‘The Ancient’ – R.A. Salvatore (Tor UK)

A few years ago, I started to hear lots of good things about R.A. Salvatore so I thought I’d give one of his books a go (not having read anything by him at the time). I can’t remember the name of the book, it was one of the ones with Drizzt in it, but I do remember that I put the book down (in fits of laughter) after coming across a dwarf named ‘Tred McKnuckles’. I didn’t pick the book up again, assuming that if all the character names were as bad as this then I wouldn’t be able to finish the book through the tears of laughter (and horror) running down my face.
It’s been a few years now since my last R.A. Salvatore ‘experiment’ and when I received a copy of ‘The Ancient’ I thought it was about time I gave him another go. I’m glad to say that ‘The Ancient’ shows an improvement in character names but there was one piece of dialogue, this time, which had me cringing. At least I finished the book this time round...

The events of ‘The Ancient’ take place in Salvatore’s world of Corona, a world where magic is found within certain gemstones and the established religion (a death cult) finds itself being pushed to the sidelines by a newer, gentler creed. This doesn’t sit well with the aforementioned death cult (the Samhaists) whose leader plots something truly awful in his palace of ice. Into this power struggle comes one Bransen Garibond; a highly skilled warrior who relies on gemstones to stop him falling prey to the affliction of ‘the Stork’. Bransen is tricked into fighting at the front lines of the Samhaist incursion but all he wants to do is return to his wife and continue his quest to free himself from his affliction. When the line is finally drawn, what will he do?

If you are really unlucky with a book you will come across things in the writing that do their level best to break the connection that you are trying to build with the story and, unfortunately, ‘The Ancient’ was one of these books for me. Salvatore’s insistence on describing Bransen’s sword as “fabulous”, at what felt like every opportunity, got boring very quickly and had me dreading coming across scenes where he featured. Come to think of it, there was something about Bransen that left me not looking forward to any of his scenes at all. As a character, he’s either too perfect or in the depths of a crippling illness so profound that we can’t see past it. These two polar opposites give us no idea if there’s any middle ground and what could be there.
Some of his dialogue also annoyed me, for this reason, but none more so then when he described himself (to a pirate captain) as an ‘independent rogue’... There isn’t enough time to go into all the reasons why I think this is an appalling piece of dialogue, suffice it to say that the world of Corona must be unique in it’s need to distinguish between ‘independent rogues’ and, erm... ‘retained rogues’? I don’t even know what the opposite of an ‘independent rogue’ is...

The story itself is a ‘stop/start’ affair which seems to involve a lot of getting characters all together before they can proceed with the finale. While some of the characters are fun to get to know (Cormack and the Powrie dwarves for example), the large distance that Bransen, and his family, has to travel really slows things down and left me with my attention wandering. There was enough there to keep me reading, and the promise of a climatic finale was delivered in some style, but I was left feeling that it had been too much of an effort to get there...

I’m glad I gave ‘The Ancient’ a go but only so I can say that I feel I’ve read enough Salvatore to know not to pick him up again (leave a comment if you think there’s a book of his that I would enjoy more...) This is one that’s maybe for fans only...

Five out of Ten