Overall Rating - 7/10

Narration - 5/10

This book is narrated by Victor Bevine. Different narration styles can be hit or miss for different people, and Bevine's didn't really hit for me here. He wasn't bad by any means, but his performance was far from dazzling for me. I wish I could pinpoint why, but overall the narration just felt boring for me.

Plot - 7/10

Fast pacing, and one or two good twists. Pace was a little too fast for my taste, making it harder to stay engaged with things happening so fast. That said, the climax was pretty freaking sick. Once

they arrived at Mithral Hall

, things really picked up and holy cow was I in it to the end.

Fantasy World-building - 8/10

Faerûn is a wonderful setting. Salvatore takes what previous D&D creators have begun and masterfully fleshes it out, adding new intriguing details and exciting easter eggs.

Characters - 6/10

I feel ambivalent about the character work in this novel. As expected, Drizzt and his companions all have unique personalities that complement each other well, in how well they get along as well as the nature of their disagreements. But I didn't think there was very much satisfying development (with one notable exception). The characters are all quite unique, and I understand their motivations, but I personally would like more introspection and internal dialogue for the characters with big moments.

Prose - 5/10

I find Salvatore's writing to be overall mediocre. Descriptions of places and events are quite simple, with little fluff. The interludes of Drizzt's introspections (journal entries?) are nice, and I believe Salvatore puts in a bit more effort for his philosophizing.

Theme - 7/10

This book covered multiple themes, the ones that stuck out to me being prejudice, nostalgia, and separating yourself from your past. Each of these themes are clearly presented and executed upon, entwining well with the plot and character development (what little there is, anyway).

Overall Thoughts

I was having trouble with this book for the majority of it, but the 60% mark was when I started to feel more engaged. This might be due to feelings around the narration of the audiobook. Because of that, I excepted the overall rating from the narration score. The plot was a bit too fast for me, but the climax was very well executed and hooked me really well. The characters weren't very engaging despite how distinct and fun they are. Despite some of my gripes, I'm always happy to return to Faerûn and the companions for a new adventurous quest!

Content Warnings

fieldofhats's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

I read this because I’m doing an essay comparing it with The Hobbit for my Young Adult Literature class, or else I would not have bothered after the disappointment of Sojourn. I remember liking this one the best of The Icewind Dale Trilogy, but still not as good as any of The Dark Elf Trilogy. I don’t plan on reading the other two Icewind Dale books, but this one was extremely meh, for many reasons.

Spoilers ahead.

To start on a lighter note, the fight scenes were okay. Not as good as the fight scenes in Exile, but not as lifeless as the few that I read in Sojourn. Largely, they were just kind of uninteresting. The most notable fights were the one with the ghostly pegasus, the brief tussle between Drizzt and Entreri, and the Shimmergloom battle. Other than those, I didn’t care all too much for the fights in this one.

Besides Bruenor, there was very little proper character development. Wulfgar was extremely flat throughout, Drizzt was discriminated against a few times, and Regis had a sense of ongoing guilt. But none of those served to further their overall arcs. I get that this novel was very Bruenor-centered, but some level of further characterization would have been nice.

The themes were all over the place. Each diary entry set up a distinct theme (beauty in mystery, danger in nostalgia, and responsibility in power, respectively), but only one, danger in nostalgia, is consistent throughout the story. The first theme seems like it should be prevalent since it relates to dragons and coincides with a long trek, like the one they’re on, but it just doesn’t. There are a few times where the band stops to admire the scenery, but they never ponder about dragons or even the mysteries of Mithral Hall, at least until the very end. They don’t even interact with Shimmergloom at all except to fight and kill him. The theme presented to us in the third diary entry simply isn’t brought up in the main book at all, even though using Shimmergloom as a device for demonstrating the dangers of power and responsibility could have been amazing.

The second theme, though, was well-developed and ended in a satisfying way. Bruenor is heartbroken at finding Mithral Hall defiled, but avenges his kin in a glorious sacrifice. I know he’s not really dead, which is an entirely different problem, but taken as a stand-alone book and assuming he’s just dead, it’s not a terrible ending for him. Especially since it paves the way for Catti-Brie and the Battlehammer clan in Icewind Dale to take it back more easily later on.

The plot progression was extremely wacky as well. I did not care about Entreri or literally anyone in his gang. I didn’t think any of them were compelling, and their storyline and motivations were not nearly interesting enough to follow them for the amount of time we did. For me, this diminished my enjoyment exponentially. I get that Entreri’s plot sets up the next novel, but I do not care. Why not do all of this in the next novel? That whole plotline stole time away from the moderately more interesting adventure of the main cast. One might argue that this plot served to bring Catti-Brie into the story, which leads nicely into my greatest critique of the story.

The portrayal of women is atrocious. In the very first chapter, Catti-Brie is captured, tied up, and tortured with a knife. She then spends almost the entirety of the novel in Entreri’s control. She eventually escapes, but the damage is already done by then. Every other woman in this story is a conniving rogue or an outright villain. The exception to this was Lady Alustriel, who didn’t let Drizzt into Silverymoon because of “perceptions.”

The problematic portrayal of people of color is still very prominent here, as it is in every Drizzt novel. It’s not new, but it does add to the overall disappointment of the book.

Overall, not a great book. After coming back to this series, I’ve found that The Legend of Drizzt was definitely more charming when I was 16, and that these books aren’t actually that good (with the exception of Exile). But if you love this series, you’ll probably like this book. If you don’t, you probably found that out before arriving at book 5.

Content Warnings

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