B.G. Willers

Ghosts of Ascalon – review

I finished my new book last night.  It’s based on the Guild Wars universe and really sets the stage for Guild Wars 2 to come out in a several months.  Some places are familiar if you’ve played the game, and the book offers a little deeper perspective on the magnitude of certain events that took place in Guild Wars the game.  But you certainly wouldn’t have to have played the game, to understand the book.

In most ways I thought it was a great book.  Not a masterpiece, but a nice read and well worth the $7.99 asking price.  It’s of decent length, but also a fairly light read, so the pages go by pretty fast.  The book does a great job of  painting the new landscape, 250 years after the end of the first game.  But it also illustrates the relationship between the races and the respect, or lack there of had for each other.  The biggest complaint I have about the book is there’s a lot of times information feels a bit forced.  “What?  You haven’t heard about the Foefire?  Well legend says…”  There’s times were there’s some obvious lines or settings thrown in to appeal to the existing Guild Wars fanbase.  And I don’t think that’s a bad thing, I guess I just prefer those moments to be a bit more subtle, than “You’re standing on X, where Y happened Z years ago.”  Okay, so it’s not THAT blatant.

All in all, if you’re a Guild Wars fan, I’d call this a “must read”.  It’s far and away better written than a common “Fan Fiction”, but it does feel written with a very deliberate purpose.  To fill in a bit of the Lore gap between Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2.  That’s a lot of information to cover in one novel, and at times, it shows.  All things considered, I’d give it an 8/10.