Homeland

     Homeland by R.A. Salvatore. 

     Homeland is the first book in R.A. Salvatore's first trilogy, "The Dark Elf Trilogy."  I'm reviewing this book for a number of reasons.

     First of all, I love R.A. Salvatore's works.  His books are what I'm looking for when I say that I read Fantasy.  Salvatore is creative, descriptive, concise, and when you read his works a picture of his world is painted clearly in your mind's eye.  Most of the legends/myths/folklore of dark elves is solidified in Salvatore's works.  J.R.R. Tolkien created the idea of elves being more than mischievous, ankle-high, fairy creatures, but Salvatore took that idea, mixed it with Norse mythology, and created the first real Dark Elf world.  D&D (namely Gary Gygax) created the evil spider goddess Lolth, and Salvatore built a Dark Elf religion around the imagined dark-goddess.  He took ideas that were at their birth, and built on them to create a cohesive world of imagination.

     Secondly, Drizzt Do'Urden is a bad-guy who turned against his upbringing.  This concept is amazing.  There are probably earlier books which have done this, but this fantasy world creates a perfect environment to teach this lesson without offending anyone.  Drizzt is part of an evil society.  I don't think anyone can read about the Dark Elf society without thinking that they are pure evil.  Drizzt starts to realize this, but the doctrines of his upbringing make him afraid to even venture to leave.  If you were to try to do this with any real-life religion, nationality, political party, or even radical movement groups, you'd end up offending somebody.  I think even Nazis still have sympathizers out there somewhere.  The Dark Elf world is a sterile field which can exemplify evil without pointing fingers.  And Salvatore humanizes Drizzt by showing his inner turmoil about abandoning his people.  Even when he's fully convinced they are wrong.  Anyone who has had to leave a family, religion, political group, etc. must feel these same emotions.  No matter how bad they were, they were all that person knew.  Home is hard to leave.

     Lastly, life is not all gumdrops and kittens when Drizzts leaves.  Being alone is hard.  Salvatore shows this beautifully.  Drizzts is an amazing, adept warrior, and his life is a near-nightmare out on his own.  Just because you make the right decisions in life, doesn't mean life will be easy.  In most cases, the right decisions are the hardest.  

     These morals aren't jammed down your throat.  Most of the more modern novelists I've been reading are too quick to shove their point down your gullet.  Tell a good story, and let the moral show in your work.  I may be guilty of this because I'm a fairly new and inexperienced author, but I sure do admire Salvatore because of his ability to easily teach without preaching.

     Okay, now the synopsis:

     Drizzt Do'Urden (Our protagonist) is a male Dark Elf in a Matriarchal society which values him little more than a slave, despite being born into a prestigious family.  The Dark Elves are evil.  They strive only for power and position, at any cost.  The only way Drizzt can ingratiate himself with his mother and sisters is by destroying families in higher standing.  Even the Spider Queen, Lolth, goddess to the Dark Elves, demands blood and betrayal.  

     Drizzt recognizes that his family is brutal, but is largely protected from the depth of their wickedness by his weapons-master and trainer Zaknafein.  Male Dark Elves aren't blessed by Lolth, so they must rely on their physical prowess to fight, whereas the Females can wield dark magic from the Spider Queen.  The males can perform small spells, but nothing compared to the females.  Drizzt is more than gifted when it comes to the sword, mainly because he is being trained by the best weapon master in the realm, but this is considered a lesser talent even among the male Dark Elves.

     The more Drizzt studies, the more he becomes disillusioned with his people.  His only friend is a spirit animal which doesn't even belong to him; Guenhwyvar, a panther from the astral plain.  Guenhwyvar belongs to Masoj, a male wizard, but the panther bonds with Drizzt causing problems for the already doomed, innocent Dark Elf.

     The book leads to the shattering of his child-like perception of his people, and his eventual choice between his people and what he believes to be right.

     This is true literature.  I'm sure a lot of people in the literary world will quickly dismiss it as silly Fantasy/Fiction, but the lessons and emotions are more real than most great works of literature I was required to read throughout school.

