I’ve read a lot of R.A. Salvatore books and I mean a lot. About 3 or 4 years ago, I figured that as a fantasy/sci-fi buff, I should start reading some of the most famous and most read D&D novels of all time: The Dark Elf Triology (The Legend of Drizzt, Books 1-3).
Those weren’t the first R.A. Salvatore book that I had read, just a few months earlier I finished his Star Wars novel called Vector Prime which started the New Jedi Order series. Unfortunately, each of the NJO books took on a different author and after reading a couple, I felt that it just wasn’t very fun or entertaining to read. But after reading Vector Prime, I decided that as a D&D geek that I needed to finally take the plunge and read the series.
So a few years later, I have finished The Legend of Drizzt Books 1-17, The Cleric Quintet series (Books 1-5), and The Sellswords series. I haven’t read Book 18 – The Pirate King, since it’s not out in paperback just yet.
The Orc King: Transitions, Book I was released around the same time that D&D updated from edition 3.5 to edition 4.0, so along with the 4.0 updated books some of the landscape and peoples of that world changed. I believe this Transitions book series will work it’s way through these changes.
Drizzt returns with his longtime friends Wulfgar, Catti-brie, Bruenor Battlehammer, and Regis to battle the orcs of Many-Arrows. He is also accompanied by several others that have made appearances in the previous books.
– spoilers below –
In the Kingdom of Many-Arrows, the orc king has decided to build a kingdom instead of the usual orc rampage of raiding and creating chaos for the other kingdoms. Since this goes against what many orcs believe, inevitably another orc rises to power to try to unseat the king and control all of the orc forces to continue their rampage across all of the lands.
Meanwhile, the dwarves (enemies of the orcs for generations) lead by the dwarven king Bruenor discover an ancient city where the dwarves and orcs lived side-by-side. As you’d expect, this throws a curveball into the fray since there’s nothing that orcs and dwarves would rather be doing than fighting each other.
About the time the orc rebels assault the orc king, the dwarven king learns that the orc king wanted to negotiate a treaty. After the final battle, the elfs, dwarves, humans, and orcs sign a treaty and peace is somewhat settled. Although, as the prologue introduces, there are still factions on both sides (particularly dwarven and orcs) where the peace treaty doesn’t sit too well which results in Drizzt and other turning back human and dwarven raiding parties who seek to disrupt the peace by attacking the orc settlements.
Overall, I enjoyed reading the well descriptive writing and battle scenes. After reading 16 previous novels with these main characters, it still feels like the essence of each character has remained constant even though many of them have changed. Just like before, Wulfgar has separated from the others at the end of the book to return to his homeland in Icewind Dale.
Prior to the the next novel is The Pirate King (which is already out in hardcover), R.A. Salvatore and his son Geno wrote a fantasy book for young readers titled The Stowaway: Stone of Tymora, Book I. This book is written for teen and pre-teen audiences, but it also provides a foundation and backgrounds for some of the characters introduced in The Pirate King. I’m unsure if I’ll read this or not, some of the other Amazon.com reviewers mention that it may help to provide some introduction prior to the Pirate King.
