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R. A. Salvatore – The Dragon’s Dagger | Review

Title: The Dragon’s Dagger

Author: R. A. Salvatore

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 316

Rating: 8/10

R. A. Salvatore – The Dragon’s Dagger

I was a big fan of this trilogy – The Spearwielder Trilogy by R. A. Salvatore, a best-selling fantasy author who’s also known for writing the Forgotten Realms series of books based upon the Baldur’s Gate series of computer games, which were in turn based on the Dungeons & Dragons role playing game. Because of this, I’m predisposed to like this book, to a certain extent. That said, my expectations were high after The Woods Out Back, the first book in this series, and whilst The Dragon’s Dagger didn’t necessarily disappoint, there were times at which it seemed to struggle.

As far as the story goes, regular guy Gary Leger is summoned back to the magical world of Faerie to take up his place as the spearwielder of legend. Unfortunately, the spearwielder of legend needs to take on a dragon. Still, he has the usual cast of characters at his side – wisecracking leprechaun Mickey McMickey and the elvish Kelsenellenelvial Gil-Ravardy, for example. It’s been a fair old while since I read this book, but I can still remember how to spell Kelsey’s full name. That’s writers for you.

With this series, I ended up feeling as though it started strong with the first book, which was one of my favourite pieces of fantasy escapism when I was growing up, but that it then lost some of its magic with each of the successive books. I would recommend The Dragon’s Dagger, but only to someone who’s already read The Woods Out Back and who enjoyed it. The thing with Salvatore is that he’s so prolific that perhaps he lost interest part of the way through – there’s a risk that you, as the reader, might feel the same way too. Either way, I thought it was pretty good!

R. A. Salvatore

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Dan Brown – The Da Vinci Code | Review

Title: The Da Vinci Code

Author: Dan Brown

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 605

Rating: 7/10

Dan Brown – The Da Vinci Code

It’s time. It’s the best-selling novel of one of the world’s best-selling authors. It’s The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown, the book that made a star of the writer and which went on to become a Hollywood film starring Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou. Odds are that if you’re a reader, you’ve read it. And if you’re on this site in the first place, you’re probably a reader.

Dan Brown’s tale of the Illuminati follows Harvard professor Robert Langdon and symbologist Sophie Neveu as they struggle to decipher an ancient mystery – it’s a typical Dan Brown novel, really. Langdon’s background as a symbologist is a necessity – the path is strewn with puzzles hidden in artwork, and it’s through this that Langdon has the symbologic savvy to understand how each of the pieces of the jigsaw fits together.

And, like all of Brown’s novels, there’s a twist – see, it turns out that Jesus had a ‘thing’ with Mary Magdalene, and after his death his bloodline continued throughout the ages. Problem is, certain people don’t want that to become common knowledge, and Langdon and Neveu need to stay alive for long enough to figure out what it is that they’re sitting on and to make it public.

Dan Brown

Another central plot line is the eventual discovery of the Holy Grail, the wooden cup that Jesus drank from at the last supper. Except, that’s not actually what the Grail is – but I’ll be quiet, I don’t want to spoil it for you all. It’s one of those books that you ought to read anyway, just because of its popularity.

It’s not a bad book though, and it’s one of only two Dan Brown novels that I could actually recommend. As much as we all love to hate him, Brown is still a master wordsmith and a man who literally taught on the subject. He started writing much later than most as well, after dabbling as a musician.

Predictably, the book managed to draw attention to the Opus Dei and to come under fire from Christian associations across the world – many called for the book to be banned. Ever heard of the Streisand Effect? It’s a phenomenon that’s named after Barbara Streisand, who tried to suppress aerial photographs of her house. This attempt at censorship alerted people to the problem in the first place, driving the whole thing to much greater heights than it could previously have reached. In part, the book’s success is surely down to the right-wingers who tried to censor it, thus increasing the desire to read it in the first place.

The Mona Lisa

As for the conspiracy element of the story, well – we all love a good theory, don’t we? I find conspiracy theories as interesting as the next man, but I’m slightly hesitant to believe them. I’ve seen too many low-budget documentaries to believe everything that I see and hear.

Of course, it doesn’t matter whether you believe it in the long run – you just need to suspend your disbelief for long enough to sit out the story. That’s pretty easy, because Brown’s writing is lucid and communicative – he’s not a bad writer, despite the occasional scientific and historical inaccuracies.

Overall, it’s a recommendation from me, ’cause it’s the kind of book that anyone can enjoy. It makes you feel clever, too – I have a feeling that that has something to do with the book’s popularity. It’s the kind of book that people read to complete their quota of a book a year.