The Crystal Shard

After several years I did return to the roleplaying games, especially, Dungeons & Dragons. One of my favorite campaign settings over there is Forgotten Realms, known because of its diversity and how it portraits the best of High Fantasy tropes (and, of course, its clichés). But of all Forgotten Realms, I've always liked Icewind Dale.

Icewind Dale has this name because of the unrelenting snow storms and the harsh life style at the faerûnian tundra. The Ten-Towns can be seen as the last bastion of human civilization in the end of the world, beyond the mountains of the Spine of the World and far from the luxurious and vivid cities of the south.

The Crystal Shard was the first time we get to know better Icewind Dale and its people, introducing a Dungeons & Dragons/Forgotten Realms adventure in a new way. The first time I read this book, I found it rather dull. In that time I found the characters hallow and superficial, with equally weak motivations. However, during my second reading of the series, I was able to have more fun leaving all those expectations aside.

The Crystal Shard is a simple, fast and plain reading, without great pretensions. Do not expect a great classic of the Fantasy genre, but rather a fun story that is able to entertain the reader for several hours, and maybe that was the author's goal when he wrote this classic in the 1980s.

We have the first appearance of Drizzt Do'Urden, Bruenor, Wulfgar, Regis and Cattie-Brie, characters well known in the world of roleplaying games. My impression is that the book has two main arcs, the first being the introduction of the characters, at a quite different pace than what happens in the second half of the book. Although loosely connected, the second part of the book presents an epic adventure to save the towns of Icewind Dale.

In this sense, I find problematic to read this book as a single story, because it is in the second part of the book that we have several elements of action that will unfold in the other books in the series. The way the author introduced the characters in the first half of the book might have been done differently.

However, The Crystal Shard entertained me a lot in the last few days, which was quite differently from the first time I read it, several years ago. If you're looking for a simple and fast reading Fantasy book, surely this is a good choice. I could clearly see that the narrative in this book is very similar to an RPG adventure, with its various heroes completing different missions (the adventures) for a larger purpose (the campaign).