Debate: Would Fantasy as we know it exist...Follow

I had heard somewhere that Tolkien was the one who created the "multi-race world", i.e. Dwarves, Elves, Orcs, etc. Is there any truth to this claim?

There's no "think" about it. McKiernan admits straight up in his Forward that he was attempting to write a story in the Tolkien tradition.

Ok. Major ******* about the whole Drizzt thing.

#1: Every character, aside from perhaps Drizzt, is a foil. The large, mighty warrior who is naive in the ways of love. The feisty, beautiful warrior maiden. The trouble making halfling who draws the party into adventure. The gruff dwarf who proves to have a tender heart*. Hell, that was half the party from the Dragonlance saga... and I'm not claiming Weis & Hickman were in any way innovative when they did it either. It's an ensemble cast but the only character whose life story can't be summed up in seven words or less is Drizzt.

#2: You don't care about anyone. This is probably related to #1. Do I care if Bruenor finds his ancient homeland? No, I do not. Why not? Because I don't give a rat's *** about the dwarf. Do I care if Wulfgar and Tika-- I mean Cattie Brie hook up? No, I do not. Why? Because of course they're going to hook up. This leads to some boring *** plotlines when none of the characters are fleshed out and their motives fall flat. Face it, you just read to the end of the Halfling's Gem to see Drizzt and Entriti (or whoever) fight and see if it was going to be a win for Drizzt or if they would tie since Drizzt obviously wasn't going to lose.

#3: Flat villians. 90% of the villians you barely remember are there, such as the evil wizard guy, the evil wizard chick and.. umm.. whoever. Then you have anti-Drizzt Enteiri (again, however its spelled) who is almost a parody of himself as he oh-so-dangerously-and-smoothly kills every minor character in the second two books.

#4: Whatever plot twists there were were quickly mitigated. Bruenor is dead! No he isn't! Cattie Brie is dead! No she isn't! Regis is dead! No he isn't! How many deus ex machina plot resolutions can you fit into a trilogy? I've heard that in the later books, Wulfgar finally bites it. Good for him.

#5: By the time you reach the prequel, even the one character with any depth is about done. He's a dark elf. But he's not evil. He's haunted by how mean his people are. He's the Mack Daddy with the scimitars. Ok, we get it.

#6: This is about the prequel trilogy but... what the hell was with some of those plots? Drizzt fighting Evil Zaknaf-whatnot on a bridge over a lake of acid with "Drizzt.. I am your father!!"?? WTF? Drizzt being trained as the bumbling apprentice to the aged but experienced blind ranger who can still hit a gnat with a thrown dagger at 500 feet? Was this written after viewing a bad kung fu movie? Why did the editor never stop and call Salvatore and say "Umm... R.A... about this scene you lifted from Star Wars..."?

Don't get me wrong. The books are better than most TSR Press pulp fantasy. If you read them as fantasy fluff, they're okay. But the amount of adoration they recieve is bewildering.

*Has there ever been a fantasy novel where the gruff dwarf turns out to just be an asshole instead of revealing his tender heart of gold? I don't think so

Well, I'm not saying Salvatore "sucks" so much as that the whole Drizzt thing is over-rated. My opinion, of course, all literature being subjective.

I don't totally agree that literature based on a serial world has to be horrible. Granted, Drizzt & Co. couldn't have very well killed Elminster or something within the confines of the Forgotten Realms milieu but we had no idea prior to Crystal shard who any of these folks were. If Cattie Brie was eaten by a yeti, it wouldn't have exactly shattered the foundations of Toril. Same as the Dragonlance Chronicles, really. Granted there they were also building Krynn from the ground up but Weis & Hickman were free to actually kill off major characters because the character were only major within the confines of the Chronicles.

I keep referring to Dragonlance, by the way, because I think the first six books were one of the best examples of good pulp fantasy. They weren't Tolkien (I'm not even sure if Tolkien was Tolkien, if you know what I mean) but they were well written for a TSR branded paperback and I assume most people familiar with the Icewind Dale trilogy are familiar with Chronicles. Anyway, Weis & Hickman did a much better job of filling out their characters, for example Caramon was still a big strong guy but he had motivation with his brother and Tika. Flint was more interesting (to me) than Bruenor and plays against Tasslehoff better than Regis. Some were still pretty two-dimensional -- I could have done without Riverwind and Goldmoon completely. I know Goldmoon's importance to the story, but she really has no personality and about all Riverwind does is stand by Goldmoon and glower a lot. Likewise, Tika is what she is: naive pretty girl who is thrown into being a wannabe warrior. On the other hand, Weis & Hickman were juggling a lot of characters. There's a quote in Art of Dragonlance collection where one of them is talking about how they had to keep reviewing chapters to make sure everyone had some face time because they kept forgetting the "lesser" main characters.

Dragonlance had better villians as well. I'd take Raistlin, Kitiara and Lord Soth over the maroons from the Salvatore books any day. Even seemingly indestructable Soth wasn't overplayed like Enteri seemed to be. Plus he had a cooler history

Anyway, I'll say that the Icewind Dale trilogy is a lot better than TSR crap piles like Spellfire and Pool of Radiance. My favorite Forgotten Realms set novel remains Azure Bonds which is kinda cheesy, but good fun. The other two "Wyvernspur Trilogy" books were written as obvious afterthoughts when Azure Bonds sold well and simply capitalize on the AB name.