As much as I love R.A. Salvatore, I think it's safe to say that the forced changes to the world of Faerun have messed with his ability to craft interesting characters. Salvatore falls prey to the old issue of telling, instead of showing. Characters that could have a sense of mystery and intrigue around them are instead spelled out for us explicitly. Additionally, Salvatore seems to be telling us that Drizzt was only the character we love because of the friends around him. Now that they are all dead and gone, he's suddenly losing his sense of who he is and his moral compass, long the most interesting piece of his background. It's sad to see a character I grew up with become so uninteresting. I guess I'll just have to keep going back to my tattered copies of The Dark Elf Trilogy.