TDL Book Reviews: Starless Night by R.A. Salvatore
My ongoing quest to get through all the Drizzt books continues. Next up is Starless Night, the eighth Drizzt book and the second of the Legacy of the Drow cycle. I remembered liking this more than The Legacy but that isn’t saying much.
The set-up to this book is simple. Drizzt feels guilty for the death of Wulfgar and believes he has to stop the drow pursuit of him. To do that he has to travel back to Menzoberranzan to do….. something. I don’t really know, exactly, what Drizzt’s plan to stop, you know, a whole city from attacking him was but, regardless, he gives Guenhwyvar to Regis with explicit instructions to tell no one where he’s going. This only lasts a day or two until Catti-brie, stricken with grief over her fallen fiance, yells the truth out of Regis and takes off in pursuit.
Reading this book, I’m realizing what my problem is with reading these books again ten years later. I have many, many more level of geek experience now and these books are written as much for people who’ve never played the game as people who have. As such, I know most of the rules of the D&D world and keep applying them to the stories. For instance, Catti-Brie tracks Drizzt to Silverymoon — basically the Forgotten Realms version of Chicago — and finds the woman who Drizzt’s been sharing a relationship with. As it turns out, Drizzt has in fact been there. Now, Lady Alustriel (one of the most powerful spellcasters on the planet — the daughter of a GOD mind you — tells Catti-brie that she has no way to get a hold of Drizzt. And that’s entirely not true. There are NUMEROUS ways to send a message to Drizzt.
Second problem. Drow use sleep poison. Drizzt knows drow use sleep poison. Everyone on the surface knows that, when drow elves attack, they have poison-tipped darts on crossbow bolts that are designed to knock you out. But Drizzt somehow decides to assault Menzoberranzan without the use of any anti-poison measures at all? He’s really that stupid? This is a frustrating thing with Salvatore’s writing. He loves to use the drow sleep poison to capture characters so he makes them seem woefully unprepared for encounters. You know the annoying guy you watch a movie with who tells you they’re not properly portraying how a particular model of gun recoils? Yeah, that’s me with geeky D&D references in these books.
On a more positive note, this is really the first book since the Dark Elf Trilogy that really gets into the inner workings and the intrigue of the drow city of Menzoberranzan. We learn that, in fact, the Matron mother has no interest in kidnapping Drizzt. Instead, she is using Drizzt to rally the houses for an assault on Mithral Hall. They plan to take the dwarven city to be an outpost to the surface. Drizzt, it turns out, is just a rallying cry.
The other good thing about this book is it really starts to get in to Jarlaxle of Bregan D’aerthe. The drow city is a matriarchy. It’s organized into to a strict hierarchical structure where females are in charge and males are subservient. It’s nearly impossible to be a drow without a house. Except for Jarlaxle. Jarlaxle created a mercenary organization built from commoners and houseless nobles (such as Drizzt’s brother Dinin. After House Do’Urden was destroyed, Dinin was offered a spot in Bregan D’aerthe as opposed to getting killed by the attacking house. He accepted). Bregan D’aerthe holds no loyalty to any house and is available to the highest bidder. In fact, in the introduction to the organization, we see his mercenary band involved in an attack on one of the drow houses only to turn on the attackers and join the defenders when the matron mother of the defending house offers him more money. I love Jarlaxle and hope that future books really start to delve in to him even more.
I’m neutral on this book. I wouldn’t recommend it but I wouldn’t tell you to not bother.