R.A. Salvatore's "Cleric Quintet" - WTF?

Cafe Society
1

A while back I was looking for something new to read, and I spotted this big fat book called “The Cleric Quintet”, written by R.A. Salvatore. It collects five books in one volume: Canticle, In Sylvan Shadows, Night Masks, The Fallen Fortress, and The Chaos Curse.

I’d read Salvatore before - his original Dark Elf trilogy, as well as the second trilogy of Drizzt books. And I really enjoyed those. Sure, they’re D&D books, and there are better writers out there, but there’s a reason Drizzt is arguably the most popular D&D novel character ever and Salvatore is one of the most popular D&D authors. So I figured more Salvatore would be good reading.

So far, (I’m about halfway through In Sylvan Shadows) these Cleric Quintet stories are just wretched. Okay, the plot itself isn’t bad, but the writing just seems … juvenile. The dialogue honestly sounds like gamers sitting around the table trying to roleplay. There is no nuance to the descriptions of what the characters are thinking or how they’re mentally reacting to different situations - they just read like straight fact-stating. Characters keep inferring/deducing things about enemy movements and motivations when they completely lack the information necessary to make those deductions.

There are a couple dwarf brothers that are just cartoons. One, though never described as “mentally challenged” in any way (aside from his deep desire to be a druid being thought really bizarre) having a vocabulary that consists of “Oo oi!” and “Doo-dad!” Running in place to build up “momentum” before attacking? Charging straight through and shattering stone walls? Shaking off and walking away from having a 200-pound rock dropped on your head? C’mon, I can suspend disbelief as well as anybody, but even for D&D characters that’s pushing it.

The main character … I’m just having difficulty finding him the least bit interesting. He’s a low-level cleric who doesn’t bother to learn spells, and hates the idea of fighting. That’s not a cleric, that’s a simple priest! The supporting cast is actually more interesting than the main character, and that’s saying something.

I’m just having a hard time believing this is the same author that gave us the Drizzt books. And it’s not like these were his first novels - the original Drizzt trilogy came first!

Anybody else read these cleric novels as well as the Drizzt novels? What did you think?

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I read them. They’re not terribly memorable. The characters aren’t very good and it came across as very slow. It seemed like the material was stretched extra-long to make five books.

However, the juvenile writing isn’t really surprising. As time went on, his writing got worse and worse. Combat is especially bad (it’s written out just like a D&D session, pretty much), to the point where I’ll just skim over those areas of text.

Really, the Crystal Shard trilogy and the Underdark-themed trilogy were the best. The first few stand-alone novels about Drizzt were okay, if not particularly memorable (these predated Cleric Quintet). Everything since has been sort of bluh. I’ll still re-read those two trilogies now and again, but the Hunter’s Blades trilogy was just not good.

3

Good grief. If you’re looking for some D&D novels to read, stay away from that hack Salvatore. Try Paul Kidd’s books like White Plume Mountain

At least they’re fun fanservice.

4

I despise that dwarf. I’ve never read the Cleric Quintet, but the character showed up in one of the later books once. That was enough.

5

Weird, looks like the hamsters ate my last post. I had replied to this:

with words to the effect of:

Eh, I was just going by my memory of the Drizzt books being good and figured more Salvatore would be worth reading. In any case, I really don’t like the Forgotten Realms setting all that much - I prefer Dragonlance and Eberron. Don Bassinthwaite’s Eberron novels are outstanding. (And yeah, I did see that your recommendation was a Greyhawk novel.)

6

Maybe you’re the wrong age group? I liked them a lot when I was younger and read the quintet more than once which is rare for me. Re-reading it a couple years ago, it wasn’t quite as good. Deep characters would’ve gone over my head then and detracted from the action! It’s been even longer since I read the Drow books but I remember liking them (over most of Terry Brooks’ works, at least).

Of course, I seem to like a lot of fantasy stuff that people here dislike (Jordan, Goodkind, Anthony, etc.) and dislike (or am indifferent to) those that get raves (eg. Martin, Pratchett, Heinlein).

I must have been birthed upside-down or something. :smiley:

7

I only read the original Dark Elf Trilogy 5 years ago - my tastes haven’t changed that much since then :stuck_out_tongue:

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Well, I was thinking that the Dark Elf trilogy was maybe geared for a more adult audience. But considering I enjoyed them back when, he could have made the Cleric Quintet similarly. I guess there is no excuse for Salvatore.

Wikipedia linked to Salvatore’s forward from the collector’s edition – he thinks it stands up to the early Drizzt books.

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I like the Cleric Quintet better than Salvatore’s Drow books… (I prefer the Liriel Baenre and War of the Spider Queen books for Drow fiction - not that I got past Insurrection in the latter, but that was just not being able to afford books for a while.)

Salvatore just isn’t a very good writer…at least with the Cleric Quintet his weaknesses and the general goofiness of the series mix into fun. Driz’zt is dreary (his supporting cast is better, though), and even Jarlaxle is only really tolerable in small doses. (The rest of the Baenre family, though, is awesome - Triel and Gromph are the most fun proper Drow in any FR fiction.)

10

Salvatore thought that he had a good formula going (hero is deliberately antistereotypical) and enough people liked the formula that he sold a lot of books. A lot of angsty teens wanted to be cool, but good: Goblins - Goblins - . It’s like sparkling vampires, in a way.

11

I used to like his writing but reading through the last couple of trilogies has been tough. For more than a decade, his combats have been tedious. It’s like he has some knowledge of it (and I think he does but don’t care enough to check) and is trying to explain it but can’t do it. It makes his combat scenes boring.

Maybe he hits that 13-23 crowd and that’s what keeps him going?

As for the Cleric Quintet, back in the day, I liked it but as someone else said, re-reading it, everything was shallow. And, I have come to hate it that TSR/WotC gives some authors freedom to do whatever instead of sticking to the DND rule set and being creative within the rules. We didn’t need Cadderly’s gadgets, just a well written cleric.

Probably just me.

vislor

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I also thought that Liriel was more interesting but Cunningham is probably my favorite FR author. WotSQ wasn’t good because at the end of the day, I didn’t care about these evil characters and WANTED to see them get their come uppence. And the ending wasn’t surprising at all. (Now, it wasn’t written by him but the idea was and I don’t know how much was his idea.)

I did think Smedmen’s trilogy was a good one but still not as good as Liriel.

vislor