Guild Wars 2

I am a person, interested in the story and lore of the Guild Wars universe. I just want the opinion of those people who have read the books released based on GW like Ghosts of Ascalon. Are they good? Is the story worthy? and what is the quality of the story-telling there?

Thanks in advance.

As a person who has read all 3. The 1st and 2nd are the only ones worth reading.

They don’t really “bridge” between gw1 and gw2. More along the lines of telling you where the claw of khan-ur is, how glint died, and why lions arch (prior to scarlet attack) was a giant pirate town craphole.

As for the quality of them there are better books out there but it’s not twilight level.

The third book bored me so bad it took me 3 months to read it and it’s not even a long book where the first 2 took me a few days.

I also read the 3 books.
Ghosts of Ascalon have the best story of the 3, but the least GW2 facts/lore among them.
Edge of Destiny is filled of lore, talk about the Destiny’s Edge that we see a lot in game among other NPCs we see in game.
Sea of Sorrows … this book is very slow paced, but if you like pirate/nautical story then you’ll love it because 99% of the book is at the sea. But at least the last chapters of the book is interesting.

[Keep in mind that I’m a a picky reader. ^^;] Personally, I found those books a bit of a mixed bag. I do not regret reading them as they provided some much needed background information about Destiny’s Edge and other prominent npcs, but they weren’t great. Edge of Destiny felt inconsistent–it was a bit all over of the place for me. The prologues were well written and poignant for the most part, but then the characters started acting as if they were playing a game and all sense of urgency and realism was lost–to the point that I wondered if a new author had taken over. On the other hand, Ghosts of Ascalon flowed pretty well. I haven’t read the third one yet.

The first book was awesome, there’s a real empathy with the characters.

The second was rather good.

And I kinda liked the third even though it’s not as GuildWars-esque as the first two (and sometimes a bit too technical to read, since I’m not a native speaker).

I have all three books. I have finished GoA; It’s a great book with nice facts, characters and description. I am currently trying to read SoS but it is very slow paced and I don’t have a connection with the character yet(currently ch3). Haven’t read DE yet though, can’t give opinion but I have heard its good too.
What I can say is that these books really fill the game world with atmosphere you wouldnt think about before. Like LA’s air just full of a salty breeze, the humid nights, etc.
I learned a lot about Slyvari as well from GoA as well.

Don’t go in expecting high literature from any of them, and you’ll do okay. That’s a basic disclaimer for any series tie-in novel though, I think.

Ghosts of Ascalon: I found it a bit slow due to a fair amount of exposition, but the characters were likeable and it was a good introduction to some of the general facets of modern Tyria (races, cultures, underpinning conflicts etc.)
Edge of Destiny: YMMV, but to me is the weakest of the three novels. Provides the immediate background that you should have at the start of the game with regards to Destiny’s Edge, but it’s all a bit rushed and shallow.
Sea of Sorrows: Best writing by a mile, written by someone a lot closer to the world of Tyria, and it shows. My favourite of the three, even if lore-wise it sits midway between GW1 and GW2 so some mental adjustment of race/culture/geography/history positioning is required. It’s very nautical/pirate-themed, so if you can’t stand ships and sailing and so on, it won’t be for you.

@Riku.4821: Well, that extra immerson is what I am looking for!
@Faowri.4159: Good to know actually. I read literature alot so, awaiting something huge may not be an option here.

Thanks to the people who commented. Appreciate that alot!

I enjoyed all three, but yes, the first two seemed better than the third.

All three were way better than anything you’ll encounter in-game. It’s safe to say that reading the books made me hate LS even more. There is a lot of lore and backstory to draw from, I’m not sure why they just pulled Scarlet out of their kitten instead of expanding on the existing lore shrug

The first book was good, second was okay, the third I found hard to read, it is slow paced had unlikable character and was quite frankly boring, it also had a fair amount of inconsistencies.

Basically I would recommend the first two books.

I’d think about the first and third. The third one covers a number of different stories, as it’s essentially a biographical fiction; in terms of quality it’s head and shoulders above the other two but because of its pacing it doesn’t appeal to the video gamer crowd as much.

First book, Ghosts of Ascalon, is not too bad though the backstory explanations are very heavy-handed. It gives a better taste of the world (and is more recent, by the timeline) than Edge of Destiny, which I’d skip all the way to the last chapter if I were to read it again. EoD reads like a transcript of a D&D game – aside from a history of what happened to Glint and Snaff there’s nothing much to see there.

Ghosts was the best, in my opinion, for its story, pacing, and character detail. It could stand on its own as a fiction piece better than the others so far, and then on top of that its ties to the Guild Wars elements helps bring it to life further. I was super excited when I met some of these NPCs/elements related to them while leveling back around the first couple of months.

EoD was good in that it filled in background for GW2’s major NPCs (pre- Living Story) and setting part of the tone for the interaction of the various races and cultures in GW2’s Tyria. However I would agree with the sentiment that it was a bit shallow, especially if you don’t award it bonus points for some of the GW1 call-outs. Still, of the three it’s probably the most relevant to the main story and bridging between the events of GW and GW2.

