Okay... quickly blowing through the unavoidable need to justify my thoughts.

These are fun books. Not great books, but in the context of your "straight down the middle fantasy" they are good books. I read them first in highschool many years ago. I wanted something right to read while I'm working weird hours, and going to sleep by 5 in the afternoon. Something where if I forget most of what I read the day before, it wouldn't matter. So I'm burning through this series again.

Here are some thoughts.

When I read these books the first time I was playing D&D pretty regularly. I'm not now (unfortunately, if anyone is looking to put a group together and you want a middle aged white guy with self esteem issues who works stupid hours and has a habit of cancelling social engagements because his reclusive life in IT has caused his burgeoning social phobias to blossom into full blown phobias - give me a call).

What I'm noticing is that these books are written like someone took a D&D character and wrote a story about them. That's almost kinda fun if you play, or played D&D.

(Possible spoilers, but if you've made it it to book three I really really hope not)

Like Drizzt's globe of darkness or levitation as innate drown abilities. Or when something takes a 1 or better weapon to hit.

But there are times when it makes the books feel a bit clumsy. And I imagine even more so for someone who hasn't played D&D. For example, is Sojourn Drizzt begins his career as a ranger. D&D players will go "ohh, he get's an affinity with animals, a racial enemy, and tracking abilities". And in the books, all those things happen. But they kinda just happen. The animal handling/empathy for example. Works prefectly fine in the context of a D&D campaign. But in the context of a novel, a dark elf who has always lived underground, in a city most of his life, then in the wilds killing most of the creatures he came across, suddenly being able to calm wild beasts seems a bit out of the blue.

Not a huge deal, but it's there.

Here's another reason to start with the other trilogy (The Icewind Dale trilogy, that comes after these chronologically, but were written before the Dark Elf trilogy.) Continuity isn't perfect. Nothing plot breaking. But when you go from the Dark Elf trilogy into the Icewind Dale trilogy you notice them. On the other hand, they are small enough that if you read the Icewind Dale trilogy first, which takes a littel bit of time telling you aobut Drizzt's past, by the time you circle back to the Dark elf trilogy you'll have forgotten the details that don't match up.

Okay. Like the others. This was a fun book. It has some issues, but I don't think it's aspiring to be anything more than a fun book. ( )

I confess I listened to this while playing an old SSI Forgotten Realms game and probably paid attention to about half of it. I mostly checked out during the battle scenes, particularly the battle with the orcs in the middle of the book. I suppose it is marginally more interesting than Books 2 and 4-6, as Drizzt acclimates to living above ground and there is more character development. But he is such a boring, cardboard hero and the villain of the novel, a bigoted human bounty hunter, is also quite a comedown from the Drow matrons Drizzt faced off against in Books 1 and 2. ( )

Nice conclusion to the prequel trilogy. I believe that this series is better read in the published order rather then time-line order that the publisher suggests by it's numbering scheme. ( )

Fun! Takes a bit of a disjointed ramble through a few different 'sections' of Drizzt's life, and sometimes a bit cliche but it's a fun and fast read. Enjoying D&D definitely makes it more...interesting to read. You can for sure pick out that parts that tie in to Dungeons and Dragons, but given I'm reading through the Realms books BECAUSE of enjoying D&D that's not so much of a negative. ( )

Another fun installment in this series. I liked seeing Drizzt emerge from the Underdark and begin to make his way above-ground. ( )