Review of The Companions by R.A. Salvatore

SFFaudio Review

The CompanionsThe Companions (Forgotten Realms: The Sundering, Book 1)
By R.A. Salvatore; Narrated by Victor Bevine
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
[UNABRIDGED] – 15 hours

Themes: / fantasy / magic / Forgotten Realms / wizard /

Publisher summary:

On the dusty plains of Netheril, a young Bedine girl spins a web of forbidden magic, obliterating a pair of assassins with a single lightning strike. On the banks of the Sea of Fallen Stars, a tiny thief walks willingly into battle with a ruthless killer, a wide grin upon his face. In the tunnels of Citadel Felbarr, a dwarfling is ambushed and strikes back with an attack well beyond his apparent strength and years. These three seemingly unrelated commoners, growing up across the far reaches of the Forgotten Realms®, hold the fate of Faerûn’s most famous dark elf, Drizzt Do’Urden, in their hands. But that fate is far from certain. For in the shadows a cunning cabal of wizards is watching, intent on hunting Chosen—mortals blessed by the gods. These wizards know something mere commoners do not: Long-forgotten gods have begun to stir. Long-lost lands have begun to tremble. The world around them is about to change. And these wizards will do whatever it takes to turn the coming chaos to their advantage. In this first book of the six-book Sundering series, New York Times bestselling author R.A. Salvatore launches a major world-shaping event that will revive old favorites, introduce new complications, and move his signature hero Drizzt into a restored era of the Forgotten Realms.

Oh, Salvatore. Never change.

Drizzt Do’Urden is back in The Companions, although in a very limited fashion. The bulk of the story focuses on Cattie-brie, Bruenor, and Regis as they are (I am not making this up) sent back to live again, from birth onwards, in order to help Drizzt far after their original deaths.

Yep. They have adult consciousness in baby bodies. They’re aware of the sensation of being birthed. They have completely adult, mature minds trapped in little toddler dwarf/human/halfling bodies. They have to struggle through relearning how to walk, eat, be toilet trained…let me back up.

Mielikki, a goddess of nature, allows the Companions to chose whether to be reborn in order to help Drizzt in a time of great need. Wulfgar appears to chose not to, electing to go to his heavenly reward instead, but the others are all reborn and go through childhood. They constantly work to hide their identities while being somewhat torn in their loyalties. The story culminates with their reunion with a wounded Drizzt and his magical panther, Guenhwyvar. Even Wulfgar shows up at the end, and it’s nicely set up for the next book in the series.

Did I mention the vampire drow? Or the dolphins? This book has it all.

Except for the beginning and end, Drizzt is not part of the action. He has escaped capture and is considered lost, so instead each chapter begins with a letter of his, a seeming memoir, on a theme that is then touched upon in Cattie-brie, Bruenor, and Regis’s new lives.

I’m not sure I’d necessarily recommend this book, as it was very odd. I did enjoy it, even as I laughed at some of the parts, and would definitely listen to the next one.

The narrator did a really good job, even managing to pull off a falsetto for the female characters voices without it turning off-putting. There was a short bit of music in between each disc, and they repeated the first few sentences from the last disc in the first track of the next disc.

Posted by Sarah R.

Review of The Legend of Drizzt

SFFaudio Review

Legend of DrizztThe Legend of Drizzt: The Collected Stories
By R. A. Salvatore
Publisher: Audible Studios
Publication Date: 12 August 2014
[UNABRIDGED] – 10 hours, 27 minutes

Themes: / Forgotten Realms / dark elf / fantasy / short stories /

Publisher summary:

The Legend of Drizzt: The Collected Stories expands upon the epic legend of the dark elf with 12 tales performed by the all-star cast of Felicia Day, Dan Harmon, Greg Grunberg, Tom Felton, Danny Pudi, Sean Astin, Melissa Rauch, Ice-T, Wil Wheaton, Al Yankovic, Michael Chiklis, and David Duchovny!

For years, the Legend of Drizzt has included short stories published in Forgotten Realms anthologies and Dragon magazine. Available here for the first time in audio are all the classic stories by the New York Times best-selling author R. A. Salvatore!

From the startling origin of Drizzt’s panther companion, to the tale of Jarlaxle and Entreri’s first encounter with the dragon sisters, the tales in The Collected Stories enrich this vividly-imagined series by building the world around Drizzt through exploring the backstories of side characters and magical locations.

Wizards of the Coast outdid themselves on this one and brought in a cast that’s actually hard to believe unless you start listening.
I thought the stories were excellent and for the most part the readings were well done. Ice-T was decent, but extremely slow and kept pronouncing the “w” in “sword” and that word is used a ton in his story. It drove me nuts.

