Review on The Ghost King by R. A. Salvatore

"The Spellplague has come to Faerûn. The Weave is unwinding. Magic has gone mad."

This novel was released October 6th, 2009. It is the 3rd and final installment of the Transitions series, the latest of all the chronological sets following in the footsteps of Drizzt Do'Urden, the Drow Ranger and the Companions of Mithral Hall. Cover art is by Todd Lockwood.


The series sets up to this point in time in chronological order to the sequence of events are as follows:

The Dark Elf Trilogy

• Homeland(1990)
• Exile(1990)
• Sojourn(1991)

The Icewind Dale Trilogy

• The Crystal Shard(1988)
• Streams of Silver(1989)
• The Halfling's Gem(1990)

Legacy of the Drow

• The Legacy(1992)
• Starless Night(1993)
• Siege of Darkness(1994)
• Passage to Dawn(1996)

Paths to Darkness

• The Silent Blade(1998)
• The Spine of the World(1999)
• Servant of the Shard(2000)
• Sea of Swords(2001)

The Hunter's Blades Trilogy

• The Thousand Orcs(2002)
• The Lone Drow(2003)
• The Two Swords(2004)

Transitions

• The Orc King(2007)
• The Pirate King(2008)
• The Ghost King(2009)

These stories are awesome! They are mature, well-written, flavorful, inspiring and contain something for everyone. There are chronologically 19 novels before The Ghost King involving the excerpts of Drizzt Do'Urden and Companions. There are also mutiple (which I have spared from listing here) sets that are side-related, catching up on circumstances with many more of the popular characters. Fortunately, the novels don't betray themselves by relying heavily on past content (see: Robert Jordan) insofar as they move on amidst the lives of the Companions of Mithral Hall with detail of the recent past and minor running familiarizations to keep the reader both refreshed and up to par with the current content. In short, yes you could just pick the first book of any series up and read it having only read, say, the first six installments chronologically in the sets without too much confusion. But why would you want to?

R. A. Salvatore is native to Massachusetts and went to college at Fitchburg for communications and then English. He is regularly a NY Times best-selling author and has sold more than 10,000,000 copies. Salvatore also personally wrote the story for the PS2, Xbox and PC video game Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone, edited a four story novel set for PC online game Everquest and designed the banter for the Quake III bots. Currently he is the Creative Director of 38 Studios, formerly Green Monster Games, along with Curt Shilling and Todd McFarlane.

R. A. Salvatore's writing style is a strong, well-rounded version of all that can be found in the great writers of our time, likely because he is also very well-read. As with most writers of the fantasy genre, Salvatore juggles between multiple climactic events all taking place during the context of one or more great objectives to overcome. Environment is well-described but not overemployed, struggle and mystery are constant but not overburdening, and characters are scintillating with reaction. Salvatore's most unique style is found within combat, actually having structured the dynamics and timing of everything that must occur within both realistic logic of relativity and fantastical connotations. That may sound complicated, the gist would be in that characters are not in some grey area of imagined triumph or loss amidst undescribable chaos where only what was written is to be finitely occurring. Also, the choices are related to Wizards of the Coast's Forgotten Realms content and must stay within those 'guidelines'.

The Ghost King is a puzzle piece fitted exactly in the conjunction of all Wizards of the Coast, Dungeons and Dragons and Forgotten Realms content. The PC game expansion pack Neverwinter Nights 2: The Mask of the Betrayer might ring a bell (good game by the way), or any reference to the Spellplague may also. All magic fibers have been torn asunder rendering deathly irony to what once were the most powerful entities on Faerûn. The realm of shadow is pouring into the prime material plane, with legion armies of otherworldly force spewing forth in contortions of rampage.

The Ghost King himself is partly the reincarnation of Crenshinibon, the crystal shard. That is the same crystal shard as mentioned in The Crystal Shard and Servant to the Shard. It is an ancient artifact millenia old that seeks revenge on those surviving who have spited it. The Spellplague, an unraveling and weirding of all magic context, has caused its previously detonated energy to form new substance. The Ghost King is possibly the most severe, colossal and heart-wrenching culmination of events that Salvatore could have designed.