There are actual, genuinely good fantasy books out there I could be listening to instead of this atrocious tripe. I'm not willing to wade through any more terrible stories badly narrated in the hopes that they might get better. but I'm just not willing to give these awful books any more chances. At some level I do wonder if R.A.Salvatore ever learnt 'show, don't tell'. If as much time was given to finishing up the plot adequately as to writing out crappy combat scenes, maybe this wouldn't be such a disaster. A wedding or a big gay orgy or something. He’s an avid gamer, father of three, and loyal citizen of Red Sox Nation. I'm not even entirely sure what happened at the end because it was just so asinine by that point that I couldn't bring myself to care. Salvatore is the New York Times bestselling author of more than 40 novels, including the popular Forgotten Realms series The Legend of Drizzt.

RAS once again writes a ridiculously boring sequence of events so immediately explained that predictability doesn't even have to factor into it. and giving a bit more screen-time to Drizzt's evil-opposite nemesis for no better reason than just to give Drizzt more things to angst over than just the colour of his skin. This book is more like tying up a loose end that was deliberately left loose to be tied up here. It isn't like there was any sort of over-arcing plot to the three books that would normally be implied by the term 'trilogy'. The first two books of this trilogy were unsubtly hinting that the plot of this one would happen. So how many not-actually-dead characters now?

The Halfling's Gem by R.A. Salvatore