Weird Al did a good job, especially with the voices, but his voice is a little too … bubbly … silly … there’s got to be a better word … for this type of serious story.

Usually Wil Wheaton does a good job, but I don’t rate him super high as a narrator because he never does different voices for the characters, at least not well. This one he did an excellent job with the voices. He’s another, however, that might have too much sarcasm in his voice for this type of story. Which is why he is the perfect narrator for anything from John Scalzi.

Last one and I’m done talking, biggest surprise was Michael Chiklis, who did an insanely good job with EVERYTHING. I hope he does tons more audiobooks and quits acting for the real money … in audiobook narration! We all know Scott Brick is rollin’ in it, amiright?

Overall, it’s more than worth the price I paid and then some and pretty cool to have these celebrities reading names like Drizzt and Zaknafein and Menzoberranzan and I’m not even touching the dwarf names of the top of my head that us geeks love oh so much.

4 out of 5 stars (highly recommended)

Posted by Bryce L.

The SFFaudio Podcast #259 – NEW RELEASES/RECENT ARRIVALS

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #259 – Jesse, Scott, Tamahome, and Seth talk about NEW RELEASES and RECENT ARRIVALS.

Talked about on today’s show:  a vintage podcast with Scott, R.I.P. RadioArchive.cc, Radio Downloader app, audio drama, Brad Lansky and the Alien at Planet X is full of sound, it’s like Ruby, Richmond Smokes a Joint, The Cleansed, are movies the most respected art form?, Pacific Rim: The Official Movie Novelization by Alexander Irvine, postmodernism, Death of the Author by Roland Barthes, The Best Horror of the Year, Vol. 4 edited by Ellen Datlow, Murder of Crows by Anne Bishop, a group of crows is murder, Night Watch #2 and #3 by Sergei Lukyanenko, the Night Watch series discussed on A Good Story Is Hard To Find #57 podcast, “a three volume novel“, Dickens serial novels, Blood Oranges by Kathleen Tierney, what Michael Jackson says at the end of songs, The Line by J. D. Horn, Jenny is studying Turkish, Sky Raiders by Brandon Mull, kids at schools love him, Raising Steam (Discworld #40) by Terry Pratchett, regular narrators for series, The Companions (The Sundering #1, Legend of Drizzt #24, Forgotten Realms) by R. A. Salvatore, Dungeons and Dragons, many Dragonlance books by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, Jesse read them!, what is your D&D Alignment??, vs the Ultima eight virtues, “he’s got cool eyes”, Magic’s Promise by Mercedes Lackey, William Shakespeare’s The Empire Striketh Back by Ian Doescher, purists won’t like it, more alignment talk, Z 2135 (Z 2134 #2) by David Wright and Sean Platt, Fractured by D.J. Molles, Little Fuzzy by H. Beam Piper, The Rift by Bob Mayer, The Runestone Incident by Neve Maslakovic, To Honor You Call Us by H. Paul Honsinger, The Folklore of Discworld by Terry Pratchett and Jacqueline Simpson (a folklorist!), The Age of Radiance: The Epic Rise and Dramatic Fall of the Atomic Era by Craig Nelson, Lockstep by Karl Schroeder, who was on Geek’s Guide #106, can’t find it in my local bookstore, was serialized in AnalogHis Share of Glory: The Complete Short Science Fiction of C. M. Kornbluth, Pickman’s Model by Lovecraft, guess who had that made?, H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine‘s missing chapter, The True Detective was inspired by The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers, Galveston: A Novel by Nic Pizzolatto (creator of True Detective), Words Of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson is longer than all of C.M. Kornbluth’s work, Terpkristin gave it five stars on Goodreads, Luke’s alignment, Brian K. Vaughan’s Saga comic with the Lying Cat, Mask Of The Red Panda graphic novel, it’s an audio drama podcast too at Decoder Ring Theatre, Julie’s alignment, Martians Go Home by Frederic Brown, Screaming Mimi and Honeymoon In Hell as well, The Frightened Fish (Doc Savage) from radioarchives.com, Doc Savage is a comic from Dynamite too, “hair is like a helmet”, Haldeman’s Forever PeaceWork Done For Hire, Haldeman’s quote about “write what you know”, Haldeman’s Star Trek novels, Jesse thinks he’s f’ing awesome, Seth likes Neal Stephenson, Project Hieroglyph, Robert J. Sawyer’s WWW trilogy, in the optimistic axis, The Woman In Black by Susan Hill (and original film)

lying cat

Posted by Tamahome