Dark elves, goblins, ettins, and more! Get ready to cast Magic Missile against the darkness, it's time for some Dungeons & Dragons themed fiction with your second or maybe third-favorite white haired dual wielding warrior: Drizzt.
Ready to be chronologically confused? The Legacy is technically the seventh novel by R.A. Salvatore featuring the exploits of the dark elf Drizzt Do'Urden, although it is the beginning of a new series of four novels known as the Legacy of the Drow. This series follows after the events of the Icewind Dale Trilogy chronologically. However, Salvatore wrote three novels known as the Dark Elf Trilogy after the Icewind Dale Trilogy was published that serve as a prequel series. Are you keeping up with this? I know I'm not. Can these fantasy authors just keep their shit together for a change? Regardless, seeing as how this is the start of a new series featuring the same cast of characters, one could probably start with The Legacy if they really wanted to, because the events of previous novels are routinely recapped by the author when necessary.
The drow elf edgelord Drizzt is on his way to Mithral Hall for a reunion with the dwarven king Bruenor Battlehammer and to attend the wedding of two former companions - the barbarian Wulfgar and plucky archer lady Catti-brie. Dubiously tagging along is the halfling thief Regis, meaning the whole gang from the previous adventures are back together again. But this reunion may be short-lived, for Drizzt's deranged sister Vierna is hellbent on capturing her wayward brother and sacrificing him to the spider goddess Lolth. Forming an alliance with the mercenary leader Jarlaxle and the assassin Artemis Entreri, Vierna leads her dark band through the subterranean tunnels underneath Mithral Hall. A clash between Clan Battlehammer and the drow elves marching upon dwarven lands now seems inevitable. Perhaps the wedding won't be happening after all...
I'd tried a Drizzt novel many years ago in my adolescent years and bounced off it extremely early on because it never seemed to grab me, but I still wanted to know what all the fuss was about with this character all these years later, especially since I've read and enjoyed a number of other books set within the Forgotten Realms series. Happenstance brought me to The Legacy, but to be honest I found it to be a bit of a chore to get through. I'd always heard that one of R.A. Salvatore's fortes was writing action scenes, but I found the non-stop minutiae of every battle to be absolute torture to sift through. The paperback edition I was reading was roughly 330 pages and I can almost guarantee if one were to strip this book of all of the myriad swordfights and army clashes you'd only be left with about a hundred pages of text. There's not a whole lot of meat to the plot here other than 'evil sister leads a dark band through some tunnels to get at her wayward brother'.
That's not to say The Legacy is a total waste, because it does have its moments. The character of Drizzt himself wasn't nearly as insufferable as I was led to believe he was (although you can clearly see the character has more than a little Elric influence about him). For me, the novel was carried by Drizzt's clashes with the assassin Entreri, who is utterly obsessed with besting Drizzt. The interplay between the band of villains was fun too. It's all too obvious the main players can't stand working with one another in their bid to capture Drizzt and it seems only a matter of time before one of them tries to defect and turn on the others.
What I didn't care for outside of the endless battle scenes were most of Drizzt's companions, in particular the girlboss Cattie-brie. She's written to be smarter and wiser than all of the males around her who have far more experience in war and she's apparently always right. So basically she's Rey in Disney Star Wars before that was even a thing. It's clear that the author has a thing for this character and, perhaps accidentally writing himself into a corner in previous outings by pairing her with the barbarian Wulfgar, wanted nothing more than to get the muscleheaded lunk out of the way so he could push Cattie and her annoying Irish accent towards becoming Drizzt's new waifu. Thus, poor Wulfgar literally gets a tunnel dropped on him without much fanfare in order to set the stage for a new romance.
As an aside, I think Salvatore also has a thing for killing off the brute characters by crushing them to death. I recall reading the first novel in the New Jedi Order series and facepalming as Chewbacca was killed off by having a freaking moon dropped on him. What's up with this recurring theme, Bob?
Anyway, I'm not sure if I'm going to delve into the next book in this series any time soon. Drizzt himself and his extraplanar panther friend are cool, but everything else around them in this novel was like a wight in D&D catching me with their energy drain. Not recommended.
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