I think it depends on the execution. And what's gained by it.
I think a good one to look at is when Drizzt is captured by Belwar in Homeland. It's not ideal, because of the way the story is paced. By that point, Salvatore had really invested in the inevitable Drizzt vs. Zaknafein confrontation, so the Belwar interlude felt a bit like narrative stalling. I think that might have been avoidable if the story were structured a little differently.
That said, overall, we gained more than we lost from the interlude: it was an important step toward Drizzt's disillusionment with his own people. We got some of that from the murder of the surface elves, of course, but that just gave the message "Menzoberranzan is bad". But the capture by Belwar, and the humane treatment by the gnomes added the message "some folks are different." (And I think you can write some interesting meta on how some of Zak's stagnation in Menzoberranzan was because he'd internalized the first lesson but never really learned the second.)
So the gnome interlude, pacing problems aside, reinforced and added an additional step to Drizzt's character development, and gave Salvatore some story elements that he could bring back in this book.
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Date: 2022-10-04 04:32 pm (UTC)I think a good one to look at is when Drizzt is captured by Belwar in Homeland. It's not ideal, because of the way the story is paced. By that point, Salvatore had really invested in the inevitable Drizzt vs. Zaknafein confrontation, so the Belwar interlude felt a bit like narrative stalling. I think that might have been avoidable if the story were structured a little differently.
That said, overall, we gained more than we lost from the interlude: it was an important step toward Drizzt's disillusionment with his own people. We got some of that from the murder of the surface elves, of course, but that just gave the message "Menzoberranzan is bad". But the capture by Belwar, and the humane treatment by the gnomes added the message "some folks are different." (And I think you can write some interesting meta on how some of Zak's stagnation in Menzoberranzan was because he'd internalized the first lesson but never really learned the second.)
So the gnome interlude, pacing problems aside, reinforced and added an additional step to Drizzt's character development, and gave Salvatore some story elements that he could bring back in this book.