking the absurdity that is the Wheel of Time.

This is as much an experiment to see if the fantasy stuff I read in my earlier years holds up as it is to remind myself about the characters and events that lead into the books of the series I haven’t read yet.

I’m glad to see that at least one actual fantasy author is calling out J.K. Rowling on her theft and shenanigans. I briefly mentioned in my review of the Harry Potter Series that J.K. Rowling was suing a small time publisher for publishing a companion piece to the Potter series that was essentially an encyclopedia of terms. Don’t remember what a Muggle is? Quickly look it up in a reference companion. This is accepted in, oh, all of academia.

The untalented attention whore had a problem with that and sued the publishing house in Manhattan federal court. I had made the point in my post that it was utterly amazing that an author who blatantly stole plots and character archetypes from a host of fantasy authors would have the audacity to sue someone for writing an (at the very least, admitted) encyclopedia based on her work. Then, claiming the whole ordeal was giving her writer’s block when, in fact, the only thing that’s giving her writer’s block is the fact there isn’t an original idea rattling around in her skull.

Well, I was very happy to see Orson Scott Card call her out on it. In much the same way that I pointed out glaring similarities between the Potter series and other works, Card says:

Well, heck, I feel like the plot of my novel Ender’s Game was stolen by J.K. Rowling.

A young kid growing up in an oppressive family situation suddenly learns that he is one of a special class of children with special abilities, who are to be educated in a remote training facility where student life is dominated by an intense game played by teams flying in midair, at which this kid turns out to be exceptionally talented and a natural leader. He trains other kids in unauthorized extra sessions, which enrages his enemies, who attack him with the intention of killing him; but he is protected by his loyal, brilliant friends and gains strength from the love of some of his family members. He is given special guidance by an older man of legendary accomplishments who previously kept the enemy at bay. He goes on to become the crucial figure in a struggle against an unseen enemy who threatens the whole world.

I read Ender’s Game in college. I’d forgotten the plot, but he’s right. He also links a Geocities page which apparently contains a bunch of similarities between Harry Potter and other works. It’s down at the time of this writing (stupid data transfer limit) but I’m going to get a look at it sooner or later. I can’t wait. I will be ripping off a guy writing about ripoffs for blog content.

And the Circle of Life goes on.