Title: The Crystal Shard
(Legend of Drizzt – Book 4)
Author: R. A. Salvatore
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 333
Rating: 2.5 of 5
As is often the case with Forgotten Realms fantasy books, I found this fourth installment in the Drizzt series (actually the first one written) to be derivative and forgettable. Take equal parts Lord of the Rings (J. R. R. Tolkien), Conan the Barbarian (Robert E. Howard), and Elric of Melniboné (Michael Moorcock), strip them of any elements of philosophical value, mix them together, and you have this book. I don’t necessarily object to purely escapist fantasy or sci-fi, but this one was just so incredibly generic that it bored me for the most part. The Dark Elf trilogy that came (chronologically) before this one kept my attention with interesting world building, but I’m hesitant to go any farther in the series at this point.
Thankfully, I now get to launch into the world of C. S. Lewis for the class I’m auditing (though I may try to finish off the last 50 pages of the Kierkegaard book I’m reading first).
Joelendil's Kingdom of Books 
I now avoid Salvatore’s FR books. And I never liked Drizz’t, so that helped 🙂
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Yeah, Elric is a slightly more interesting I’m-from-an-evil-race-but-have-a-conscience character (though he comes off like a whiney emo half the time too)
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I prefer Erevis Cale myself. But with only 8 books about him, and no more, once you’re done, you’re done…
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I haven’t read any Erevis Cale. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever made it all the way through a FR book that didn’t feature drow (not that I’ve tried that many). Elric is part of Moorcock’s massive Eternal Champions cycle and I’m pretty sure Drizzt is just a poor knockoff of him.
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Just googled Erevis Cale and he sounds pretty interesting…What order should I read his books in if I decide to give him a shot?
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Halls of Stormweather
Shadow’s Witness [this and the above are actually part of a 7part series called Sembia: Gateway to the Realm. I read the whole thing, but don’t spend your time on it unless you really like the Uskreven family]
Twilight falling
Dawn of Night
Midnight’s Mask
Shadowbred
Shadowstorm
Shadowrealm
The Godborn [more of a sequel and wrapup than anything]
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Is your post linked/reposted from GR? I really like how you have the cover slightly off the page and was wondering if that was something you did manually.
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I just cut/paste it at the start of the post and it shows up that way… maybe it’s the theme I use?
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That’s probably it…
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