This book was so bizarre. Anyone who knows me knows that I adore the Dragon Age franchise, so much that my first tattoo is going to be the Hawke crest. But goddamn, this book was wretched to read. The actions of the characters made absolutely no sense. At any given moment, I was baffled and frustrated by their choices, or actively angry at how stupid they were being.

Katriel and the way she is written as an oppressed minority woman is so genuinely atrocious I had to read sections out loud to my guild just to negate the psychic damage her scenes were giving me. Going from being introduced as an SA victim saved by the male protagonist, to one half of a weird girl hate thing, to fucking the protagonist (who is betrothed to the other half of said girl hate thing), all in ONE DAY... I had to just set the book down for a while and think about my life choices.

I genuinely have no idea if the reader is supposed to connect to Maric or Loghain as protagonists or not. Maric goes from being a sort of lovable golden retriever to a cheater without even a second thought, and when confronted he feels bad for all of two seconds, to cold-blooded and ruthless murderer, usually in the span of a page or two per transition. It's so hard to understand his emotions or why he takes such extreme actions out of nowhere. Loghain, on the other hand, gets very little internal dialogue past the halfway point of the book so the reasoning behind him leading Maric down this path just isn't there. So, the book that feels like it was supposed to redeem him or make him understandable as the villain of DA:O doesn't fulfill that purpose. This book only succeeded in making me hate Maric. Was that the point?

Another major issue was the pacing. The first hundred or so pages took place over the span of a day, then 2 years were skipped in a few sentences, and I could barely keep track of how much time was supposed to have passed. Then, what should be the climactic and interesting part of the battle and the eventual overthrow of King Meghren and the Orlesian occupation... isn't shown on page. It cuts to a Chantry mother reading the story to a young Cailan (which... why does this kid need to know about his dad's infidelity?) and describes what should be the best, most intense part of the book, in a couple of paragraphs. I'm genuinely so baffled by this decision.

Other issues include desperate need for an editor (numerous typos, punctuation errors, "you're" where "your" should be, etc), extremely boring and overly descriptive prose, casting every mage as a weirdo or a villain, and not passing the Bechdel test (the least of the issues with women in this book).

To say nothing of the rampant racism--the only dark-skinned character is the villain, the Legionnaires of the Dead are persuaded to go against all their valued cultural customs and come to the surface and serve in a human war, elves are exoticized to an uncomfortable degree... Just yuck. I wish this wasn't part of DA canon.

 

I wasn’t sure what to expect from this book, but I’m glad I enjoyed it. I’m a big fan of Dragon Age, so it was nice to be able to enjoy more of the franchise’s extra content.

To start, I really liked Maric’s journey across the book. Especially how his relationship with his closest friend, Loghain, played into it. He goes from a whiny and naïve boy to a hardened king, willing to do what’s necessary. It’s not fully framed as good either, even more so when taking his relationship with Loghain into the mix. They’re two friends who clearly love and are devoted to each other, yet still hurt each other.

I also thought the book’s description’s were well done. I had a solid pictures of characters and locations, but also the action and feelings in the moment. The combat is the best example of this. They felt visceral and fast-moving. Keeping that quick pace is something I see books struggle with a lot, so this was nice to see.

I also think the characters were largely compelling. While there was one I couldn’t really get behind, I think most were allowed a lot of depth and complexity. Even characters now handled well had it to an extent. I really felt like that the main cast were a group of young people that were suffering the consequences of growing up in a war.

However, the book has its flaws as well.

The most obvious issue was how women were written. Despite a level of complexity all characters had, the women felt a little flat. While Rowen had moments of a lot of depth, overall she and the other leading woman were largely objects. They became items for Maric and Loghain to fight and have conflict over, instead of being fully people. It was disappointing.

I also think the book’s pacing was off. I felt like some important moments were glossed over, meanwhile other moments were dragged out. This was even more obvious at the end of the book. The climax felt off and dissatisfying. While the epilogue was solid, I ended the book feeling like I’d been denied something.

Overall I really enjoyed the book. I had fun reading it, but I’d hesitate to recommend it to anyone that isn’t already a fan of Dragon Age.

This book serves as a prequel to the video game series. However, it is clumsily written and has a much darker tone compared to the games. It contains explicit and uncomfortable scenes of sexualization and assault. I do like the extra lore it provides, but without it bring a tie-in to the games, it would be just another forgettable fantasy book.

The structure of this book is lacking heavily. The ending was a big build up for no pay off for example, and some of the scene to scene moments were clunky. It reads in some ways like a list of notes of "how the story is gonna go" and then some filled in scenes, like a very very loose rough draft. 
Also the characters leave a ton to be desired. Maric is at best boring and a sort of retread (pretread) Alistair which makes little sense to me, Katriel is essentially a plot device in spite of being clearly meant as a compelling love story (falls flat), Rowan is a not like other girls turned perfect wife (and her romances are even more boring than Katriel's), Loghain is the only one with credible motivations who acts like a person and he does several things that made me hate him. At least he felt real.
As for connections to existing dragon age Lore, this is clearly working with some Lore that was never re-established in the series proper. It also is like required to really understand the context of the first game, which is frustrating as it is not great.
As far as representation went, the women are at best fun props and at worse awful ones. There are 3 nonwhite people ever mentioned at all and they are all 1. Evil 2. Power hungry 3. All of them but the last are also lecherous creeps (and only two are named). On multiple ocassions they sre described as "swarthy". Honorable mention to the only guy described as "olive skinned" being the comically evil puppet king who's power hungry and tortures people for fun. 
Even the in universe marginalized groups are presented in a very negative light, having the only mages be evil and against our team or evil and with our team. The elves are generally treated as the stereotypes describe them (either sexy props, dangerous servants or dangerous "savage" stereotypes). They even have a human create an all elven military force despite having no real serious communication with elves, no understanding or care for their history and culture, and never actually showing any of them interact with each other in any meaningful way.
There is also rape or sexual assault mentioned with extremely casually and suddenly even with very little reason or relevance to the story. I can think of 1 instance that was necessary- and it was of course only necessary for a male characters development. The other instances are all from a "Good male" character perspective as well, and the overall impact on the women involved is non existent (except for one notable instance when a lady who is a soldier and kills people all the time is more hung up on having killed the guy who assaulted her than the assault itself).
(Heavy Spoiler territory)
Additionally one of the main ladies is fridged- by being murdered violently by her love interest in a fit of rage no less. 
On top of all of that some of the most intriguing moments for a person who has played the first dragon age game "how exactly did Loghain become the Hero of River Dane" "how did Maric take the throne back" are largely skipped over in favor of a quick summary in the epilogue. Even the epilogue is questionable, as it implies that the whole book was a woman telling the young son of one of the characters all the details- missing the epic battles and instead focusing on how many people his parents cheated with each other on. A baffling ending in every respect.
I read it bc I wanted the details of before the game to be more clear. Now I just wish the details were less bullshit.

this book is amazing either as an introduction of the Dragon Age world to newcomers or a bit more lore for the people that have been following the game since origins but in my opinion it the fridging of it's female characters are it's biggest flaw.