Book Review: The Ghost King (Transitions #3, The Legend of Drizzt #19)

The Ghost King by R.A. Salvatore
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Summary:

Don't miss the gripping conclusion to Salvatore's New York Times best-selling Transitions trilogy!

When the Spellplague ravages Faerûn, Drizzt and his companions are caught in the chaos. Seeking out the help of the priest Cadderly–the hero of the recently reissued series The Cleric Quintet–Drizzt finds himself facing his most powerful and elusive foe, the twisted Crenshinibon, the demonic crystal shard he believed had been destroyed years ago.

Review:

This is hard for me, and for you to understand that, I have to tell you a story.

First I want to say it's amazing how much a person can love a work of art, a creation. That is why I will never fault fans, even if the work itself is extremely faulty with many issues that impressionable teenagers shouldn't be exposed to. (But that is a story for another time.)

My point is that R.A. Salvatore's work is the reason why I started to write fantasy. So, giving it three stars hurts a little. It hurts the remnants of that fourteen year old girl who finally found her place, and was terrified of it till college. It hurts the little girl who used to secretly watch anime on Cartoon Network without telling anyone at school. It hurt the little girl who read her adult mystery novels at home, while trying to read age appropriate books in front of other people.

You see, I was thirteen when I fell in love with Harry Potter. That made me realize I loved fantasy. So I went looking for more. Tried reading The Hobbit, and utterly failed. (It was boring, still is.) And then someone told me about the Drizzt books. Some kid online I used to do one of those post style roll-plays with.

So I bought Homeland, and to my surprise it was signed. I read it, loved it, and proceeded to read his Drizzt books and his Demon Wars Saga works. I started mixing in other fantasy, but most of it was different genres. Humor, urban fantasy. The occasional mystery. Then literary works once I entered college (aside from my Lord of the Rings class). I fell behind.

One day I bought the ebooks of the ones I hadn't read yet, this being the first. It took my a while to get through it. For a while I couldn't pin down why. Then it hit me. My nostalgia had bottomed out, collapsed, vanished into thin air. I had become too educated and well read, and these books weren't holding up to my new standards.

The first thing I noticed was that the writing just wasn't that special. It lacked the emotional detail I was looking for. It was straight forward fantasy narrative, but was all over the place. Most of the time it seemed to try to be shooting for third person omniscient, but kind of failing. It was honestly a bit annoying. I mean the writing wasn't bad, but not special. It was like reading Garden of the Moon again. It didn't hold my interest.

And the characters. Damn. How do I say this? When a writer has 20 years of work they need to do something with, I expect such finality to have more of a slow build. Instead I feel like it came on like a truck leaving a smeared mess in it's wake.

First, the falling apart of magic. That alone could get some serious mileage. It's changing how people live. I got broadsided with no reason why.

Instead I got to watch some people panic, favorite characters become absolutely useless, and Cadderly become a walking deus ex machina. I don't even know what really happened. I'm just confused and kind of upset. I mean these characters have always had a slight comic book quality, you know, feats of heroism that would make shounen characters clap in appreciation at the sheer ridiculous, but damn.

I don't even know how I can voice my disappointment anymore. I seriously have no more words. I want to downgrade to a two star, but I guess I have a small shred of nostalgia left over. I don't even know why that's still there. The leftover fan in me is very angry right now. I just realized that. I thought I didn't care about the events in the book, but I do. I feel cheated. Everything felt so sloppy and haphazard. Things just happened. They happened, feeling unconnected to everything else. That is what it was like. That is why I'm disappointed and a bit sad.

I'm angry (view spoiler)[Cattie-brie got fridged (hide spoiler)].

I'm angry characters I loved were just kind of there.

I'm angry I wanted it to be awesome, and then it just wasn't.

Screw it, two stars.

Book Review: The Desert Spear

The Desert Spear by Peter V. Brett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Okay, here I go.

