Reflecting On: Neverwinter

I read this, the 17th Drizzt Do’Urden novel, about two months ago. This is the second book of the Neverwinter Saga. There are spoilers here, of previous Drizzt books.

While I really like the idea of continuing with the Drizzt character decades later and leaving the familiar friends behind, I’m having a hard time getting attached to the new group of characters. R.A. Salvatore, while not my favorite author, is definitely my favorite writer when it comes to battle scenes. But his attempt to describe Dahlia’s battle scenes are awkward, to say the least. It’s as if he challenged himself with coming up with a complicated weapon – Kozah’s Needle – and still successfully paint the picture for the reader. He falls short. The battle scenes are still interesting, but more than a little confusing. Kozah’s Needle is a staff that can be turned into flails or a tri-staff. The charging up to create lightning – that’s a nice touch. But describing her moves with a tri-staff that suddenly turns into flails, loses me.

The book carries a mediocre plot, but is saved by a pretty good cast of villains as well as the return of one of the best characters in the Drizzt fantasy world. The assassin Artemis Entreri. His appearance, hinted at heavily throughout, is well explained. I can buy the backstory of the reasons that he is still alive fifty years after he should be.

I’ve always felt that if books about Drizzt are to be written about his adventures decades after the original companions were alive, that the new characters should be developed first, and then bring Drizzt in later. As in halfway through the second book. However, bringing back Entreri has proven to be a good alternative and makes this Saga worth reading.