Book series review of "War of the Spider Queen" part 1

Well, I finished a book series recently that I hadn't previously read before, which is fun, I like broadening my horizons a bit. This series is part of the "Forgotten Realms" world created by R. A. Salvatore.

The interesting thing about this series is that it's composed of 6 books, and each book is written by a different author. O_o With each book overseen by Salvatore, to make sure it all works.

The book series is called "War of the Spider Queen". Lol, the title just sounds evil, doesn't it? XD

First off, I'd like to mention that this series--In my opinion--should not be read by kids at LEAST under 13 or 14. Why? Weeeeell, I'll get into that in a bit and explain, but I'll just abridge it for now and say: Intense/cruel violence, implied sex, language, and just downright evilness. The only thing that's mostly constant is violence. Based on this rating I'm giving it, you may go: "AHHH, TAKE THOSE BOOKS AWAY FROM ME!!!", but I ask you to read this whole review and all I have to say about this interesting series. :)

**WARNING: SPOILERS**

The story begins in the underground city of Menzoberranzan. A dark elf city. The culture of these dark elves(commonly called "drow" in this book) took me by surprise with the fact that men are held in quite low-esteem. "Males" as they are typically called in this book are all of lower importance, lower authority, most even of lower stature. The city is mostly run by priestesses and matron mothers of the goddess "Lolth", AKA, The Spider Queen.

The hiccup in the beginning of the story is that the great and terrible goddess Lolth has been silent for far too long and has no longer allowed her priestesses to use spells. Of course, her priestesses are unsure why, and attempt to wring an answer from the goddess, but to no avail. One of the main characters of the story is a dark elf priestess by the name of "Quenthal", who is tall, foreboding, beautiful, ruthless, and carries a whip with several living(and speaking) venomous serpents. When this silence occurs, some enemies of hers send assassins to take her out. Fortunately for her she manages to defeat every assassin. One of her subjects was found to have been helping the assassin. Quenthel thought about killing her but instead punished her by cutting off her fingers and cutting out her tongue. She explained how effective it was for avoiding future problems from the person, no fingers to hold a weapon, and no tongue to speak. She was right. Not long afterwards, her sister Triel Baenre, a matron mother of great importance, assigned Quenthel to travel to find the goddess Lolth and to find out why she was silent. Triel sends her son Jeggred with Quenthel to assist her on her journey. Jeggred is a large hulking beast, a half-demon half-dark-elf. I'm not sure how an elf can...eh...sexualize with a demon...but whatever. XD That's fantasy for ya.

Also in Menzoberranzan is a mage by the name of Pharaun Mizzrym. He's an extremely powerful magic-wielder, with an equally powerful wit. When he is first mentioned in the story he is shown hanging out with a friend of his, a dark elf by the name of Ryld Argith. Ryld is a fearsome muscular warrior with a large sword he named "Splitter". Throughout the book you can see why he called it that, he splits quite a few things. The two friends make a lethal pair, and serve as two other main characters to this series. Pharaun is assigned(because of a magic experiment gone wrong that killed several students) by the archmage of Menzoberranzan to discover why males have been disappearing from the city mysteriously. Ryld is bored with his current lifestyle, and decides to accompany him. So the two journey off following clues as to where the disappearing males are sneaking off to. They travel to the poorer parts of Menzoberranzan and eventually discover that the missing male dark elves have been running off to assist a goblin uprising against the city. Pharaun and Ryld unraveled the plot, but not before the goblins and renegade dark elves started revolting. As Pharaun and Ryld attempted to escape pursuing foes, Pharaun...betrays Ryld...and leaves him trapped to fend off pursuers to give himself more of a chance at surviving. *Glares* That's just uncool. This is something that should be taken note of, dark elves in these books care 99% about themselves only, and their own plans to achieve power and survive. It irritated me how easily Pharaun could just throw their friendship out the window just so that he could escape with his hide. Although Ryld survived the encounter, it set a deep rift between the two that would never be mended.

Soon after all this, Pharaun and Ryld meet up with Quenthel and Jeggred, along with a scout named Valas, and a drow priestess named Faeryl Zauvirr to find the cause of Lolth the Spider Queen's silence.

Let me just add something real quick. The funny thing about Pharaun is that he's pretty witty. He's not afraid to tease or mock Quenthel about most anything. And as I already stated, males are held as much lower people than women, so to speak in such ways to a high priestess of Lolth is quite an offense. But Quenthel can't do much about it because Pharaun is a powerful wizard, capable of destroying her in seconds if he desired. So it's just kinda funny to see this evil female elf put in her place a lot. XD

 They first travel to a city called Ched Nasad, where they encounter an army of creatures called "Tanuruuks" led by Aliiza, who is what is known as an "Alu-Fiend". What's that? Well... An alu-fiend is a female that is half demon and half human.

One more thing about Aliiza. She's a baaad girl. XD I'm kidding, but I'm also serious. She represents everything wrong with a lot of women. She sleeps around with anyone who's good looking. Regardless of the fact that she already has a "lover". Her insatiable craving for bodily pleasures is just uncool. She's gorgeous, too, so that kind of helps her out a lot when trying to attract people...

