Rate this book

Duchy Askalonu (2012)

by Matt Forbeck(Favorite Author)

3.72 of 5 Votes: 5

languge

English

genre

Fantasy

publisher

Dwójka bez sternika

series

Guild Wars

review 1: This book is a tie-in to the video game series Guild Wars. It provides a lot of backstory that happens between the two games, but it is a decent fantasy book by itself. Most of the reason I liked it was because I liked the video games so if you have never played them it might not be as interesting. It has a lot of battles and violence in it so it's probably not suitable for younger children, but it's not so violent that it would be inappropriate for older children that may watch PG-13 movies.
review 2: This novel made me realize that Guild Wars 2's writing isn't all that spectaculair. The real magic begins when you can craft your own story or already have certain memories attached to characters. I did enjoy reading this, but I didn't enjoy it as much as Edge of... more Destiny, which had been a great character study of characters I already love.Ghosts of Ascalon is an enjoyable read once you're already invested in the mmorpg. It gives great background information on events that are mentioned in the game. As a fantasy novel it does lack a sensible story structure. Certain events at the beginning have an impact later on but they just don't feel very logical. The first chapter references a quest in which characters lose things but their loss only scratches the surfice of emotional damage for the following chapters. Maybe it's not so much the structure of the story that is bothering me as the lack of emotions.I didn't care for most characters, especially the main character who is your standard human hero that we keep on seeing in the game. There is one exception in the form of Killeen the sylvari. Her thoughtprocess gave life to the story (see what I did there? ;)). It was wonderful to read about the differences in a sylvari mind. Some things about their thoughts finally clicked within me. I flipped the pages much faster when she was around. Another character that was well done was Ember Doomforge (and of course Almorra Soulkeeper). If this were a quest that I could do myself I would eat this story up (with my human heroine). Unfortunately the writing isn't good enough to make me feel as if I am an additional partymember in their quest. However the writing is good enough to get to know Tyria a bit better. It does its job as the first Guild Wars 2 novel: it introduces the different races with characters that are very stereotypical for the race. Ghosts of Ascalon isn't bad either. It does make me feel in the end. less

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