After the success of The Icewind Dale trilogy and the immense reputation of its breakout star, Drizzt Do’Urden, R.A. Salvatore was inevitably going to discover how the one non-evil drow elf within the Forgotten Realms turned… effectively, non-evil. The outcome was the Dark Elf trilogy, which started with Homeland. It was by far my favourite Dungeons & Dragons novel after I was a child, and now, 30+ years later, it nonetheless is.

Homeland chronicles Drizzt’s life from his delivery to the second he leaves the Underdark and enters the floor world for the primary time, however its biggest energy is the way it explores drow society, which as much as that time was greatest summarized as “very evil.” Prior to Drizzt, within the vein of orcs, trolls, and primary-colored dragons, the Drow have been basically categorized as extra monsters for gamers to battle and defeat. Their pores and skin was obsidian black, incomes them the alternate title of darkish elves, and marking them because the evil counterpart to the nice and heroic lighter-skinned elves of the floor.

The drawback with that is apparent, and already felt bizarre to me again after I was 13. When the drow have been one-dimensional unhealthy guys within the Monster Manual, it was simpler not to consider the extremely terrible resolution to make a dark-skinned race uniformly evil. But when Salvatore launched Drizzt in 1988’s The Crystal Shard, gamers/readers who hadn’t been bothered this by have been compelled to acknowledge the correlation as a result of characters within the Forgotten Realms judged Drizzt by the colour of his pores and skin. He was distrusted, despised, and discriminated in opposition to, typically even by these he helped.

I don’t understand how aware Salvatore was of arguably setting Wizards of the Coast on its journey to reckon with Dungeons & Dragons’ racism drawback again then—though he definitely is now—by presenting the concept even a drow might be a hero, nevertheless it was a path he trod extra solidly in Homeland. While drow society is evil (it’s additionally a matriarchy, which isn’t an excellent look both) Salvatore takes care to level out Drizzt isn’t alone, and never each elf residing within the underground metropolis of Menzoberranzan is chaotic evil.

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Zaknafein, the weapon master of House Do’Urden and the secret father of Drizzt, finds drow society horrible but feels utterly trapped in it. Drizzt’s sister Vierna, who’s placed in charge of Drizzt for his first 13 years, has moments of care for empathy for her little brother, who was originally destined to be sacrificed as the unneeded third son of Matron Malice Do’Urden. (Luckily, Drizzt’s older brother Dinin murdered Drizzt’s oldest brother Nalfein that same night, upgrading Drizzt to the second son.) Unfortunately, the indoctrination that Vierna was raised with usually reasserts itself, and Vierna often punishes Drizzt for the non-evil thoughts he inspires in her.

Admittedly, those are pretty much the only three people we know who have some degree of good in them in a thriving, malicious cast of dozens. But Salvatore takes care to point out drow aren’t born evil, they’re raised evil. Here’s an anguished thought from Zaknafein, after watching Drizzt explore the Do’Urden weapon room with unbridled, non-sadistic happiness.

“Are they all like that?” he requested into his practically empty room. “Do all drow children possess such innocence, such simple, untainted smiles that cannot survive the ugliness of our world?”

It’s not much, and yes, the vast majority of characters in Homeland are unabashedly evil. But it’s hard not to draw a line from Homeland to the problems Wizards of the Coast is trying to address now.

But where Homeland really shines—what hooked me as a kid, and what I still find fascinating now—is how thoroughly Salvatore examines drow society and the city of Menzoberranzan. From the cult of Lolth, the spider-goddess, to the matriarchal houses constantly scheming to destroy the others, to their equally Machiavellian education system, to the brutal class structure, Salvatore explores it all. He gives equal attention to the architecture and art of Menzoberranzan, and he’s gained enough skill to describe it with aplomb. What would look like utter darkness to us is a world of vivid color for the drow, whose nightvision (the D&D term for being able to see the infrared spectrum) is unparalleled. It’s augmented by magic and the elves’ ability to shape stone into works of art, ornate houses, and more.

Through all the Forgotten Realms novels I’ve read, the realm itself has always filled like generic, Tolkien fantasy. Which is fine, and exactly what I wanted as a kid! But Homeland took me beyond D&D’s generic fantasy campaign setting into someplace I’d never been before, someplace utterly foreign and fascinating. And just as importantly, Homeland wasn’t a D&D game retrofitted into a novel; it was a coming-of-age story about a kid who’s born into a cult and manages to resist its brainwashing and escape into a new world… where a new series of problems await him.

It was unlike any other Dungeons & Dragons novel I’d read at the time, and I’m pretty sure it still is—and that includes the other book in the Dark Elf trilogy, Exile and Sojourn. I have no idea if that will change as I start getting into the novels I didn’t read as a kid, but for now, I say Homeland rolls a critical hit—a natural 20. It’s as good as I suspect a classic D&D novel to get, but I am very willing to be proven wrong. Given that there are 34 more Legend of Drizzt novels to read, this could be a horrible choice that will force me to recalibrate the entire score system at some point, but oh well.

Assorted Musings:

• Okay, this isn’t really a musing, and there’s only one. But next time on Dungeons & Dragons & Novels, we’re heading back to Krynn but skipping around a little bit. I’ll be taking on the third book in the Dragonlance: Heroes series (which kicked off with The Legend of Huma), titled Weasel’s Luck! Is it simply because the word “weasel” is in the title? I’ll never tell!

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