Guild Wars 2

I have finished, “Seas of Sorrows”, “Edge of Destiny”, and “Ghosts of Ascalon” and I must say… The Story and Action and characters are freakin AWESOME!!!

Good Job to the Author and the ArenaNet Team!

I only wish the stories from those books were part of the game’s “Story Missions” because I got to know the characters way better from the books than in game. Let’s see how the full story turns out in GW2 expansion cause im getting excited! =P

Anyone who hasn’t read GW2 books… DO IT… BUY IT… You Wont Regret it!!! =D

I enjoyed them as well. But, one little thing: Each book was written by a different person.

Reading the books really only let you enjoy the cool little bits they throw in the game.

Like the skill point where Killeen died in Fields of Ruin :’(

there are other easter eggs too quite a lot.

I greatly enjoyed Sea of Sorrows and Ghosts of Ascalon, but I felt like the author for Edge of Destiny got lazy. His writing style was a bit sloppy to begin with, but about half way through the book, you could tell he just gave up and wanted to get it over with.

The only good thing I found about Edge of Destiny was that it at least gave you a telling of what happened with Destiny’s Edge, whereas in the game, you only get hints of what really happened.

I thought the books weren’t very good to be honest. I mean the story was sort of interesting/alright but the writing itself was just terrible… That said, I haven’t read the last book so perhaps that one has improved. I would recommend reading more well known fantasy books so you can experience the contrast in quality because the writing quality in the first two books is just awful.

I loved Ghosts of Ascalon ( T_T ) need to read the other two for sure.

@Fay other fantasy books are boring because there’s no attachment. Gamebooks are the best

Fay, Sea of Sorrows was head and shoulders better than the first two, to the point it was almost worth reading on its own without the context of being a GW2 player.

Emikochan, I think you and I have opposite opinions there. I have almost never found a game book to be a gripping read for any purpose beyond learning more of the game world (and I’ve been reading F&SF including media novels since the mid 1970’s). The authors are constrained by a world built by committee and requirements to stay in canon. Often they have an imposed agenda requiring certain plot points to happen regardless of the narrative value of those points.

I prefer fantasy that takes me to stranger destinations.

So the GW2 books are superb at giving backstory and an overview of the world, but not so good at characterization and plausibility. You can just see the tick marks getting checked off. One of each race. Many different professions. A tour of the landscape.

At least they’re fast reads (And as I said, the third one is much more gripping, as it deals with massive catastrophe and heroic response rather than with petty personal squabbles).

Fay.2735:

I thought the books weren’t very good to be honest. I mean the story was sort of interesting/alright but the writing itself was just terrible… That said, I haven’t read the last book so perhaps that one has improved. I would recommend reading more well known fantasy books so you can experience the contrast in quality because the writing quality in the first two books is just awful.

I’m very widely read in both fantasy and science fiction, and I don’t really agree with this statement. The difference between books written for game series has less to do with the “quality of the writing” and more to do with the audience you’re targeting. This was, in my opinion, what caused the biggest flaw in Edge of Destiny.

It was fine when it started, right up until the author turned it into an action flick. It felt like the Matrix. Great premise usurped by an action movie.

But I didn’t think the writing in Ghosts of Ascalon was bad, nor did I feel the writing in Sea of Sorrows was bad. However the purpose of the writing, that is filling in the missing information between Guild Wars 1 and Guild Wars 2 completely changed how those books were written.

I didn’t start reading those books expecting Lord of Light or even Game of Thrones. I expected a book to fill me in on what’s been going in in Tyria for a couple of hundred years and in that, the books succeeded.

Vayne.8563:

I’m very widely read in both fantasy and science fiction, and I don’t really agree with this statement. The difference between books written for game series has less to do with the “quality of the writing” and more to do with the audience you’re targeting. This was, in my opinion, what caused the biggest flaw in Edge of Destiny.

It was fine when it started, right up until the author turned it into an action flick. It felt like the Matrix. Great premise usurped by an action movie.

But I didn’t think the writing in Ghosts of Ascalon was bad, nor did I feel the writing in Sea of Sorrows was bad. However the purpose of the writing, that is filling in the missing information between Guild Wars 1 and Guild Wars 2 completely changed how those books were written.

