When a blood-thirsty banc of orcs led by an as-yet-unseen enemy, comes rampaging out of the Spine of the World, it lays waste to everything in its path. Dark elf ranger Drizzt Do'Urden and his most trusted friends find themselves in the path of destruction. As blades slash and feet trample, even the heroes may not survive a desperate stand.
After his father dies, Gary Leger, the Dragonslayer, longs to take his wife back with him to Faerie and the friends he had made there years earlier and finds his wish coming true when a cruel king threatens to plunge Faerie into war.
Salvatore continues the saga of Gary Leger, the reluctant, mundane hero of the battles of Faerie begun in The Woods Out Back. Gary now has a career and a girlfriend, but the wars call him back. Robert the Dragon is roaming the land, seeking whom he might broil; the wicked witch seeks freedom from her imprisonment; and if that weren't enough, the human intrigues that Salvatore offers up would keep a half dozen heroes busy.
Elf ranger Drizzt Do'Urden and his gifted warriors go in search of a missing member of their own band in this latest fast-moving fantasy adventure from bestseller Salvatore (Servant of the Shard, etc.). In the previous episode of the Paths of Darkness series (of the Forgotten Realms umbrella series), Wulfgar the barbarian fought a demon, was possessed and supposedly killed. Now it turns out that not only is he alive but he is in need of the type of assistance at which his friends excel.
This book brings two familiar characters into the limelight for the first time! Jarlaxle, a dark elf assassin, and Artemis Entreri, a human assassin, work together and against each other in Calimport. Their conflict is intensified by the influence of the Crystal Shard, a malevolent artifact that has been raousing trouble in the Forgotten Realms world since its introduction in The Crystal Shard.
