Salvatore goes back into the past of his hero, Drizzt, and explores his childhood in the Underdark. He does a great job of describing the drow society, and the machinations of its leaders. This is the story of how Drizzt became good, and why he fled from his homeland. ( )

The Dark Elf Trilogy has long been one of my favorite books. I've purchased three copies; the first destroyed by children, the second destroyed by flood, the third sitting nicely on a shelf out of the reach of both. ( )

I turned to this recently when I wanted a quick fantasy fix, and because I'd heard that R. A. Salvatore's stuff was pretty good. While it wasn't as good as I expected, it was still a fun read.

The story itself, dealing with dark elves (duh!) and Drizzt Do'Urden's rebellion against his race's ingrained lack of morality, is a good one. What marred the experience for me was not the story telling, but some bad writing quirks that Salvatore has. Specifically, he uses a set of tag lines for his dialogue over and over - and then he uses them some more. I get that dark elves are evil and all, but do they really have to *growl* and *snap* so much? As I remarked on my blog, it reached the point that I wondered if the dark elves had a bit of canine blood in them.

There were some other things that seemed a bit goofy, which were incorporated into the book mostly (I assume) to plant more links to the D&D game itself. For example, all dark elves can levitate; the Do'Urdens, Drizzt's family, can levitate repeatedly. And so they have no stairway to their tower. They just levitate up to the balcony to get in. It was explained in the book that it helped them defend their home from the other ruling houses of the city, but even with that explanation - levitating into your house? Struck me as goofy. :)

All in all, I don't regret reading it, even though I had to grit my teeth a bit to get through the dialogue. It was a bit battle heavy, but it *is* based on D&D, so I can't say I expected otherwise. I'm going to finish reading the Dark Elf Trilogy to see how it all pans out. ( )

This book is awesome! I love watching Drizzt grow and learning about his upbringing. Getting to see the culture of the Drow so intimately is also fantastic. Ultimately, this book is great because of the inner turmoil Drizzt goes through as he attempts to come to terms with “what it means to be a Drow” and his existence as one. ( )

The kind of book that would have entertained me as a teenager. As an adult I didn't find the writing to be high quality or the characters particularly well drawn, including the famous Drizzt. ( )