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20 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent Fantasy Story, January 30, 2002
I've been a Salvatore fan since I first read the Icewind Dale Trilogy, and I actually am enjoying this series a little more. The story follows Elbryan, a youth in Dundalis who is left orphaned after his town is sacked by goblins and giants, Pony, Elbryan's playmate and love interest who grew up with him, and Avelyn a monk studying the magic holy stones in the Abellican church. They all come together and must face off against an evil demon dactyl that is gathering an army of powries, which are evil bloodthirsty dwarves, goblins, and giants. The transitions between each character work well by chapter, and you really end up caring about each of the main characters. The difference between this and the Drizzt novels is that all the charactes are vunerable. In other words, some of the characters you come to love may not last, let's just leave it at that. The only problems are the usual problems with Salvatore's writing, overuse of certain words (ex. stoic, stoically...). It's a small price to pay for such a fun and exciting book. The holy stones make magic seem new and interesting also. Definitely pick up this book if you have the chance, you won't regret it.
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21 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Lacks sophistication to tackle raised themes, November 25, 2000
The world grows corrupt and decadent, allowing the Dactyl to come back to life. In its hunger for pain and suffering, the Dactyl slowly gathers its evil throng, and finally erupts upon the unwary world in a titanic war of destruction. The reader follows the lives of the three heroes from adolescence through adulthood as they slowly realize that their goal is to warn (or, alternatively, save) the world. The one female and two male heroes are: Jylseponie (Jilly or Pony for short), a girl who loses her memory after her village is burned and ransacked by goblins; Elbryan ("Nightbird") the Ranger, who, having witnessed the same carnage as Pony, is trained by the elves to become an ultimate warrior; and, finally, Avelyn Desbris, a young monk with phenomenal magic powers who loses faith and escapes with a trove of magic stones, having witnessed the ultimate corruption of his order. To put it plainly, Salvatore seems to lack the sophistication to properly exploit the complicated themes he raises (lost faith, long-lasting trauma, wanderlust, alienation, captivity), and because of this flaw the most involving aspects of the plot become mundane very quickly. An viable alternative would be to flesh out the dark, somber world of the Demon Wars saga, but it is not pursued. His world retains the feeling of modernism and rarely allows the reader to "immerse" himself in the reading. The reader is left dangling between the Scylla of a fragmentary world and the Charybdis of characters that grow flatter as the book progresses. Although generally quick-paced, the chapters are frequently interrupted by overlong, overdescribed skirmishes, where each individual stike and parry gets its own sentence. Since very little imagery is involved, the skirmishes quickly lose individuality. A long, fairly average read, the first in a fairly long series.
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16 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Been There, Done That, March 9, 2000
By A Customer
R.A. Salvatore offers us nothing new here - but then, he rarely does. I loved every page of The Dark Elf Trilogy and am a huge fan of Salvatore's TSR character, Drizzt Do'Urden. However, Salvatore's other offerings thus far have been lacking in creativity and originality (see The Crimson Shadow). The Demon Awakens gives us more of both - but that's not to say it doesn't have some redeeming qualities. The main characters depicted here are Avelyn the renegade monk, an Elven-trained ranger named Elbryan, and the woman he loves, Pony, who has also suffered her fair share of trials and tribulations. The monk, Avelyn, is a delightful, interesting character while, as one might expect, the others add very little to the experience. Unfortunate in particular since the series focuses primarily on THEM. As for me, I think Elbryan is a Drizzt wanna-be with an attitude problem, and I only found him interesting in the early stages of the book when his Elven initiation is under way. All in all, he's one of my least favorite main characters of all time. The story itself offers nothing overly exciting. The Demon Dactyl (give me a break) is taking over the world with his armies of Goblins and Giants from his volcanic lair (Mt. Doom, perhaps). If you've read one Salvatore battle scene between a ranger and a dozen Goblins you've read them all. Fortunately they are handled better here than deeper into the series when such encounters are mind-numbingly frequent. All in all this book has its share of good traits, but almost all have a "been there, done that" effect on most readers. However, it IS worth a look to fans of fantasy and Salvatore, but it is the only effort in the Demon Wars series I would recommend at all.
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