I recently finished The Ghost King by one of my favorite authors, R. A. Salvatore. I’ve been reading the books in this series (the saga of Drizzt Do’Urden) since I was in middle school, and this one was a nice continuation of the storyline. Major and minor spoilers after the jump.

For me, the neatest thing about this book was the return of Cadderly Bonaduce. I read The Cleric Quintet even before Salvatore’s other books, and it is still one of my favorite book series. Cadderly was always a character that was easy for me to relate to, and this book is no different. He’s called upon to make some difficult choices throughout, but he does so with such grace that it is hard to ignore.

I also felt that Cadderly brought a lot to this particular story – moreso even than Drizzt and the other “main” character arc. Before the Companions of the Hall even got to the Spirit Soaring, Cadderly was fighting a losing battle, and holding his own as a leader and priest.

Where Cadderly was fighting a losing battle and barely holding, it seemed that Drizzt, Bruenor, Jarlaxle, and Athrogate were having very little trouble with their journey. While the catastrophe of the Ghost King was certainly somewhat localized, this dampened some of the drama significantly once they arrived at the Spirit Soaring – with such a powerful group of heroes, it was difficult to maintain the suspense. This aspect of the story seemed more concerned with pushing the plot along rather than telling the story of the heroes involved. While fair (Drizzt and crew have had much more story time than Cadderly), it still fell a little shallow, and much less epic.

With all of the interesting action taking place at the Spirit Soaring, there seemed a couple of rather distracting storylines. The most egregious of these (in my opinion) was the one concerning Cadderly’s children and the people of Caradoon. More than any other aspect of the story, the children’s struggle with leadership fell flat, especially with their reliance on Pikel Bouldershoulder, and their choices really never getting them anywhere. This was particularly poignant when they all showed up late for the finale at Spirit Soaring, only to find the aftermath of the encounter with the Ghost King.

My last main gripe with the book was how it handled Catti-brie. From the beginning, the book chronicled a quest about saving Catti-brie from the spellplague. And, while it’s fine for quests to fail, I felt that leaving the primary driving force behind the quest unresolved until after the climax was poor. Also, the fact that she dies, after everyone returns home, and have begun to relax, seemed rather banal and forsook the chance to instill some pathos in her death. This, by itself, made the book a hard pill to swallow. If there was something to make her death meaningful, I feel it would have been a far superior story.

Aside from those gripes, however, I thought it was an good book. Well worth the read if you are a fan of the Legacy of Drizzt, but for its faults, I can’t say it is an excellent book, or as good as many of the others in the series.