Drizzt Novels...

[Pants]

Salvatore's books are hit or miss for me.
The Icewind Dale books are really mediocre, but if all you want are some tough characters bashing their way through some puply action scenes, then you might like it. Streams of Silver, the 2nd Icewind Dale book, is probably my least favorite Drizzt book by a long shot. Not only is it a really big LotR ripoff, but it's just kinda... boring. The only good thing to come from that book was Artemis.
The other two are okay, with The Halfling's Gem being the better one.

The Dark Elf Trilogy is great, especially when you consider that it was one of the first books to explore Drow culture. It's not angsty at all and it features some great characters.

The Legacy, well... I really enjoyed the Legacy, although the last two books were kinda weak. Still good, but they start the slow downhill degredation of quality.

The other Drizzt books are very uneven. I really, really liked Servant of the Shard and I thought that Spine of the World was a nice change of pace, but Sea of Swords sucked and The Silent Blade was either really boring or really good.

The Thousand Orcs was pretty underwhelming. I still haven't read the other two.

 

[Duncan Haldane]

I've read all the Drizzt books.

The ID trilogy were ok, pretty standard Sword & Sorcery stuff. The Crystal Shard appears to be a stand-alone, with the next two just being more adventures of the same characters.

The Dark Elf Trilogy was the first to show the angst side - if you like that style, keep reading. If you don't like it, stop.

I enjoyed Legacy. I thought it was a good return to the present after The Dark Elf trilogy.
I like the various factions involved and how they interacted.

The rest of the books, apart from Servant of the Shard, are ok, if you don't mind the angst, don't like to have to think too much, and read other books in between each one. I would not recommend trying to read them one after the other - you will find them too repetative and boring.

I agree that R.A.S. is using the "we thought he was dead but now he's back" too much. He really does need to find a new focus for Drizzt if he wants to keep using him.

While I enjoy the humour of the Bouldershoulder brothers, I was not a fan of the Cleric Quintet. IMO Cadderly got too powerful far far too quickly. Generally I prefer low-level adventure types. I did enjoy the first book. I liked the 2nd. I found the 3rd mediocre, the 4th annoying, and the 5th awful.

Oh, and the comment about the "bonus chapter" - they usually publish the first chapter from the next book in the paperback of the current one, not new material for the existing book.

Hope that helps,

Duncan (who first read The Crystal Shard when it was first published)

 

[JoeGKushner]

You'll probably get a wide range of answers on this, as Drizzt's popularity gets on some folks nerves. I read the books before they became really, really popular and I thought they were a good read. I liked both the Icewind Dale Trilogy and The Dark Elf Trilogy. So my opinion is that they are worth picking up to read.

This is pretty much my feeling but I'd like to add that I read them as they came out, and I was much younger than. Some of the writing grats on my nerves in the latter books, but some, like Spine of the World, which doesn't focus too much on old Drizzt, have stayed in the realm of "good reading."

 

[Fast Learner]

The only D&D novels I've read were the Dark Elf trilogy and the Cleric Quintet, and I found both to be shallow and uninteresting. I read through them because I'd paid for them and wanted my money's worth, but they just didn't work for me.

 

[Morrus]

there are some people out there who really hate his novels, and the fact that he's so popular absolutely enrages them. So whenever the subject of R.A. Salvatore comes up, you'll see people claiming that he's a no-talent hack and that Drizzt Do'Urden is singlehandedly responsible for destroying everything that made D&D great.

It is quite possible that there are people out there who honestly believe that his work is poorly written. I'm one of them, and I'm sure there must be many others. I can quite happily say, though, that his popularity does not enrage me.

Admittedly, I haven't read anything of his since Starless Night. I found Homeland to be a reasonably average read at best, the next two in the Dark Elf trilogy to be pretty poor, and the Icewind Dale trilogy to be utterly awful, even as a teenager when I read them! I tried rereading a couple of them recently, and just can't get through them.

Then again, I've never been a fan of the TSR/WotC D&D novels. As a rule, I find them clumsy, poorly written and unimaginative. There are occasional exceptions, but Salvatore's work isn't one of them for me.

 

[David Howery]

I'm not a fan of the D&D novels either, and quit reading them years ago. That said, I think Salvatore wrote some of the better ones. As for the Drizzt novels... read them up through 'Siege of Darkness' and then quit, it slides downhill pretty fast after that...

 

[Cthulhudrew]

For my money, The Crystal Shard is the best book of the lot, and one of the best D&D novels put out, period. Sure, there are some "hack 'n slash" moments that a lot of people don't like (but, which, to me, were more easier to visualize than many of Salvatore's later combat scenes), but overall, it has more character defining moments and development than any other of his novels, I think.

The IW trilogy goes down in quality with each book, although it is still a good series. The fight with Artemis and Drizzt in the Underdark is one of the most memorable and striking moments of the series, and a high point of the second book.

The Homeland series is decent, though I began to tire of Drizzt as it went on. The books after that are... meh. I stopped buying them after a while- I think everything from Servant of the Shard to whatever they're at now, though I've heard some good things about a few of the more recent books.

 

[Lancelot]

Read the first three series. Found the Icewind Dale trilogy to be fairly typical D&D fare (unimaginative, cardboard characters, endless combat... but still readable). The Dark Elf trilogy was the high point, particularly the first book (Homeland). Good insight into Underdark cultures, some really good adventure ideas, and interesting/innovative characters.

It was the following four books (Legacy, Starless Night, etc) that killed the series for me. With the exception of antihero Artemis Entreri, none of the characters grew or changed. Storylines and plot points were repeated. Some of the more complex characters from the Dark Elf trilogy (I'll leave out spoilers) were turned into simple "villains". It became a real chore to read them, so I simply stopped. I've heard good things about Servant of the Shard, but a quick bookstore perusal of other books (such as the Thousand Orcs trilogy) has convinced me that nothing has really changed.

Basically, I'd say your enjoyment of the books relies on your preference for endless scenes of battle where Drizzt and other munchkins take down literally dozens of huge beasties, interspersed with the occasional chapter where Drizzt bemoans the fact that life sucks to be a "good" drow. And a "love triangle" which, to the best of my knowledge, is still unresolved after more than 15 books.

I'll repeat a comment above: read the Dark Elf trilogy first, then decide whether you'd want to read the others. And I'd recommend skipping the series starting with the Legacy altogether.

 

[amethal]

The Dark Elf trilogy is ok. Its worth reading. I got fed up after that.

As you can see, the whole thing gets mixed reviews.

I wasn't overly impressed with the Dark Elf trilogy because I wasn't that keen on the way he portrayed Drow culture. It didn't mesh with how I'd vaguely imagined it to be like. I'm therefore probably biased against it, yet I still thought it was worth reading.

Read it, and make up your own mind.

The only other books of his I've read are the first of the New Jedi Order series, (and I didn't like it) and Attack of the Clones (and I didn't much like that either - had me wishing Terry Brooks had written it, which was a novel experince for me ). I guess I'm just not a RA Salvatore fan.

 

[Jarrod]

Eh.

The first few novels were okay D&D fiction. Actually, among the better D&D fiction, but that's not really saying much unfortunately. The later ones started driving me nuts. Also, I'm one of the few people here that _really_ had a problem with Servant of the Shard. The plot was great, but the writing... RA seemed to join the Robert Jordan School of Cutting and Pasting. How many times did he "wave his arm wildly", creating "a wall of ash"? I mean, geez! It drove me nuts, and made it hard to finish the book.