I started reading this book immediately after I read The Warded Man because it was teasing me from my shelf for about a month. I picked my copy up at a used book store, intending to read the series, but it took forever to get the first book. I'm glad I read them back to back. It made remembering everything so much easier.

The following contains spoilers. Please read responsibly.

The book opens with a new class of demon. I applaud Brett on this decision. Upping the stakes in a sequel is a good move as long as it makes sense, and this makes perfect sense. Mind controlling demon princes and their shapeshifting pets add the perfect creep factor. I loved it and appropriately weirded out.

New demon aside, Brett went in an entirely different direction with the first part. He rewound the tape, relocated the story to Krasia, and gave us everything about Jardir. You remember Jardir, right? The jerk off that beat up Arlen and took the spear after saying they were friends. As it turns out, he felt horrible for it because of his highly ambitious first wife, Inevera.

Jardir was a poor kid raised to fight the demons as all Krasian boys are. You make it, you're set for life. You fail, you're disgraced into the lower caste like Abban. All Jardir is really good at is war. He's relatively intelligent, but pretty impulsive, which has a tendency to cloud his judgement. Skipping a bunch of character development, grown up Jardir comes across as fervent in the beliefs of his people and his mission, but yet he doesn't seem to quite "get it" when it comes to anything outside of blood or sex.

When the Krasian's invade the north, he blunders horribly by invading Rizon at night where he kills the men that resist and has the women raped. It is needless to say that the northerners don't take too kindly to this. In fact, when Jadir wants to unite them all under him, they're quite upset (understatement) because of his entrance. This pretty much sets the tone for a majority of the book.

This book is all about clashing. There are two "Deliverers" (Arlen and Jardir), two cultures, and the choices the characters must make. Many of them are torn in some sense between direction and another. There is a couple sentences that Jardir says that really sum up the struggles the best: "It seems our cultures are a natural insult to each other.... We must resist the urge to take offense, if we are to learn from each other." (p.167)

My general reaction to Jardir, last book aside, I didn't know whether I wanted him to die stick around so I could laugh at his misfortune in the form of his powerful wife. Brett gives him a bit of the "awkward foreigner" vibe in the scenes when he's in Cutter's Hollow to see the strange northern people who fight the demons. It sounds like a horrible gimmick, but Brett makes it work with his personality. Jardir always tries to understand the strange in his own frame of reference, as all humans do, and Brett understands that well. I applaud him for it.

As for Inevera, I loved to hate her. She's a well rounded, strong female character, but I felt bad for her husband. Bitch is manipulative.

Cutter's Hollow is where the stories join together since Leesha and Rojer are still there perfecting their demon slaying skills. It's been a year, and the only things that have changed is that Leesha is running the village. Rojer still doesn't believe he's important and Leesha has stopped trying to hook up with Arlen since he refuses to let anyone in because he's absorbed too much demon magic and it doesn't burn off in the sun like it's supposed to.

Arlen, now with so much ink it would make a tattoo convention jealous, is trying to share his battle runes with the people until he shows up in the places he was raised. This time around, Arlen's story is more introspective than before. He struggles with the idea that his time left may be limited. I usually don't like mopey characters, but I understood where he was coming from. He screwed up, and he doesn't want anyone to make the same mistake.

Until Renna comes along. There really isn't anything like a spunky, corn-fed girl to make everything better for our sad sack protagonist. She keeps him on his toes. I like her.

The extra view points are nice outside of the previous three. Brett arranges them artfully enough that I didn't feel like I was head hopping.

The previous world building is intact. Since it was so well done before, all he can do is add to it.

Oh, before I forget. One niggle. "... his face was a sandstorm." I rolled my eyes. I really did.

Over all, just as good as the first. Brett handles culture clash well, which only adds to the tension. The new characters are structured well and the character progression for the previous ones is logical. They don't stagnate. Going back to familiar settings is also a good call.

So, I guess I'm going to have to read the next one.

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