Anyways, Aliiza took a particular liking to the powerful, witty, and attractive Pharaun Mizzrym and...did...y'know...with him. It wasn't shown, but it was obviously implied and then ended the chapter.

After that the party was betrayed by Faeryl Zauvirr to a matron mother in Ched Nasad. Quenthel and Jeggred get captured and held in the dungeon. Faeryl had suffered some unpleasantries from Quenthel and Jeggred in the past, so she made sure that they felt some pain as well.

Fortunately, Pharaun and Ryld were on top of things and managed to rescue Quenthel and Jeggred. Before this was accomplished, however, they ran into a priestess named Halisstra and her incredibly beautiful battle-captive named Danifae. After almost coming to blows thinking each other enemies, they managed to get along and decide to become allies. Nothing exactly is special about these two new companions at first, but that had yet to change...

Once Quenthel and Jeggred were rescued with Halisstra and Danifae's help, revenge was taken upon Faeryl. This would be one of the more disturbing/cruel paragraphs in this series. Quenthel allowed Jeggred to do what he willed with the restrained and fully-concious traitor. I won't go into more graphic detail than I have to(the book didn't necessarily either, but it did a good job of making the reader grimace), but it involved Jeggred piercing one of his claws under her chin up through her mouth, pinning her tongue, and going farther up. And then he slashed open her midriff, allowing her...insides... to fall out freely. He then commenced to eat her.

*Shakes head rapidly in disgust* Blech. At first I thought "Well, she was a traitor, she had it coming..." but now I think "A traitor to who? A servant of the Spider Queen?" There's nothing good about the Spider Queen or her followers. True, Faeryl did torture Quenthel and Jeggred somewhat, but still, a death involving being cruelly sliced apart and eaten alive is no picnic.

Anyways, I'm moving on, mercifully...XD

After that, the group of seven now moved to escape the city which had fallen into chaos from attackers and was collapsing. Pharaun commenced to teleport them all out safely and barely saved the beautiful Danifae from a death of being crushed by rubble. The teleportation sent them far up to the surface of the world. Up on the surface the group continues onward to find followers of the god "Vhaeron" to assist them in finding Lolth. On their way, Halisstra get's captured by followers of the goddess "Eilistraee". (I know, lots of gods and goddesses in these books...) In their dungeon, one of Eilistraee's followers by the name of Seyl attempts to convert Halisstra to their faith. Halisstra refuses multiple times but Seyl keeps coming back. Halisstra plays along with them finally, pretending to be interested in converting from her faith in the Spider Queen. It's kind of sad, because the book showed that Seyl genuinely hoped for Halisstra to convert and become a follower of Eilistraee and to experience the love and acceptance that faith had to offer. And Halisstra just planned to trick them.

Let me just throw my 2 cents in about the Eilistraeen faith. This faith is as close to Christianity as you're gonna get with these books. Now I'm not trying to insult Christianity by comparing these books to that, lol, but I'm just saying. There is love, joy, fellowship and forgiveness involved in the Eilistraeen faith, meanwhile with the Spider Queen...there's hate, rage, evil, and death. Out of the two, it seems as though the Eilistraeen faith is the much better option.

However, as Seyl and a few other of Eilistraee's priestesses lead Halisstra to a ceremony in hopes to convert Halisstra, Halisstra outwits them and strikes. She manages to kill one of the priestesses, wound another, and then fatally wound Seyl. As Seyl lays dying and Halisstra robs her of her pocketed belongings, Seyl... Isn't angry. She's not cursing Halisstra and voicing her rage at her like someone who served the Spider Queen would do. In fact, Seyl forgives her and tells her that she still has hope for her. And then she dies. This will haunt Halisstra for the remainder of the series and baffle her. Such love and compassion is unknown to those of the Spider Queen. This was somewhat of a cool and sad moment.

Eventually Halisstra makes it back to her companions, and they consult the high priest of Vhaeron to assist them in finding Lolth. The priest agrees, and through a bizarre mechanism, they manage to visit Lolth's domain using their spirits. Their bodies all lay asleep in a room in the temple of Vhaeron, guarded by Jeggred, and their souls are used to travel to Lolth. When their souls make it through the "Demonweb Pits" and reach Lolth's domain, they find that she's blocked off inside a construct, and will not answer their prayers.

Halisstra is deeply hurt by Lolth's silence, and begins to question her long held faith. Meanwhile, the priest of Vhaeron betrays them by gating Vhaeron himself into the Pits, where he plans to kill Lolth and become the dominant Drow deity. "Selvetarm", Lolth's protecter, engages Vhaeron in battle, during which Pharaun communicates to Jeggred to kill the Priest's body. Jeggred does so and the priest dies. Vhaeron fails in his mission to kill Lolth's protector, and the 7 companions escape with their souls back to their bodies in the temple. The companions failed to reach Lolth, but they decide to make another attempt, and to find the Spider Queen in the Abyss.



Well guys, that's 3 of the books covered right there. :) There's SO much more info to the stories that I left out, so to experience the whole intense tale you'll have to read them for yourself.

In my next blog post I'll cover the gist of the last 3 books in the series, and I must say...These last 3 are the saddest. :( I'm still trying to get over them.

Anyways, hope you enjoyed this post, and I'll see you chaps next time. :D



                                                               Quenthal and Jeggred:

Pharaun Mizzrym