Homeland - Introduction and Prelude(s)

[kalinara]

Okay, so I'm unfairly irked right now and it is NOT the fault of this book. However, I managed to fuck up when checking my preview and formatting and lost my COMPLETED draft of this review. Kaput!

So here we go again.

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So this is Homeland, the first book of the Dark Elf Trilogy, and the origin story of the legendary hero, Drizzt Do'Urden. It's also where most fans of Drizzt will tell you to start reading, treating the Icewind Dale Trilogy as something of an old shame.

I don't think that's completely fair, because while the books did have a lot of flaws, they did also ably introduce Drizzt, his boon companions, one of his more infamous adversaries and the general conceits of the series. But I do remember Homeland being a significant improvement in form and style.

So let's talk about a few things first.

Obviously, as I said before, I am not fond of drow as a concept. I think they're racist. And I think they're sexist. But to be fair, I don't entirely know who to blame for what. I believe the drow, and their spider goddess Lloth/Lolth had their origins with Gary Gygax. But I'm not sure how much of the version that we see in the Forgotten Realms comes from him, Ed Greenwood (who definitely seems to have a thing for sexy powerful women), or R. A. Salvatore, who likely fleshed out the city of Menzoberranzan at the very least, but may have had some editorial constraints that he had to follow.

Because of that, I'm going to try (TRY) to focus more on the execution of the concepts, rather than the concepts themselves. We'll see how well I succeed.

I do think that I should give Mr. Salvatore some credit though. This article, which was published this month, is a really interesting look at how Mr. Salvatore and Wizards of the Coast are attempting to address and remedy some of the inherent issues regarding the drow race. I think Mr. Salvatore does a pretty good job of acknowledging the issue and demonstrating that he has learned a lot since 1990.

But that said, we're not critiquing 2021 Salvatore. This is 1990 Salvatore. Warts and all.



There's a really odd phenomenon that starts around this time, when it comes to the portrayal of Drizzt on the covers of these books.

Now, if you've read my reviews of the Icewind Dale Trilogy, or if you have any familiarity with the Forgotten Realms, you probably have a pretty good idea of what drow are supposed to look like. They're generally preternaturally young and beautiful, like all elves are, but with very black skin and white hair.

So let's look at Homeland's cover:



...

Now I appreciate that the image is small, so you may be missing some details. So I'm going to show you another cover:



So admittedly, this one is infamously the worst of them. But it's got the same general features as every Drizzt cover in the 90s: inexplicable skullcap never mentioned in any book, oddly receding hairline, old features and WHITE SKIN.

Now, look, I'm not going to criticize the artist, because god knows what kind of instruction or detail he was given. But someone had to approve these covers. And this person either didn't read the books or...fuck if I know. I've read various potential explanations and all of them seem like more than a little bullshit.

Either way, while I've infamously been in favor of older covers on this blog in most cases. This series is my exception. Newer editions of the book have this cover instead:



Now this is a nice cover. It's recognizable, evocative, and most importantly, it's pretty. This Drizzt is so pretty that I can almost forget that he annoys the fuck out of me. (My favorite Drizzt portrayal is the original Elmore cover of Crystal Shard which is shown in the article linked above.)

But tangent aside, let's get started.

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So the first section here is a prelude. And to be honest with you, I don't remember this bit at all. Somewhere in my basement is my original paperback of this book and I am 99% sure that this prelude wasn't in it. That said, it's got some truly lovely imagery:

Never does a star grace this land with a poet’s light of twinkling mysteries, nor does the sun send to here its rays of warmth and life. This is the Underdark, the secret world beneath the bustling surface of the Forgotten Realms, whose sky is a ceiling of heartless stone and whose walls show the gray blandness of death in the torchlight of the foolish surface-dwellers that stumble here. This is not their world, not the world of light. Most who come here uninvited do not return.

I'm also very fond of this:

There is a silence here, profound and foreboding, the crouched hush of a predator at work. Too often the only sound, the only reminder to travelers in the Underdark that they have not lost their sense of hearing altogether, is a distant and echoing drip of water, beating like the heart of a beast, slipping through the silent stones to the deep Underdark pools of chilled water. What lies beneath the still onyx surface of these pools one can only guess. What secrets await the brave, what horrors await the foolish, only the imagination can reveal—until the stillness is disturbed. This is the Underdark.

and this:

In one such cavern, two miles wide and a thousand feet high, looms Menzoberranzan, a monument to the other worldly and— ultimately—deadly grace that marks the race of drow elves. Menzoberranzan is not a large city by drow standards; only twenty thousand dark elves reside there. Where, in ages past, there had been an empty cavern of roughly shaped stalactites and stalagmites now stands artistry, row after row of carved castles thrumming in a quiet glow of magic. The city is perfection of form, where not a stone has been left to its natural shape. This sense of order and control, however, is but a cruel facade, a deception hiding the chaos and vileness that rule the dark elves’ hearts. Like their cities, they are a beautiful, slender, and delicate people, with features sharp and haunting.

These are gorgeous descriptions which paint beautiful pictures, but at the same time, it's rather like reading a travelogue. There's no real hook or emotion here. And I think it's ultimately unnecessary: we'll see Menzoberranzan for ourselves soon enough. We'll experience it alongside the characters. And then we'll feel it.

It's not an offensive addition to the story, but it doesn't really accomplish anything either.

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The second part though, I do remember. And, with a few caveats, it's much better.

We're not in Chapter One yet, but we have, per the page, started PART One. And we're introduced to a new conceit that will permeate the rest of the Drizzt novels: the written monologue/journal entry. Honestly, I suspect I wouldn't find Drizzt half so irritating if not for these fucking pontificating, droning, self-congratulating journal entries.

But that said, this one isn't bad.

This section is called "Station" and while I usually omit chapter titles (except in Mistwraith/Merior, because it's nearly impossible to keep events straight without them), I'm mentioning this one because it comes up as a motif.

Drizzt tells us that "Station" is the most important word in the world of the drow. It's the calling of their ("-of our-") religion and it pulls at their heartstrings. Ambition overrides good sense and compassion, all in the name of their goddess, Lolth.

Drizzt tells us about drow society. There are rules of behavior, because a truly chaotic society can't survive long without eating each other. They're pretty straight forward: open murder or war invites retribution in the form of "drow justice", a concept that Drizzt does not hold very highly. But backstabbing and assassination are great!

Drizzt gets a great line here: "Investigation is not the forte of drow justice. No one cares enough to bother."

Drizzt discusses Lolth and "the ambition she bestows to further the chaos, to keep her drow 'children' along their appointed course of self-imprisonment." He scoffs at his own word choice, comparing them to dancing dolls for her amusement.

Overall, it's a great segment. There's genuine emotion and character here, for both the drow and Drizzt himself. There's a palpable weariness when Drizzt discusses drow justice, and a sharp bitterness when he talks about the Spider Queen.

I don't like the last paragraph though:

Station is the paradox of the world of my people, the limitation of our power within the hunger for power. It is gained through treachery and invites treachery against those who gain it. Those most powerful in Menzoberranzan spend their days watching over their shoulders, defending against the daggers that would find their backs. Their deaths usually come from the front.

This reads like the closing paragraph of a college essay about a given theme, not a personal account of thought and feeling. I'd have dropped it entirely and ended with the last sentence of the Lolth paragraph instead: "All climb the Spider Queen's ladders; all hunt for her pleasure; and all fall to the hunters of her pleasure."

But that's a pretty small quibble for a pretty decent introduction.

Join me next time, and we'll review chapter one!