Starless Night: Legacy of the Drow, Book II [Mass Market Paperback]

If you haven't, then here's what you need to know. These four books center around a good-aligned drow elf named Drizzt, who is now wandering the surface of Faerun. If you've never read about Drizzt before, be advised that these four books are not first in chronological order of Drizzt's life; you'll be given some backstory to understand who Drizzt is, but you'll also know pretty much everything that happened in all the earlier novels, which may lessen your enjoyment of them when you eventually read them. I say "when" rather than "if" because it seems to me that if you approach these novels without an anti-Drizzt or anti-Salvatore mindset, you will love them, and you will go buy all the others.

I'm not going to write out a play-by-play of events in the book, since you can look them each up individually and get plenty of information from other posters. I give these 4 books a total of 5 stars; some are better than others, but none rank below a 3.

As a sidenote, if you are buying this as a gift for someone, you might want to know that they are set in the Forgotten Realms, which is a unique world, NOT a generic fantasy world. I would not purchase this set as a gift for someone unless I already knew that they were familiar with the Forgotten Realms world. It's too complex a place to approach in the middle of a series without understanding the world at least to some degree.

It is amazing finally getting into the underground city of the drow (I have not yet read the "Homeland" books). The inner workings of the city are facinating and unlike anything I had ever imagined. They truely seem to be pure evil (or most of them at least). The political intrigue in this book is exceptional. It is nothing like the politics in a huge epic (like "Song of Ice and Fire") but still pretty good and facinating at face value for a such a small book and a vastly different target audience. This book never let me down and was quite fun and enjoyable to read. My only reservation about this book is that Breunor and Regis are not that involved in the story (they are definately not involved in the main story, and their side plot line is very slim). But Salvatore proves that he doesn't need all of the companions to make a great book, and also proves that he still has a lot of fire under him and some surprises still up his sleave.

As always, the battles are fierce and exciting. Also the assasin (one of my favorites) is back and "integrated" into the drow society. Very interesting watching the strong and powerful get pushed around.

Read this book - this sub series in the Drizzt series is my favorite so far and is filled with more action and adventures than the others I have read.