Firstly, no game campaign should dictate where a story goes. Only the story should dictate that. And the fact is that RA Salvatore had NUMEROUS chances to kill off his characters. He has implausibly saved them from death so many times when their dying would have been dramatic. That he now chooses to kill them off via deus ex-machina (some poorly-explained ‘spellplague’ that is incidental to the main plot) is just bad writing.

Add to that the fact that his villain is a composite of several characters that he earlier killed off, and you have a plot that makes no sense. Have the book is devoted to goofy battle scenes (zombie bears getting kicked to death by ‘monks?’ Really?). In reality, more than half. This book reads like a B-or even C-action movie from the 80s.

To be fair, Salvatore’s books usually are filled with gratuitous battle scenes. Yet usually he lets the characters drive the plot to some degree. But this book felt too much like, well, a game. And I know it is based on a gaming world, but it should read like a book, it should feel real. You shouldn’t see stats jumping out at you every few pages, such as when Danica’s ‘monk abilities’ save her from a suicidal fall.

This is one of the worst books ever written in my opinion. The spellplague whatever that is is never explained, the plot makes no sense and is dramatically unsatisfying, and characters who should have died in service to a story died just because a gaming company said they needed to. For shame.

All im thinking is..
“Why Salvatore? Why?!”