TDLibrary: The Two Swords by R.A. Salvatore
Full disclosure: I actually read this trilogy out of order. I grabbed book three, misread the roman numeral, saw the number two in the title, and ended up reading this out of order. It felt like I’d missed a giant block of stuff, but thought he just jumped past the first siege and was going to fill in the gaps via flashback. Too much LOST, I guess. I’m going to skip reviewing that one because, well, really I felt I was able to get the whole of the trilogy without actually reading the second book.
That’s probably not good.
Ultimately, the novel keeps the major plot lines active for future novels, and introduces several more. And for me, this is where it falls flat. I wanted a lot out of this trilogy, which is apparently the last before Drizzt jumps a century in the future and leaves all these characters behind. I’m glad to get Drizzt’s new relationship with Innovindil (his first elven companion) and was glad to see him finally get some education from a surface elf. The scenes between these two were generally worth the price of admission and she finally got him to see that it’s OK to live his exceptionally long life in many small lifetimes. It took thousands of pages to get to this point — that it’s OK to love someone who is going to die 800 years before you do.
In all, a trilogy that started off really good for me ended up leaving me feeling kind of blah. Drizzt and Catti-brie finally start a relationship after a bunch of years of nonsense (A good thing they retconned her age, or it would have taken him until she was in her late 30s to wake up). Delly Curtie is, as predicted, disposed of in an ultimately pointless and stupid way (and in a way no sufficiently paranoid group of adventurers would ever allow… leaving your intelligent blade that hates you unattended in close proximity to NPCs? Really?) and Colson is kidnapped. Delly was written out so quickly and ignominiously that, were she an actress, I would have assumed she demanded an ungodly contract.
Secondly, I had a terribly hard time believing that NONE of the surrounding townships saw fit to send in support for a neighboring kingdom battling a goblin-horde of over 20,000. Whatever politician made the argument “hey, the goblin-races will be perfectly satisfied to take over a little chunk of the world and then they’ll settle down. Not our problem” deserves the golden bullsh*t award. I realize Faerun’s states are notoriously provincial, it seems almost ridiculous that the humans wouldn’t team up to end the orc-threat before it got out of hand.
Thirdly, Drizzt spends the whole of the second and third book assuming his friends are dead and never actually going to check. I find this nigh impossible to buy. I realize that Drizzt is generally self-absorbed, fatalistic, and thinks the world revolves around him — but spending months out in the wilderness instead of going back to Mithril Hall and, at the very least, paying his respects? It’s beyond even his goth personality, felt forced, and was completely out of character… again.
I’m torn on the series jumping ahead. On one hand, this world desperately needs a shake-up of some sort. On the other, it would have been nice to give Wulfgar one happy ending. You’d think spending 5 years in Hell followed by another few years as a drunk with PTSD would earn the guy some karma points. Guess not. If the series jumps ahead we leave Wulfgar being partially responsible for the death of his wife and the kidnapping of his adopted daughter. Can the guy catch a break? Just one?
If these characters are never going to move forward, never die, and never really be at a threat — there’s only so many situations you can put them in. They’ve now survived a war, the drow, assassins, an evil goddess, and Hell itself. There’s nothing left. It’s time for Drizzt to find some new friends.
We’ll see how Transitions goes. It’s got one book.
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