     Salvatore is a close second for my favorite author because of the incredible world he created.  Most of modern Dark Elf lore in video games, movies, and books are derived from the Forgotten Realms world Salvatore created.  I was surprised a few weeks ago when I reviewed a book and the author didn't even know who Salvatore was.  The author patterned his Dark Elf world directly after Salvatore's, and didn't even know it because Salvatore's concepts have been expanded so much through the Fantasy world that most just accept them as the way Dark Elves are.

     Of course, I give this book

     

Roman (Saints and Sinners)

      Roman (Saints and Sinners) by Kennedy Streath (Nya Rawlyns)is a YA Romance/Dark Fantasy.  I'm not exactly sure why Mrs. Rawlyns felt she needed a different pen name for this book, except that maybe she wanted to have a different standing for YA than her usual adult work.  And I do mean "Adult Work".  She has a score of Adult Romance novels out, so going into this, I was very wary.  I don't mind Romance, and I don't even mind a sex scene or two in a novel if they aren't too explicit, but when the whole book is smut, I can't turn the page.  The only reason I agreed to review this work was that it was YA, and I hoped that the smut would be toned down for the kiddos.  

     Okay, before I start the review, I need to get a monkey off my back.  I'm part of so many writer's forums, blogs, support groups, and Facebook pages I can't even keep track of most of them.  I always see the question, "Why don't publishers like the omniscient narrative voice?"  Well, I've read a couple of professionally published works where they author, with, I'm sure, the help of editors, made it work.  I've also been reading a lot of indie work from authors who don't have the benefit of all of that professional help.  Omniscient Narrative is very, VERY, hard to do well.  It can be very confusing and jarring to read when not done well.  I'm all but convinced that a single author, no matter how talented, can not accomplish the task alone.  It's the biggest critique I have of this book.  Don't use an omniscient voice.  When I have to go back an read something over again because I don't know who is talking/thinking what, I get put in a surly mood.  Especially when thoughts are italicized without lead-in or lead-out tags annotating who is speaking/thinking.  TJ's thoughts are thrown in in the middle of other character's sentences.  There are better ways to portray thoughts and feelings.

     Okay, on to the review.  Theresa Jane (TJ) just lost her no-good mother, and is forced to move in with her no-good father who abandoned them when she was five.  Typical premise for this type of YA novel.  

     A strange young man named Roman is living with her father.  He's on probation for a crime which has been sealed, and even the police don't seem to want to talk about.  The only advice her brother tells her before shipping off is to stay away from the boy.  You know the old saying, "the best way to get a girl to do something is to tell her not to do it"?  Well, it works.  The mysterious bad boy is an immediate obsession for TJ, even against her own will.  She finds herself drawn to him, wondering about everything about him.  Her dreams are even riddled with the essence of him.  That part is borderline too adult for a YA book, but I digress.  

     It becomes quickly apparent, however, that there is more going on with Roman than just your typical street tough teen.  The lead-ins for this are actually brilliant.  I have to tip my hat to Mrs. Rawlyns for not giving away too much too fast.  The characters are built very carefully, and even with the whinny, poor-picked-on-me, school girl premise, I didn't hate TJ.  She's not completely self-absorbed like most YA protagonists seem to be.  I'm certain the YA audience will love her.

     There are strange things happening in the mine just outside of town.  And the towns people all refer to it as, "the same thing that happened four years ago".  Four years ago is about the time Roman showed up.  There is also a dark contract involved...

     The story is actually quite good.  The characters are well developed.  I cringed a little whenever things heated up between Roman and TJ, just because of the other books Mrs. Rawlyns has written, and she did a pretty good job staving off the inevitable, but, right towards the end, she gave in to her writing habits.  A couple of sixteen year-olds going at it... It was kind of a shame because the rest of the book was rather good.  I don't think teens need more sex and passion.  That one little slip, in my opinion, made the book unsuitable for YA.  Even though it wasn't too explicit.  So, that's my only other criticism; write for kids, or write for adults.  Don't put too many adult ideas into kids' minds who can barely contain their hormones as it is.

     I would have given this book 4-5 stars if not for the end.  As it stands  I give it