Sign in with Facebook
Chelsea's Reviews > The Crystal Shard
The Crystal Shard (Forgotten Realms: Icewind Dale, #1; Legend of Drizzt, #4)
by R.A. Salvatore
by R.A. Salvatore
Chelsea's review
bookshelves: fantasy, wizards-and-mages, reviewed, son-i-am-dissapoint
Apr 12, 12
bookshelves: fantasy, wizards-and-mages, reviewed, son-i-am-dissapoint
Read from October 01 to 06, 2011
** spoiler alert **
Authors like Pat Rothfuss, Scott Lynch, Joe Abercrombie and GRRM have now spoiled me for lesser books. What this book reminds me of is the brilliant comic Goblins. You can find it here: http://www.goblinscomic.com/
In the first part of this comic, Adventurers (all with good alignments, no less), burst upon a village of goblins. Any D&D player knows that goblins are the training wheel enemy of any level 1 or level 2 party. Goblins and wolves are the baby food of an adventurer. The adventurers utterly wipe out the goblin village, killing the young, the old, the blind, the innocent and the wounded indiscriminately. The few remaining goblins decide to become adventurers themselves, so they can level up and prevent another village from being destroyed.
In the Crystal Shard, a malevolent wizard uses the "evil races" as his agents against the forces of good, i.e. Drizzt et al. They declare themselves enemies of the evil races (trolls, orcs, etc) and go out to kill things (even though Drizzt is always whining about not being given a chance to prove his goodness, as he is an "evil" drow).
And so, instead of discovering why all of the goblin, giant, troll and orc hordes are banding together, Our Heroes go on a slaughterfest of epic (heh) proportions. One of the first casualties is the chef. Really? The chef? Like, what the hell did this guy do? Wouldn't it have been more productive to spy on the enemies, figure out what the deal was and focus on the true enemy? Whatever. I guess a little spying and espionage doesn't allow for much reversing of grips/momentum of slashing, gleaming scimitars.
As other people have commented, I guess Drizzt hasn't learned much from being judged by the color of his skin, and chooses to freely kill as many damn orcs as he wants to, just because their presumed alignment is Chaotic Evil.
If you think about it, the protagonists could have found a way to turn back the magic and had the goblins, orcs, etc, wipe out the stupid wizard and the demon for them without lifting a damn finger. Woulda saved them a load of grief. I guess these guys aren't known for creativity. They wouldn't last a day against my DM.
In the first part of this comic, Adventurers (all with good alignments, no less), burst upon a village of goblins. Any D&D player knows that goblins are the training wheel enemy of any level 1 or level 2 party. Goblins and wolves are the baby food of an adventurer. The adventurers utterly wipe out the goblin village, killing the young, the old, the blind, the innocent and the wounded indiscriminately. The few remaining goblins decide to become adventurers themselves, so they can level up and prevent another village from being destroyed.
In the Crystal Shard, a malevolent wizard uses the "evil races" as his agents against the forces of good, i.e. Drizzt et al. They declare themselves enemies of the evil races (trolls, orcs, etc) and go out to kill things (even though Drizzt is always whining about not being given a chance to prove his goodness, as he is an "evil" drow).
And so, instead of discovering why all of the goblin, giant, troll and orc hordes are banding together, Our Heroes go on a slaughterfest of epic (heh) proportions. One of the first casualties is the chef. Really? The chef? Like, what the hell did this guy do? Wouldn't it have been more productive to spy on the enemies, figure out what the deal was and focus on the true enemy? Whatever. I guess a little spying and espionage doesn't allow for much reversing of grips/momentum of slashing, gleaming scimitars.
As other people have commented, I guess Drizzt hasn't learned much from being judged by the color of his skin, and chooses to freely kill as many damn orcs as he wants to, just because their presumed alignment is Chaotic Evil.
If you think about it, the protagonists could have found a way to turn back the magic and had the goblins, orcs, etc, wipe out the stupid wizard and the demon for them without lifting a damn finger. Woulda saved them a load of grief. I guess these guys aren't known for creativity. They wouldn't last a day against my DM.
Sign into Goodreads to see if any of your friends have read The Crystal Shard.
sign in »
Reading Progress
| 10/01/2011 | page 100 |
|
26.0% |
Comments (showing 1-7 of 7) (7 new)
date
newest »
newest »
message 1:
by
Chelsea
(new)
-
rated it 2 stars
Oct 01, 2011 10:27pm
This isn't as good as the first three.
reply
|
flag
*
And yet it was written first. You can tell as you go along that the Icewind Dale trilogy was meant to go in a very different direction, but then the widespread fan love for Drizzt made his writing take a turn.
Yeah, I get that. But, since it was the first written, it's still lousy character-building. To borrow again from D&D, I'm not going to build a character who's a royal bastard and then not give him any Knowledge (Royalty), even if I personally don't care about royalty. Don't put something like overcoming racism and wanting to protect the innocent in a character's backstory and then have him kill kill kill!
You're right aboupt the character building, and about both the copying from D&D. If you keep going in the trilogy, be prepared for some hefty copying from Tolkien too (although it seems like most fantasy authors tend to do that anyway).
Yeah, it's a given. I'm willing to give the rest of the books a try, especially since he's still writing. I want to know if they get better. Drizzt is a cool character, I just want to see him done better.
