The Demon Awakens (R. A. Salvatore)

The Demon Awakens
The DemonWars Saga, Book 1
R. A. Salvatore
Del Rey
Fiction, Fantasy
** (Bad)

DESCRIPTION: In the wild northern frontier of the land of Corona, young Elbryan and his best friend Jilseponie (better known as Pony, who lately has seemed to him something more than just a friend) couldn't wait to grow up... until the goblins came. Their town burned to the ground, their families and friends cut down, the two are separated by the whims of fate - or perhaps the hand of destiny. While Pony loses her memory and wanders far away to a distant city, Elbryan is taken by elves to their secret sanctuary, there to be trained as a ranger like his uncle before him. Meanwhile, far away, pious young Avelyn fulfills his life's dream of entering the elite monastery St. Mere-Abelle... but his visions of godly devotion clash with the rot he finds within, a rot that echoes the impiety spreading across the land. For the goblin raid in the north was just one sign of a greater danger to Corona: the waking of a dactyl, a demon from the darkest pits of Hell, who would turn the land's corruption into a weapon to end the reign of humanity and bring eternal darkness.

REVIEW: This seemed like a decent old-school epic fantasy... at first. Yes, the main enemy is a literal demon from Hell, cackling and gloating from his obsidian throne, and the heroes are inhumanly virtuous in the face of sin and corruption, but there's something to be said for an old-fashioned throwdown between Good and Evil. The retro charm, however, soon wears very thin, as it becomes glaringly clear that The Demon Awakens is not so much an epic fantasy as a morality play that makes Narnia look downright subtle.
Elbryan, Pony, and Avelyn are simply too holy in their perfection and virtue, looking down with smiling paternal condescension on the poor sinning fools they're compelled to defend (and fools they're often shown to be, ignoring warnings and blundering into danger and laughing at calls to reject wickedness), who more or less brought the evil on themselves for being corruptible (a.k.a human.) Pony in particular, for all that Salvatore insists she's a warrior and equal to Elbryan (as he gives lip service to how women in this world are accepted as hunters and warriors), is invariably described by her beauty and desirability first and foremost, to the point where, even at the climax, Elbryan finds her distractingly breathtaking in the middle of pitched battle. (This, despite innumerable mentions about how he acknowledges her to be beyond protecting.) True to her nickname, she's a wild animal only Elbryan's perfection and divine virtue can tame - to the point where he literally rides a wild stallion to meet her the night they consummate their long-simmering love. (Talk about choking the reader with symbolism...) Elbryan is an impossibly perfect warrior who never makes a misstep or has an impure thought or otherwise is relatable in any way, so physically beautiful that at one point his companions stand mesmerized as he performs a sword dance in the nude... not sexually attracted, but just awed by his pure manly perfection. Avelyn, played as a bit of a comic relief, becomes a third wheel, prone to throwing around his catchphrase far, far too often, a hearty "Ho, ho, what!" that soon had me envisioning a deranged Santa Claus instead of a warrior monk on a holy mission. The other races of the land are invariably evil, save a lone centaur and the waning angelic elves; given that the humans of Corona are all white, this takes on some iffy racial connotations if one squints. And, of course, even the elven diety is revealed to clearly be just another aspect of the human (thinly-veiled Christian) God, driving home the idea that there really is only one religion and everyone is practicing it even if they think they're not, silly elves.
Once the divine hand of destiny becomes clear behind everything, the plot devolves into tedium, drawing out the inevitable final confrontation with innumerable blow-by-blow battles where the heroes cannot lose and which mainly serve to reinforce their superiority. (And I do mean blow-by-blow: every step, every sword sweep, every slight angling of a stave is meticulously recorded.) As an atheist-leaning agnostic, the reliance on religion and stark black-and-white morality lessons lacked a certain appeal for me. Add to that the omniscient viewpoint prone to grandiose embellishments, and what started as a fun adventure turned into a slog, wending through some of the epic fantasy subgenre's most overplayed and tiring tropes. In any event, I will not be reading onward.

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