The Lone Drow by R. A. Salvatore (3/5 stars)

The Lone Drow is the second book in The Hunter's Blade trilogy by R. A. Salvatore. This book details the struggle of the Mithril drawven army to hold off increasing numbers of orcs and trolls and tells of the struggle of Drizzt to deal with what he thinks was the demise of all of his friends. Drizzt drops back into the "hunter" mode that he found so useful in Menzoberanzzan; and dispatches many of the orcs in his style. Drizzt continues to struggle with his killing of Le'Lorinel, while the two surface elves work to try and bring Drizzt to reason before he gets himself killed.

This book delivers all of what you expect from a R. A. Salvatore book. There are a lot of well-written action sequences and lots of battle. There are some heart-rending sacrifices in the heat of battle...oh and did I mention some battle?

There were a few things that really annoyed me about this book. The first was Drizzt himself. His story in this book was annoying. He is struggling with the fact that he believes his friends have all been killed, okay I get that. The thing that puzzled me is that he also mentions that he believes that some of his friends are still alive but he is too afraid to go and find out who made it and who didn't. So...he is upset because everyone is dead and he is upset that somebody might be alive? I understand that Drizzt is supposed to be a deeply emotional character but this logical loop is a bit much considering that he is also supposed to be intelligent.

Second thing I didn't like...the title of the book. This book suggests that the majority of the time is spend with Drizzt. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately given Drizzt's addled state of mind, the majority of the time is spent dealing with the dwarves and the orcs and their battle. I have a sneaking suspicion that this title was meant to draw people in to read about their favorite character Drizzt, when in fact Drizzt didn't get the majority of page space.

Third thing that bothered me was how fractionated the story was. I know Salvatore usually bounces between a few different storylines and that is fine. This book was his usual stuff to the nth degree. Sometimes you had less than 1/2 a page to read until he switched perspective on you.

All in all this book was okay. It was a necessary evil to get through the storyline to the next book. I found this book very hard to get through; it took me forever to slog through each page. The story started to pick up again in the end and recaptured my interest in the last couple chapters. I was going to take a break from this series before reading the last book, but the last few chapters convinced me to go on and read the last book of the trilogy right away.