I have to wonder if the only universal part of adulthood is wondering when you’ve become an actual adult. Perhaps the mark is less having a 401K or excitement at buying a new vacuum, but when you sit down and go, “so am I an adult now?” I mean, as a kid I never asked myself that question.
“Hey, you’re 18 now; that means you’re an adult!” But I’m too stupid to be an adult. That can’t be right. Also, I drink way too irresponsibly.
“Hey, you’re 28 now; you are so an adult.” But I’m still stupid! Also, I only clean my room like once a month when the carpet gets a texture. Cleaning doesn’t include dusting because there are too many Alien toys in the way. Adults dust. They also don’t collect Alien toys.
Yet I can say that I’m a different person than when I was 18. God help me if I wasn’t. I can say my tastes have changed, along with about a thousand other things too.
Now, this is all a really bad way of getting to The Dark Elf Trilogy by R.A. Salvatore, which I’ve finally reread as a pretend adult who doesn’t clean his room all that often and still buys toys.
See, I picked up The Thousand Orcs around 2003 and began my journey with Drizzt Du’Urden (I pronounce it Drizzit) when I was a freshman in high school. Drizzt became a huge part of my life. Honestly, he became a friend. So did Bruenor, Regis, Cattie-Brie, Wulfgar, and Guenhwyvar. From 2003 to 2014, a part of me lived in Toril with these characters and their ever-dangerous world filled with orcs, giants, demons, and dragons. And probably the occasional werewolf.
At the end of The Last Threshold, I stopped.
It felt like a milestone, like the end of that booked mark the end of childhood. I was editing my first novel and at a job that, while I didn’t enjoy, at least paid well. I’m also pretty sure I got a blender as a Christmas present and was super happy about that. Like, irrationally happy to have a goddamned blender.
No 401K though. I still don’t have one of those.
Time continues to pass. It seems like every year I look at my bookshelf and pick something to get rid of. It’s shrinking faster than it’s growing, which is really sad. At the same time, no, I’m never going to read the novelization of Aliens vs. Predator ever again. I don’t even know why I read it a first time.
I know why I read Homeland a first time, though why I’ve decided to read it a second is a bit complicated. Suffice to say, here we are.
13 year old me and 28 year old me have different opinions on Homeland and the books that follow. It’s surreal, really. I’m a completely different person than the stupid freshman in high school hiding behind a fantasy novel because he had no friends. (I now hide behind alcohol for that, thank you very much.)
I’ve changed.
Or at least, somewhat. Drizzt showed up and nostalgia hit me so hard that I saw stars. Yet there was a difference to him, something not quite right. I missed him—truly I did—yet he wasn’t the elf I thought I missed. There was more angst, more anger. Something was wrong.
That something was me, of course.
I went through Homeland and Exile in a bit of a haze. I had grown up, but the books hadn’t. Drizzt is whispering, “come on, let’s have a look around this bend to see what adventures await!” and I’m going “But almost none of this makes any sense! Why does the Underdark not have rules?”
Drizzt plays at swords and internal struggles, killing hook horrors and hating his parents like 13 year old me listening to Eminem, and I’m stuck on, well…everything else. I get it, but only intellectually, where it doesn’t matter. I need to get it in my gut.
At the same time, I was having fun. The world of Toril is just kind of conducive to that, execution notwithstanding. I churned through Homeland in a few days, and Exile didn’t take much longer. By the end of Exile, I was starting to feel a bit better about everything, too. Yeah, Zak’s climactic end is anime bullshit, but Drizzt’s whispers of adventure were getting harder to ignore. That, and Sojourn promised a journey to Ten Towns. That’s when THE LEGACY really begins, after all.
I was also beginning to appreciate some aspects to Drizzt and his struggles that I hadn’t noticed when I was 13, which is funny because subtlety doesn’t really exist in the Underdark.
I’m used to black-and-white morality in my fantasy stories. It sucks, but it is what it is. Sauron is evil for the sake of evil and so are his orcs. Drizzt’s world though is a bit greyer. To be sure, Menzoberranzan is largely pants-on-head stupid, but it’s also filled with antiheroes like Zak and Jarlaxle. They bring forth some nice questions about what it is to be good and how one should follow their own morals—or how one fails at following their own morals.
Zak is by all accounts a good character. He’s one of maybe three in the Underdark. But wow does he enjoy killing dark elves. Yeah dark elves suck, but so does murder. It begets some questions that aren’t so easy to answer, such as the roles of nature v nurture and religion as a cultural cornerstone.
Drizzt’s trip through Blindenstone is likewise filled with introspection. It’s not always well written to be sure, but I like that it’s there.
When I was 13, I was all about the sword fights and goofy magic. Now though, it’s the moments between that shine the brightest. Ironically, those are generally moments of deep despair.
Come Sojourn, and the questions keep piling on, as do the character moments. Does Drizzt kill a bunch of giant monsters? Of course. But his interactions with a small farming village and the subsequent chase as he’s framed for killing a family are far more tense.
And for all my complaints, R.A. Salvatore is one of those writers that makes it so easy for me to lose myself, to see through the pages and into the world. I’ll criticize the prose in these novels until I’m blue in the face, but his words are effective. I could see Drizzt fighting alongside Mooshie, shooting arrows into an army of orcs. I could see the darkness spell on Mooshie’s shield, the blind ranger moving around like a black hole of swords and screams.
I mean, it’s stupid, right? Drizzt can throw out globes of darkness and fairy fire, and every time he does—be it the first or the thirtieth—we get an explanation of what and how. It’s frustrating, yet it’s exhilarating too.
I suppose I should wrap this all up with some platitude about being an adult, how knowing when to work and when to just enjoy is the marking of maturity and wisdom or some shit, but I’m not. If I had any answers, I wouldn’t be writing this pseudo-introspective essay about a dumb fantasy novel. Clearly I do not have my shit together.
I could also wrap this up in a review way, giving the series a score and a recommendation, but I won’t do that either. I don’t know if these are good. I’m too attached, even with a 14 year gap.
I am going to read the next three though. And perhaps the next four after that. I might even go the distance and read all 23. Who knows? At this point, I think I’ll just be happy to have a friend back, even if it’s only for a moment.
Maybe tomorrow I won’t be stupid.
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