For today’s review, I’m going to reach way down into my book collection to one of those fantasy books I grew up with—I never promised to be timely on this blog. We’re talking about “
Homeland” by R.A. Salvatore, author of the “Legend of Drizzt” series whose titular character was a childhood hero of mine.
Full disclosure, I first read this book—and a lot of other R.A. Salvatore books—when I was a wee lad, well, not really because I was a pretty chubby kid. My point is, though, I grew up with these books, and my love for them is nostalgia drenched, which is a sentiment that, while warm and fuzzy, should be taken with a large grain of salt.
***The Non-Spoiler part of this review***
What I love about this book:While we’re on the topic of shocking revelations, I’m a big D&D nerd, and the forgotten realms, the shared universe that Drizzt belongs to, is a D&D setting. Part of my initial and enduring interest in these books is how they tie into that game world. You don’t need to have any understanding or experience with D&D to enjoy the stories; it’s just that knowledge of it enhances the experience.
Drizzt Do’Urden himself is probably chiefly why I love “Homeland” and all the other novels in this series. I find him to be a compelling character even all these years later. My belief is it’s because of his bedrock moral character. If any one character in fiction exemplifies the admirable quality of sticking to one’s principles, even when it’s hard or even deadly to do so, it’s Drizzt.
Another major reason why I like this novel so much is that it’s the origin story for Drizzt Do’Urden and his life amongst the sinister dark elves, the drow. An anomaly amongst the drow, Drizzt, unlike most drow, couldn’t bring himself to fit in with their evil society, which predictably did not go over well.
Finally, a thing that I like about all of these books are the bits where Salvatore writes as Drizzt, and we get to read his personal journal. There is a timeless philosophical feeling about these journal entries that I really appreciate—hell, I’d read a book that was just Drizzt’s journal entries. It was a bold choice to include these in the novel(s) because it could be taken as a bit indulgent, but I’ve always felt it made the world feel more like a real lived-in place.
What I don’t love about this book:
My main problem with this story is the concept that there are goodly races and not so goodly races. This is more a problem with D&D in general and as such applies to this novel as well. D&D’s stories build off the literary tradition of J.R.R. Tolkien and “The Lord of the Rings,” which in of itself has this problem. The whole concept of orcs is pretty fucked up the longer you think about it. The idea that morality is somehow a racial trait and not an individual characteristic is pretty awful.
Drizzt himself, early on, is really just an exception that proves the rule that the drow, as a race, are evil, and everyone knows this about them and reacts accordingly. To be fair, this is a concept that in later stories, Salvatore has had the moral courage to push back against, and trust me, it’s unsettling but necessary to see our heroes struggle with possibly being on the wrong side of history for a bit. But that isn’t this story. In this story, the drow are uniformly evil, except for Drizzt, and maybe his dad, and only because they’re awesome.
And finally, Matron
Malice is a name so on the nose that it’s like being punched in the nose. It’s only a shade better than just calling her Lady Sinister Von McEvil.
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***The Spoiler part of this review***
***Ye be warned to turn back now***
The quick and dirty synopsis:
The novel starts in a city in the Underdark, Menzoberranzan, the dark elves’ city, aka the drow, engaged in their favorite pastime—war. Not war against an external threat to the city, mind you, but rather one great house of the city against another. In Menzoberranzan, the city is ruled by a ruling council made up of the most powerful families. The only way for a family to advance in drow society is for another family, higher in rank, to somehow be eliminated. In drow “law,” it isn’t illegal for one family to murder another, but it is deadly to be “caught” by leaving any survivors.