SoS was definitely pretty plodding at times, but if you like Lion’s Arch as it is now/pre-Scarlet it’s a nice history. It emphasizes the horrors and threat of the elder dragons like Edge of Destiny with more detail about Zhaitan and Orr’s rise. There’s some great stuff that gets dropped on you towards the end, and if you liked any of the memorial plaques and stuff added to LA and its founding history you’ll appreciate getting the background context.

So far I’ve only read GoA, but I have Destiny’s Edge as well. GoA was pretty poorly written. They could be in one place on one page, and then a city away the next page with two characters dead. There were a couple parts where I had to reread to make sure that the character was dead because it only got one sentence…..

But overall if you like the lore of the game then it was entertaining enough. Like others have said though, don’t expect it to be a well written book and you will be fine.

Haven’t read the books, but you can get a lot of the lore from the guild wars wiki. Especially character lore.

This game has surprising great lore behind it that doesn’t necessarily get conveyed well through the game.

Destinys Edge is poorly written but a great intro in the lore of the second game. And somehow succeeds in making Logan heroic. A great feat for which the writer deserves to win the Man Booker Prize

Ghosts of Ascalon is by far the better written of the 3 and interesting to read, with plenty of lore from GW1 and GW2 (but not necs related to the main story)

The third also isn’t particularly well written – good fan fiction at best and with an absolutely dire lead character. It is also incredibly dull. It’s main redeeming factor is that is has some decent lore about the rise of Zhaitan and particularly LA (which added a lot to the city when I explored it on an alt)

Don’t buy any for the literature, but I’d value the first 2 books more than the third personally.

I see opinions are all over the place.

I read the first two books before launch because I hadn’t played GW1 and wanted some lore to help me figure out my RP. I found them excruciatingly bad as books but very clear sources of lore about the world. They so clearly were written with the need to showcase one of each race and a variety of professions. The first one was a bit better because it at least had a focused treasure hunt story. The second one … I was appalled at how much Logan and Rytlock sounded like puerile early teens spoiled western boys. Logan’s reaction to Jennah made no sense (unless she mesmered the heck out of him). There was simply no maturity anywhere in the novel other than Snaff and even he was simplistically written.

The third book impressed me far more. There was a real sense of disaster and heroism, a solid plot, and a feeling the book was written to tell history rather than to showcase game mechanics. Perhaps it helped that I was well steeped in GW2 lore by the time it was published, so my mind could fill in depth (see: Connie Willis’ essays on writing and how the reader collaborates with the author to form the experience). I still wouldn’t recommend it to someone as a stand alone read if they weren’t interested in the game.

I’m pretty fussy about my fantasy reading. I want complex stories, interesting magic systems, internal consistency, gripping writing, and characters that I want to be friends with or at least believe could be real people. I’ve almost never seen that in any media-created shared world writing. In fact about the only novel that springs to mind as one I’d recommend to someone who’d never heard of the universe is one by Diane Duane in which Spock gets dumped in the 19th century Pacific Northwest with amnesia.

So yeah, I’m highly critical of the GW2 novels. I still recommend them as lore information sources, but only as that. The third one I’d even suggest as light reading — beach reading, for those who do that.

In comparison to proper, decent fantasy books (and no I don’t mean Game of Thrones..), the GW2 novels like all tie ins are poor literature I agree. However, if 14 years in bookselling taught me anything, you benchmark a read against what it is, not what it could be.

As I and pretty much everyone will agree in this thread, they are fun source of lore. Beyond that, they could easily be dismantled if one wished.

On a side note, I’m reading a set of short stories called the Dragon Griaule. It’s about a 6km long dragon frozen in magical animation whilst communities and people grow up around it. A fantastic read if the lore of Dragons and the epicness of the GW2 Elder Dragon sparks your imagination.

GoA and SoS is worth reading. EoD doesn’t make sense.

Well as mentioned before they are not high litterature and by far not the best that fantasy books have to offer.
That said they are really intresting in regards to lore in my opinion.

Ghosts of Ascalon to me was best, but that may be colored a bit by reading it before the release of GW2 and I was super hyped for it. Still. GoA had some loveable characters and a decent pacing imo.

Edge of Destiny I also read prior to release of the game and I think it gave me a much bigger understanding of those main npc’s. Why they do what they do when we meet them. It is decent, but somewhere along the way it just seem to get rushed through a lot in a very short time, losing track of it.

Sea of Sorrows I actually liked. I liked that it was closer to the GW1 time than the other 2 and unlike what others said I liked the main character, he was no perfect hero, he made mistakes, he showed real emotions. It may be more slowpaced, which can be boring to some, but imo it is one of its qualities.

Non of them are particulary hard to read imo (and english is not my first language) though it takes some adjusting to some terms not used in many other books. As background lore for the game they are definitely worth reading.

As a side note my mom read the first 2 too and liked them enough to want to read the last one too, once I let her, and she never played any of the games…. infact she never played any games, she barely knows how to turn on a PC.

They are not exactly that expensive (I think) so I say go ahead and shape your own opinion of the 3 of them. If you don’t give yourself too high expectations you might just enjoy them.

Edge of Destiny is probably the worst written novel I’ve ever encountered.