It’s been a long road to get here, spanning hundreds of years and a range of incredible characters experiencing tremendous pain, loss, love, and redemption. Salvatore’s most recent book, Relentless, is the end of an era, leaving Icewind Dale quiet for the first time in centuries. I walk the road with friends, and so I have my home.” Deceptively simple given the epic sagas it has hosted, Icewind Dale has been home to cultures, worlds, and sweeping tales that taught me more about myself than my shrink and my mirror. Passage to Dawn, the final book of Salvatore’s Legacy of the Drow series, sums up the feelings it evokes perfectly: “If this road, this series of stepping-stones, leads nowhere, then so be it.

If you’re reading this review, you’re on the same journey as I am and feel the same anticipation I do upon catching a glimpse of it. ( Listen to our conversation with RA Salvatore here.) I can still remember the layout of the bookstore, though, the snarky associate’s blue hair, and even the smell of the brand-new paperback when I thumbed it open and looked at the first map of Icewind Dale. I wish I could say I rode my trusty steed uphill both ways, but the truth is that Amarillo is as flat as a pancake and not nearly as much fun. I was going to pick up The Crystal Shard by R.A. That day was an especially portentous one for I was on a quest, my steed (Huffy bike) carrying me forth to find a dark elf.

The year was 1993 AD the place was Amarillo, Texas. This time of year, they had to be taken seriously because they brought fist-sized hail, tornadoes, and flying cows. On my left, the grassland dotted with kine ran unobstructed to the horizon to my right, a few brave homes clung together with scraggly trees and tight shutters. The land around me was bleak, desolate, and bitterly cold. My breath came rapidly as my legs pumped up and down and the wind whipped through my hair.

Εξορία by R.A. Salvatore