Obsidian Ridge is one of the four Citadel books released by Forgotten Realms. Reading it has a classic feel with a helpless princess, an overburden king, and a unstoppable hero fighting for the love of his life. The villain, an undying evil sorcerer comes to claim the kingdoms princess for his own. To add greater interest, the king not only has to deal with the aggressor from outside his kingdom. but he also struggles with the underworld politics of a budding drug trade.
There are so many elements in this book that could have made it great. The illicit drug commerce is very compelling, yet remained undeveloped through the story as background noise. Also present was a religious culture that lent its followers magic power but instead of being centered around virtuous worship, the religion's focus point was money, wealth, and items of value. This too was a creative concept, but just like the drug plot, it remained understated and really could have used more attention.
The kingdom, and more so, its inhabitants felt like stock taken from an old movie. The city scenes seem generic and the people one sided with flat dialogue. I never found myself caring for the characters because not enough was done to make me identify with them. It seems like characters would be introduced as a convenience to the plot. If the hero needed a quick way out, another character would suddenly be introduced with knowledge of secret tunnels and hidden passages, and then fade from the plot for the rest of the novel.
The book already sports the uncreative plot of a helpless princess and her desperate king father. Unfortunately the lack of creativity doesn't end there. The hero brandishes a set of four, Wolverine like, claws on each hand as his main weapon. There is no diversity in monsters in this book as the reader will only come across maybe a max of five different kinds, only one of which seemed original. Also spells seemed lacking originality as well, unnamed sorcerers would sling basic lighting bolts and you saw the occasional magic shield.
Finally Obsidian Ridge suffers from countless plot pitfalls. The villain makes himself unnecessarily vulnerable without explanation. The weakness to his citadels power is made clear to the hero early on arrival. It seems that everyone close to the king has some supposed super secret alter ego. That makes the reader wonder how the kingdom functions with all his advisers running around in capes and robes at night. This could have been a great read but seemed to fall short too many times, for the price it seems this is just another notch in Forgotten Realms belt.