I didn’t start reading those books expecting Lord of Light or even Game of Thrones. I expected a book to fill me in on what’s been going in in Tyria for a couple of hundred years and in that, the books succeeded.

Writing badly just because it’s a game book is not really an excuse; there are books about games that are actually well written without being on the same level as Tolkien etc. For example, the books about the Myst series of games are really quite good.

To deliberately write badly just because it’s for a game is almost insulting to the player base of that game who value the story of that universe. If it was purely as a ‘filler’ then they could have just directed players to Wikipedia. If you write an actual book, you should do it properly in my opinion, perhaps that’s just me?

Don’t get me wrong, I was not expecting the best quality ever when I picked them up. I’m not some sort of literature elitist… but it was bad enough for it to significantly put me off the story and I had to force myself to keep reading it for the sake of the story (being a fan of GW2 and all). It was just so immersion breaking and some of the worst writing I’ve ever seen in a book, apart from a couple of others I can recall off the top of my head. That said, I’m sure there are plenty of worse ones out there (my ‘to read’ list is long).

As I said, I haven’t read the last book yet. I’ve been wary picking it up with how bad the first two were but the story was overall just fine. It was just purely the writing and the delivery of the story that was off-putting. If people say that the last one is really good in comparison; I might consider it because I AM interested in the story.

Fay.2735:

Vayne.8563:

I’m very widely read in both fantasy and science fiction, and I don’t really agree with this statement. The difference between books written for game series has less to do with the “quality of the writing” and more to do with the audience you’re targeting. This was, in my opinion, what caused the biggest flaw in Edge of Destiny.

It was fine when it started, right up until the author turned it into an action flick. It felt like the Matrix. Great premise usurped by an action movie.

But I didn’t think the writing in Ghosts of Ascalon was bad, nor did I feel the writing in Sea of Sorrows was bad. However the purpose of the writing, that is filling in the missing information between Guild Wars 1 and Guild Wars 2 completely changed how those books were written.

I didn’t start reading those books expecting Lord of Light or even Game of Thrones. I expected a book to fill me in on what’s been going in in Tyria for a couple of hundred years and in that, the books succeeded.

Writing badly just because it’s a game book is not really an excuse; there are books about games that are actually well written without being on the same level as Tolkien etc. For example, the books about the Myst series of games are really quite good.

To deliberately write badly just because it’s for a game is almost insulting to the player base of that game who value the story of that universe. If it was purely as a ‘filler’ then they could have just directed players to Wikipedia. If you write an actual book, you should do it properly in my opinion, perhaps that’s just me?

Don’t get me wrong, I was not expecting the best quality ever when I picked them up. I’m not some sort of literature elitist… but it was bad enough for it to significantly put me off the story and I had to force myself to keep reading it for the sake of the story (being a fan of GW2 and all). It was just so immersion breaking and some of the worst writing I’ve ever seen in a book, apart from a couple of others I can recall off the top of my head. That said, I’m sure there are plenty of worse ones out there (my ‘to read’ list is long).

As I said, I haven’t read the last book yet. I’ve been wary picking it up with how bad the first two were but the story was overall just fine. It was just purely the writing and the delivery of the story that was off-putting. If people say that the last one is really good in comparison; I might consider it because I AM interested in the story.

I’m disagreeing that the writing is as bad as you say. It takes more than saying writing is bad to make it bad.

I agree it wasn’t Shakespeare, but it wasn’t as horrid as you’re making it out to be.

Sea of Sorrows is by far, a much better quality book than Ghosts of Ascalon and Edge of Destiny.

Having said that, Ghosts of Ascalon was an enjoyable read, while Edge of Destiny was a bit of a chore, its only saving grace being that we could get a closer look at what really happened to Destiny’s Edge.

I wanna know if there is going to be more books I like reading gw2 stuff!

Ghost of Ascalon is a decent action focused light read. I really dig out the interaction between the protagonist and their companions, even considering how forced some of the motivations were. The tensions and conflicts between the different cultures, and the awesomenes of the Vigil and her leader in spite of all that racial hate felt really great.

