The Cleric quintet

R.A. Salvatores 5 book series about the Cleric Cadderly and the "chaos curse" unleashed by his evil father. Cadderly a young cleric at the Edificant library which is tucked away in the snowflake mountains is pulled into the schemes of his evil wizard father Aballister in the first book as Cadderly's home gets infiltrated and subdued with a mind altering spell. Being one of few people unaffected by the effects he searches the Edificant library for the source of the spell, aided by a few friends. The series is different from the Icewind Dale trilogy mainly in what enemies the heroes are faced with. While the Icewind Dale focused on orcs, giants, human enemies and such - the Cleric Quintet has the heroes fight undead, vampires and evil aligned wizards.

It is a nice change of pace, the tone is also slightly different as when the series stars both Cadderly and his friends are complete rookies whereas Drizzt, Breunnor and the others in the Icewind Dale series were seasoned fighters who could kick ass from the beginning. This makes it interesting to read the Cleric Quintet as the heroes improve over the course of the books. Cadderly is more of a regular guy with the potential to cast spells and use various magic items than a great close combat fighter. Cadderlys friends provide some interesting additions to the combat, such as the fighting of the monk Danica (with her bare hands).

The chaos curse unleashed in the first book becomes the main theme and evil to be fought throughout the series and affects people and places that Cadderly comes into contact with, it also ties the first and fifth book together with a strong "undead enemies" theme which is pretty cool.

As a whole these books are different from the Icewind Dale series, for better or worse. You get an elaborate backstory to the Cadderly character who also appears in the books where Drizzt is the main character. You get new settings, new type of heroes with their own unique fighting styles and the first and last book are really good. If you like R.A. Salvatore then this series will provide something new in between the stories about Drizzt.