The novel ‘Streams of Silver’ by R. A. Salvatore is an epic fantasy adventure set in the realm of Faerun, Salvatore’s fictional world filled with goblins, elves, dwarves and other mysterious and terrible creatures. It tells the story of a group of friends and adventurers who are traveling to aid a friend in realizing his life’s dream and unknowingly to protect one of their friends from a great evil. The story is packed full of battle, adventure, deceit, and friendship.
The story’s main characters include the returned Drizzt Do’Urden, the noble dark elf, Bruenor Battlehammer, dwarven king with a temper as short as his height, Wulfgar, the young barbarian who wishes to expand his narrow view of the world, Cattie Brie, adopted human daughter of Bruenor, and Regis, a halfling who loves comfort more than any other being to have lived. There are also other characters, such as Artemis Entreri, a feared and heartless assassin who lives only by his blade, and Dendybar the Mottled, an opportunistic and ambitious old wizard who isn’t afraid to toss aside loyalties for his own gain.
The story begins by taking off from where the previous novel, The Crystal Shard, left off, where Bruenor Battlehammer leads his friends Regis, Drizzt, and Wulfgar on a quest to find his long lost underground kingdom and reclaim the throne and treasures within. The group finds themselves in mostly high spirits in the beginning of the journey; however, foreshadowing shows that the group is not alone, and is most certainly not protected from evil and watchful eyes. The group is being followed by the notorious Artemis Entreri, who seeks to capture Regis and return him to his guild master in a land far south.
They are also being monitored by a powerful wizard named Dendybar the Mottled, who seeks an ancient and evil artifact that was last possessed by Drizzt Do’Urden. The adventurers meet trouble not long after they enter their first city, the port town of Luskan; Wulfgar completely demolishes a bar and it’s denizens in a fierce bar room brawl, while Bruenor and Drizzt nearly end up on the bad end of a dirty dealing. The group is able to escape after a while, and find themselves leaving the city of Luskan and out on the road to a more helpful location.
They travel through the dense and deadly wilderness and battle fierce orcs and barbarians, hoping to reach their destination, the town of Longsaddle. In the meantime, Artemis Entreri, with Bruenor’s adopted daughter Cattie Brie as his hostage, has tracked the group’s movements to Luskan, where he encounters the evil wizard Dendybar and his two cohorts Sydney, the wizard’s apprentice, and Jierdan, the proud soldier. Realizing that their goals could both be completed if they worked together, the assassin and the wizard strike an alliance, much to Artemis Entreri’s distaste.
Soon after, Dendybar sends Sydney and Jierdan, along with his flesh golem Bok, to aid Entreri in the search for Bruenor’s party. The dark group easily find themselves in the city of Silverymoon, and prepare to lie in wait for the adventurers to fall into their grasp. Meanwhile, the heroes of our story had reached Longsaddle and met up with the eccentric wizard family known better as the Harpells. They soon discovered that the sky was the limit for these strange wizards, who constantly flirted with danger and with physical boundaries with their magic.
The group receives helpful advice from an elder Harpell, and are sent off on their way to the village of Nesme, where they are cruelly rebuked due to Drizzt’s skin color and his heritage. The disheartened party are then forced to go through the dreaded Trollmoors, home to evil trolls and other denizens of darkness, in order to reach Silverymoon, one of the greatest and well known cities in the realm and known as a city of great tolerance. It takes them days to get through the Trollmoors, and each of them was filled with battle and danger.
The friends are barely able to escape alive. Upon reaching Silverymoon, the friends, to their surprise and dismay, once again find themselves seemingly rejected due to Drizzt’s appearance, which hurts the dark elf deeply. This misunderstanding is soon cleared after the ruler of the city, Lady Alustriel, meets with Drizzt privately and explains her reasons for denying him entrance, and in turn helping Drizzt and his friends find the path to Bruenor’s lost home, Mithral Hall.
Around the same time, Entreri’s group had caught wind of Drizzt’s arrival and set off after the group in hot pursuit. After several mishaps, which includes Entreri killing Jierdan in a duel and Cattie Brie escaping the groups clutches to reunite with her friends, the group finally clashes with Bruenor’s party in the kingdom of Mithral Hall. Artemis Entreri and Drizzt do battle for a short period of time, but in that instance discover a deep link to each other. Each realizes the other person as almost his mirror image, and skill wise the two are equals.
It is their morals that seperate them, however. Drizzt and Entreri become seperated from the others after a cave in, and the other groups presume them dead. In an effort to leave the halls which took his best friend, Bruenor unwittingly stumbles into the midst of the Hall’s current owner, the shadow dragon Shimmergloom. Although Bruenor, Wulfgar, and Cattie Brie, who had acquired a legendary bow from one of the treasuries, battled courageously, the dwarven king had to end up sacrificing himself in order to save his children and slay the dragon once and for all.
It is during this time that the story ends with Drizzt reuniting with his friends and Artemis Entreri capturing Regis and goading Drizzt into following him south so that they may do battle once again. Having to save his friend, Drizzt has no choice but to comply. This story has many themes, but one stands out amongst them all: prejudice. Due to Drizzt’s dark skin and heritage, many people would not see him as the noble ranger he was, but as what his people are in general; cruel, murderous, and evil.
This has disheartened Drizzt on many occasions, and has almost led him to reconsider his decision to forsake his homeland many times. But his friends, who look beyond his skin and see his true self, always remind him that his choice was a wise one. I recommend this book to anyone who loves adventure, and deep storylines, although I recommend they read ‘The Crystal Shard’ first to get a better grip on this story.
