My Top Reads: The Drizzt Series

Okay, so a series may not be something you might expected as a top read but this is an excellent series by R.A. Salvatore. It is high fantasy with elves, dwarves, and the like so fans of that genre should definitely check out this series.

The series has been running for several years and follows the adventures of a drow (dark elf) named Drizzt Do'urden. Every book in the series is good but there is definitely an order in which they have to be read, though the titles do little to help you get it straight. When in doubt, just Google it.

This is a series that came highly recommended to me several years ago by multiple friends who were already very familiar with it and I can honestly say that I was not disappointed. I spent the next several months reading on my tablet or physical books to get caught up but find myself falling behind again. Since my last read, R.A. Salvatore has released a few more books to the series that I've missed because of my own writing.

My failure to keep up though is not a sign that the series isn't as good as I might let on, just that I've put my work in front of the work of others for a while and its caused me to fall behind. In fact, when he announced the release of Timeless in 2018 I was super excited. My friends and I were all sharing screenshots of the announcements we found online and discussing what we thought might happen in it.

My wife surprised me by having a pre-ordered copy delivered on release day. That book still sits on my desk next to me day in and day out. It doesn't matter how many times I read it, it will stay there because it has meaning to me beyond just the content now.

And as I write this blog, I know the level of ineffectiveness it will have because so many people are already a fan of R.A. Salvatore's work, even if they don't know it. These books have served as inspiration to numerous video games for years. It seems that most any western role-playing game (RPG) released in recent years has some level of inspiration pulled from these works. A lot of people often associated RPGs with games like Dungeons & Dragons, which is not necessarily a lie either, but just as D&D influences gaming very heavily, it seems that the works of R.A. Salvatore does too. And as a gamer, I could not be happier about that.

Yes, there are a lot of books out there in the Drizzt series and it is a big undertaking to read them all but I encourage anyone who is a fan of books in this genre to give 'em a try. They are not your typical fantasy books and Drizzt is not your average protagonist.