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Streams of Silver (Forgotten Realms: The Icewind Dale, #2; Legend of Drizzt, #5)

R.A. Salvatore

Start date: May 1, 2021

Finish date: May 31, 2021

Discussion: Forgotten Realms Reading

Why we're reading this: Published January 1989

Schedule:

May 1st - May 9th Chapters 1 - 7
May 10th - May 17th Chapters 8 - 15
May 18…more
[close] Published January 1989

Schedule:

May 1st - May 9th Chapters 1 - 7
May 10th - May 17th Chapters 8 - 15
May 18th - May 23rd Chapters 16 - End

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What Members Thought

May 31, 2021 Don Brown rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, forgotten-realms, z-2021

This is a tough review to write. I loved these books as a kid. I thought these Drizzt books were full of fun and adventure. As an adult, I see that the writing is average at best and the adventure I remember is not well developed or describe. Adult me thinks that Streams of Silver is a shallow, disjointed, and predictable young adult novel and not the serious fantasy fare I once thought. The series as a whole presents a series of encounters for the book's protagonists as if they were happening r This is a tough review to write. I loved these books as a kid. I thought these Drizzt books were full of fun and adventure. As an adult, I see that the writing is average at best and the adventure I remember is not well developed or describe. Adult me thinks that Streams of Silver is a shallow, disjointed, and predictable young adult novel and not the serious fantasy fare I once thought. The series as a whole presents a series of encounters for the book's protagonists as if they were happening right in a D&D game. Like its predecessor, The Crystal Shard, this book is more about showcasing elements of the D&D game in novel form, and less about developing any people, places, or things on their own for an original purpose. That is the common challenge for writers-for-hire when they are writing in someone else's universe.

That said, I like the idea of Bruenor, Drizzt and Wulfgar as characters, though they are not developed well in Salvatore's writing. The casual reader may think we have fleshed out characters here, but we really do not. We have named characters with basic trappings like race, equipment and their expected behaviors based on class right of the Player's Handbook. I truly believe that Drizzt is more fully developed in the minds of readers because of their prosody, not because of the author. The reader gleans the most from Drizzt's sophomoric pontifications between the books' parts, wherein the famous dark elf waxes philosophically about life, the cosmos and everything else. The problem is, those moments of pseudo-reflection are used as an excuse by the author to provide little development in the rest of the books' pages.

Look at 'conversations' in the books. Most of them are short and vapid. The dialogue is a lot of, "You sorcerous dog!" or “Up the high run and into Keeper’s Dale!” It is like the characters are always yelling and everything they say is a grand declaration that needs emphasis. It is so unrealistic and hints at a poor ability to write dialogue. The proof of this is the constant use of exclamation points: the sure sign of bad dialogue writing. 'Conversations' are jarring, short, and stilted, almost unreadable. This dearth of dialogue is another element of the books that tells me they are not about the characters, as much as we like to think, but more about advertising the Forgotten Realms and the D&D brand.

The most disappointing 'conversation' is between Alustriel and Drizzt. The legendary leader of Silverymoon rambles on for page after page without making any point beyond, "You cannot come into the city." Her actual reasons are poorly conceived and badly conveyed. This may be because the author is either not allowed to write about it or has chosen not to or was running out of word space (thousands of words were wasted on TWO chapters of Troll murdering - it was ridiculous and exhausting).

I hate to dump on these books, but they are not great. I loved them as a young reader because they scratched my fantasy itch and brought my tabletop D&D experiences to the page. Now, I see the flaws in the these venerated fantasy novels from Salvatore.

Vapid, stilted dialogue; inconsistencies in the story; exceedingly powerful protagonists that have no fear of harm and therefore no stakes or tension; terribly underserved and shockingly stupid bad guys (Shimmergloom is an utter disappointment - there is no excuse for botching what should be a climatic ending); underrepresented and often poorly conceived of female characters; predictability; and unoriginal (a dwarf looking for his lost home? Really?).

