“The reason this review is up later than I expected is because I kept putting the book down out of sheer boredom every time I came to another six-page stretch of ‘And then they killed a bunch of goblins.'”
Tag: R.A. Salvatore
“The nice thing about a mixed bag like this is that even when you suffer through a badly-written story, you know it’s going to be short and you’ll probably get to a better one soon. Beats slogging through a bad 300-page novel, that’s for sure.”
“Let’s be honest: Drizzt wouldn’t know what to do with himself if he didn’t have things to kill on a regular basis. I don’t buy this self-pitying pacifist bollocks for one minute.”
“Writing tip: when your other characters start lampshading how incredibly annoying it is that your protagonist magically knows everything, maybe, just maybe it’s time to dial the omniscience back a bit.”
“Goblins, orcs, ogres, orogs, ogrillons, giants — say what you like about the forces of evil, but at least they’ve put a lot of effort into creating a diverse workplace.”
“With five books all focusing on one overarching story, the temptation to indulge in sloppy characterization and meandering plots requires immense discipline to avoid. “Disciplined” isn’t really an adjective that springs to mind when I think about Salvatore’s writings thus far.”
“Montolio feels like a much more sinister character to me now as an adult than he did when I was a teenager — the personification of the ugly questions about racism that the Drizzt books keep raising but then never addressing.”
“There’s still some dialogue that feels stilted, some descriptions which seem affected, but the writing here isn’t nearly as painful as his previous work. (Either that or I’m just developing scar tissue from all the terrible books I’ve read, which is a very real possibility.)”
“I’ve thrown a fair amount of shade at Salvatore in my previous reviews — the Mary Sue characters, the stilted dialogue, the incredibly florid, dramatic prose style — and all of those flaws are still present here. But despite all that, I have to admit that this is a surprisingly good book.”
“The Halfling’s Gem, unfortunately, is a textbook example of Orientalist literature: the noble northern (Western) characters visit exotic Calimshan (the Middle East), are disgusted by what they find, demonstrate their moral and physical superiority by kicking seven kinds of hell out of the depraved Calishites, then return to their home.”