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No Crystal Shard, Sunday, August 01, 2010
As a long-time fan of Salvatore, having been hooked by "The Crystal Shard" when it was first published, I picked up "The Pirate King" with high hopes, but fairly quickly became bored and disinterested. To the point where even though I am now most of the way through the book, every time I think of picking it up to finish it, I can not find a compelling reason to actually do so. Then I go play video games instead.
There are numerous issues with the story that contribute to my intense disinterest: much -- if not most -- of the novel seems to focus on the antagonists and their interminable mysterious plotting that, really, who cares? Done well, it might have worked. Unfortunately, it only gives the whole story an unfinished, jumpy feeling, as though we are reading two or three entirely different novels mashed up together and with a number of important chapters removed.
Similarly, much of the novel focuses on characters who are not the main protagonists of the series, but secondary characters from previous novels or entirely new characters, all of whom suffer from terminal under-development. Indeed, the main focus seems to be on characters we barely know and do not care much about either, who have not been (and are not) fleshed out enough /for/ us to care about, most of whom receive what I can only describe as a "series of cameos" instead of fully realized development, as though these barren slices will somehow make us care about them, what they are doing, or what happens to them. In short, readers are treated to little more than prose-laden descriptions of a series of events happening around pieces of cardboard with faces painted on them.
It seems like, and feels so obvious I can not imagine this not being the case, Salvatore is being forced to follow along a particular script and tell about various world events in the Realms, rather than having free reign to continue to develop the usual protagonists and tell their stories.
I say that as he finds these interesting plot points he could go places with, then abandons them to limbo in order to tell a story that is not about the main characters, in a city the main protagonists do not really have any reason to care about (nor are they given any compelling one), and a war they are only barely involved with and interact with in a limited way (and even that seems circumstantial and so comes off as forced...a sort of "What should we do today? I know, let's go fight in a war!" feeling). This results in book about a war and its after-effects, but not really (in a bad way, not in a clever "symbolism" way), and so the war and evil plotting ends up being just a thing that is happening readers are not given a real reason to care about one-way-or-another.
All told, it is poor storytelling, even for a D&D novel (heck, it's on par with the usual "storytelling" found in a /game/ of D&D, and that's saying something), especially from Salvatore, who actually is better than that.
I have felt for a while that Salvatore is burning out on writing the Drizzt characters. Yet those plot points I mention him abandoning to limbo tell me he is not done with them yet, that there are still stories to tell with them, if only he would DO so.
Rating: 2 out of 5
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The Pirate King, Tuesday, July 13, 2010
I liked this book for the most part. It wasn't Salvatore's best work, but there hasn't been much the man has written that I don't like. The book is a little slow to develop, but once it gets going, it is hard to put down.
Rating: 4 out of 5
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