Annihilation by Phillip Athans is a Forgotten Realms novel and the fifth book in the six part War of the Spider Queen saga. The book's storyline continues from the end of Extinction with perhaps a couple days having passed in the gap between the novels. The novel opens in Menzoberranzan where Gromph Baenre is busy fixing himself. Having accidentally blinded himself in the previous book and without the healing magics of Lolth's priestesses to call upon, he is forced to resort to a far more grisly alternative. In a fairly gruesome opening chapter, he has his rat familiar chew out his own ruined eyeballs and then uses magic to replace them with a pair of eyes taken from a captive drow male from the traitor house of Agrach Dyrr.
Pharaun meanwhile is busily summoning in lesser demons as food for the Ship of Chaos, it needing to be powered up by sacrifice. As this process is going to take several days, Valas and Danifae head off to a nearby drow city to buy supplies, not knowing how long the voyage to the Abyss is going to take, nor how long they will be there.
Having passed the tests set to her, Halisstra is now in possession of the awesome Crescent Blade, a weapon capable of killing anything... even a goddess. To that end Eilistraee wishes her to go to the Abyss and slay Lolth herself, to deliver the drow race from her tyranny. Ryld though is increasingly realising that other than Halisstra he has nothing to keep him on the surface and he is missing his life back in Menzoberranzan.
Slipping away from Valas once they arrive in the city of Sschindylryn, Danifae makes her way to the home of an old retainer of her family, a wizard by the name of Zinnirit, who she coerces into freeing her of the Binding magic that links her to Halisstra. With that gone, she sets about a fairly convoluted scheme of revenge on her former Mistress, seperating Halisstra from Ryld and setting Jeggred on the warrior. The draegloth has increasingly been looking to Danifae for leadership, Quenthel listening more and more to the whispered words of the five minor demons bound into her whip of vipers.
Jeggred and Ryld's battle is well written and exciting to read though I'll admit I was disapointed in the outcome. Still that is made up by the amazing battle that takes place in Menzoberranzan when Gromph Baenre faces off against the lichdrow Dyrr. A battle between rival wizards is always fun to read, but these two are both extremely powerful spellcasters and possessed of a dry wit, trading insults, observations, taunts and barbs as often as they trade lethal magics. Gromph is assisted in this by a telepathic connection to a couple other wizards of his house, whilst Dyrr receives unexpected aid from the shadowy assassin Nimor Imphreazl (the architect of the combined force besieging the city), giving Gromph two powerful foes to deal with. No easy task even for an archmage!
Sailing a Ship of Chaos is something that Pharaun has no actual idea how to do. Luckily for him, Aliisza has been spying on the party for some time and she is very fond of the wizard. Staying invisible to the others, she advises him as to how to control and steer the ship and how to navigate a course to another dimension. With everyone aboard he guides the ship through realities to the Abyss itself.
There is a lot going on in this book. Most of what I've just described takes place in the first half to two thirds of the novel. By the end of the book, Lolth has returned, her power blasting out through the planes of reality and empowering her priestesses everywhere in a fantastic series of scenes that really grabbed my imagination and dramatically turns the tide of the siege of Menzoberranzan. Forewarned by Aliisza, Kaanyr's Scourged Legion withdraws from the siege, as does Nimor, realising that the window of opportunity to topple the city has been lost.
I'm going to award this book 4/5 as while some parts of it are truly stunning to read and fantastic entertinament, other parts (mostly involving Halisstra) are really quite dull. Her conversion to Eilistraee never comes across as convincing and seems to be to be a poorly thought out subplot that should have been cut out. I think the book would have been a lot better if the page space devoted to her exploits had been used on other characters instead.
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