I give this book 2.5 stars rounded down to two. I hate doing that because I was hoping for better and I liked this series when I was younger. I must admit that this series has moments of good writing. Regrettably, there is not enough of it to put the books into the same arena as some of our modern fantasy masterpieces like Sapkowski's "The Withcer," Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire," and Sanderson's "Cosmere." The early Drizzt books did not age well, and they are the best of the lot. I do not recommend them. ...more

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May 11, 2021 Raechel rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, fantasy, forgotten-realms, the-legend-of-drizzt

What a fun continuation of the Drizzt story!

Drizzt and co are on a quest to find the fabled Mithril Hall of Bruenor's childhood. Unknown to most of the group, an assassin is on their trail to find Regis.

There's not much I feel like I can say about this book. It's another fun D&D adventure. I feel like it meanders a fair bit in the first third, like the DM is having trouble getting the party to follow the quest hook. Also in the first half of the book, I wasn't a fan of Catti-Brie, but I liked he What a fun continuation of the Drizzt story!

Drizzt and co are on a quest to find the fabled Mithril Hall of Bruenor's childhood. Unknown to most of the group, an assassin is on their trail to find Regis.

There's not much I feel like I can say about this book. It's another fun D&D adventure. I feel like it meanders a fair bit in the first third, like the DM is having trouble getting the party to follow the quest hook. Also in the first half of the book, I wasn't a fan of Catti-Brie, but I liked her development in the second half. It feels like Salvatore realized she needed to be more than just a Sexy Lamp.

There is still some 'D&D Is For Teenage Boys' issues... the only named women are Catti-Brie (a sexy innocent), Whisper (a sexy double-crossing rogue), and Sydney (a non-sexy evil mage). Any other women mentioned are: an aggressive prostitute (which Regis (view spoiler)), the women that Wulfar's tribe rape (and Drizzt hopes Wulfgar's people will someday realize Women Are People Too), and... oh, a magic elf lady who is there to be Sexy and Helpful and flirt with Drizzt. Hey, maybe we'll see better progress in the next book?

I like how the end of each book leads into the main quest for the next one. And I think it's really funny that there's been a (view spoiler) in each book. Is that going to be a theme?

Besides the pointless first third of the book, I felt like the action scenes in this were very weird. Either the action is brushed over very quickly, so much so that a fight is just summarized in a couple sentences... or the action is described in such a weird way I honestly couldn't understand what exactly was happening. I'm going to assume Salvatore gets better at these as he continues to write dozens more Drizzt novels.

I will still read the next book in this series, this is pretty predictable early D&D adventure. Someone gets a magic weapon. They solve some ancient mystery (that's actually only 200 years old which honestly doesn't seem old AT ALL considering the lifetime of some races), and there's a plot hook for the next quest. ...more

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Nov 26, 2024 David rated it really liked it

We continue the story of the Drow ranger Drizzt Do’Urden, Bruenor Battleahammer (Dwarf fighter King), Wulfgar (human barbarian fighter), Regis “Rumblebelly” (Halfling thief), and Catti-brie (human fighter/archer). We go on a long journey to find Bruenor’s long lost home/kingdom underground. Meanwhile, they are also being followed by multiple enemies (1 powerful wizard who sends his apprentice, a fighter, and indestructible golem to get Drizzt’s crystal shard (which he doesn’t have), and a deadly ...more

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Dec 17, 2018 Liam rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I have not been the biggest fan of the Drizzt series so far, and it continued initially with this book as well. The Legend of Drizzt is not some grand epic of high fantasy, but it is a nice adventurous sword and sorcery series and when I realized that I was able to enjoy it a lot more. Needless to say it took me awhile to get through this book, but the last 3/4 was a lot quicker than the 1/4. Unfairly to the book, maybe, I got distracted by other things the day I started it anyway.

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Aug 13, 2021 Rob rated it really liked it

Shelves: fantasy, fantasy-forgotten-realms

This is the second book in the Icewind Dale trilogy. It picks up just a few months after the events in The Crystal Shard. This was another fun adventure that brings the heroes of the first book - Drizzt, Wulfgar, Bruenor, Carrie-Brie, and Regis into a new adventure outside of Icewind Dale.

I really enjoyed the book but have to admit that as the heroes were roaming around an abandoned dwarven underground city, it got a little tedious. But I like this series and am anxious to read the last book of ...more

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