Edge of Destiny begins a bit tired and ends really icky. The relationship between Rytlock and Logan and between Sojja and Snaff are very good, really, but the continuous change of escenary cuts the pace and destroys the plot every few pages, and stop the story itself from making any development with the characters. The antagonists feel incomplete and lame, and everyone else in the world seems to be incompetent. There are some great sequences here and there, but overall, is the worst of the three. Bright point: to love Snaff and hate Logan is extremely satisfactory.
Shame on you, kitten Logan. SHAME ON YOU!.

Sea of Sorrow is a notable fantasy book, without any doubt, the best of the three, and IMO, way better than the vast majority of D&D overrated books. (IMO, Ree is no match to legendary writers like Ursula K. LeGuin, or RR Martin… but she DOES write with better rithm and more consistency than Tolkien, so she is not one of the bunch.)

The book is really fun to read, and has a cinematographic quality that made the whole story feel like a movie trilogy, with the time elapses and all. The tripulation of The Pride was truly moving, Cobiah win my heart in no time, and there were even some complexity to the motivations of friends and foes. I’m sure I’m going to read it again in the future, as it was a really enjoyable experience.

If you have not read the books, you should know they were published in an inverse order rspect their chronological place in the history of Tyria: Ghost happens just a couple years ago, while Destinys Edge takes place during the first appearance of the Silvary, and Sea of Sorrow witness the various decades that followed the rise of Orr.
The storys are separate and the characters doesn’t interact at all, so there isn’t a reading order. I suggest to begin with Destiny’s Edge, followed by Ghost of Ascalon and Sea of Sorrows in the end, so you can go from bottom to up in quality.

In fact, I could say the three books doesn’t mix very well.

Ghosts and Sea are high fantasy… but in a low key: they follow very mundane people that confront great opposition and achieve great deeds. In the case of Sea of Sorrows, the great deed takes the whole life of the protagonist to get done, so yes, it feels like there is an amazing amount of effort and resolve to make it possible.

Destiny’s Edge, on the other hand, is like DragonBall Z in comparison: the party fights against massive hordes and powerfull dragon minions in a small group, interact with world leaders without major care and handle magic and martial prowess of the top tier almost as if it’s daily routine. The odds are truly impossible, of course, we are talking of dragon level here, but it all feels really cartoony. (It is closer to the game level of fantasy/power, IMO, but far less plausible.).

All in all, the three books are a fair read, and a must if you really are interested in the lore of the game. Also: ASURA RULES.

On a particular note my general rate on the books:
Sea of sorrows – By far the best. Love you Ree Soesbee, this book it amongst my yop 5 ever read. And I’ve read a lot of books.
Edge of destiny – A great book, I enjoyed reading it. has some lacking points, but still great and obligatory tied into gw2 story.
Ghosts of ascalon – Not a bad book, but way too generic. Don’t have the drama feeling of the other two, neither the great story concept + progression. Still, a good book.

The writing in Edge of Destiny wasn’t bad. It had a childish naivete that made the writing a bit simplistic, but it wasn’t bad. It was heavily action oriented and worked well enough for Edge of Destiny. Besides, Logan was always kind of a jerk to begin with….

Ghosts of Ascalon and Sea of Sorrows were sooooo good though. I wonder if Ree is still at Anet? That last book made me yearn for what could have been in this game. T__T

You make me feel so tempted. I rarely read because I can’t stand sitting still that long but. . . GW2 stories are the best!

Although edge of destiny was the worst writren novel, sea of sorrows was the actual worst of the three for me and by quite a way. It was extremely dull for a lot of it, but the biggest out off was the main character. He had no real personality behind him at all. There were some good supporting cast, but what it boiled down to was a largely by the numbers zombie novel.

Ghosts of Ascalon was thoroughly enjoyable however. Edge of Destiny had enough lore, enough nods to GW1 and an actual Elder Dragon to make up for the writing.

Theres enough to enjoy in all of them, but Sea of Sorrows is the one Id least recommend, personally. Sorry Rees!!