A prequel novel to Dragon Age: Origins, explores the battles to freedom for the kingdom of Ferelden over the westward country of Orlais. Overall a great story and a great choice for my first time using an audio book.  

 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.

 

this book falls off so hard
i like loghain and maric’s dynamic but everything else is terrible

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.

I enjoyed this more than three stars, because I love these games. But it's hard to say I'd enjoy this as it's own work.