A few months back I received the press release of R.A. Salvatore's new Forgotten Realms book, "The Silent Blade." I immediately hopped on the internet and requested a copy of the hardback book, anxious to review it for our loyal readers.

Now, before I get into the meat of this review, I feel I should preface it by saying, after getting fifty-or-so pages into this book, I came to the conclusion that I was the wrong person to be reviewing it. This conclusion came as I tried to get into the characters and their dramas and relationships, but only found that I really didn't care about anything that was happening to them. Bare in mind, I've never read any of Mr. Salvatore's Forgotten Realms novels and when I e-mailed TSR to find out if I should bone up on the earlier novels before reading this one, I received the internet equivilent of static...nothing. So, completely new to the series, I eagerly dove into the book.

As I mentioned earlier, I quickly became disenchanted with the core characters of "The Silent Blade." I'm not unfamiliar with Mr. Salvatore's writing style and the assassin character in this particular story was particularly fun to read. But I didn't care a wit for the heroes. I even routed for the demise of the elven hero at the climax of the story. (That's how frustrated I became with this book.)

So, in short, I feel that "The Silent Blade," though very well written, is not the book of choice to introduce a new reader to the Forgotten Realms genre. I am relatively sure that had I been familiar with the genre's core characters and the ongoing story line that Mr. Salvatore has created around the colorful assortment of personalities, that I would have enjoyed the book a lot more and the climax would have really had me caught into it. As it was, I was just glad the story was over. On an up note, I'd be very interested in reading any other works by R.A. Salvatore which feature "The Silent Blade"'s villainous underworld characters, but that's probably too much to hope for...snif!

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