From what I’ve seen so far in this one book, that is far from the case. This particular “style” isn’t necessarily a problem in and of itself, as long as people recognize it for what it is, but I worry that there are some people out there, perhaps people who cut their fantasy teeth on something like Harry Potter, who view Salvatore as some sort of paragon of the genre. Short paragraphs, general descriptions, and repreated phrasing and imagery all seem designed to make reading Homeland as easy–and therefore as vanilla–as possible. Everything reads smoothly, and that’s part of the problem.

Or perhaps a less accurate but more truthful way of putting it is that Homeland has no heart and soul. But regardless, even if Salvatore writes every single word in all of his books, this one seemed to have no style.

These days, with all the ghost writing and the pseudonyms, and the So-and-So writing in What’s-Their-Name’s universe that’s going on, it’s impossible to tell who is actually writing some of these massive franchise books (I’m looking at you, Warhammer.). Or at least he supposedly writes a lot of books. Which leads me to my first, but probably my least important complaint: The writing. The three days I took to read it were a very leisurely few days. The Episode I to The Legend of Drizzt’s Star Wars, Homeland is a very quick read. Note: The predictability of the plot is NOT actually one of my primary complaints. And that’s even accounting for the fact that Drizzt is apparently destined to become some great hero in later stories. Spoiler Alert: You probably won’t care about any of the spoilers I include below, because the plot is already predictable as soon as you get a paragraph in.

If the book was older, perhaps it would be remarkable, but for a book published after 1980 (1990? there seems to be some confusion about this, and I haven’t taken the time to straighten it out), Homeland seems overly conventional and, while not boring, not exactly the most exciting fantasy offering of all time. My Summary Assessment: Homeland is, at best, not bad. (Of course, that didn’t work quite at planned with the Night Angel Trilogy, but I’m still game to give it a try…) This review has been languishing in Draft Land for a few more days than normal, but thanks to Snow Day 3.0, I’m finally able to get it polished up and posted. As I stated the other day in my pre-reading impression, I’m going to try to do a little write-up after each section in the Drizzt “saga” before getting too involved in the subsequent section.

Homeland by R.A. Salvatore