Adam
This is a re-read for me, because I read this so long ago it was before I was writing reviews of books I read. I started playing Diablo IV again and one of the adjustments they made is a new section of the game where you can do a challenging battle and then you can choose a demon to fight in the end. One of the demons you can fight is Bartuc! I remembered he was a major part of this novel, but that's about all I remembered. So, I decided to re-read the book while I was thinking about it.
Now, even when I first read the book, I did not find it to be a great book. It sort of suffered through some of the more typical "first novel" in a new setting kind of things. While Knaak is fairly experienced Fantasy author from Dragonlance when you first start working on a licensed work, I do wonder how much freedom he had in crafting this story. This is coming in on the heals of the Diablo 2 expansion pack "Lord of Destruction" and I have very fond memories of playing that game. Diablo 2 was awesome, and the way they expanded the lore from the first game was impressive. So, I'm not surprised they decided to flesh things out into a novel. Unfortunately, I suspect Knaak couldn't make any major changes to the lore or flesh out major parts of it, so all we seem to get is a side quest at best. In fact, this reads massively like a run of the mill Dungeons & Dragon tale.
Some new classes of characters you could play had been added to Diablo 2, one of which was the Necromancer. If Knaak actually played through the games, I suspect this was his character choice. Here we primarily follow the tale of Kara, a novice necromancer, who is tasked with trying to track down some cursed armor. I actually can't remember if she was checking in on it or if they knew it was gone... either way. When she gets to the caves where the armor is hidden, she finds that it is gone, which is very very bad. For this armor belongs to the famed Warlord of Blood, Bartuc. The armor is enchanted and nearly sentient and can grant its wearer untold powers.
What we learn in the first chapter is that the armor was not taken by choice. Instead a fighter named Norrec, who was technically there to loot the caves, but wasn't after the armor specifically finds himself wearing the armor against his will. Unfortunately for him, the armor is aware it is missing a piece, the helmet and it seeks to reunite itself with the whole set. So he is forced on a harrowing journey, partly on foot, where he serves as host to carry the armor from point A to B.
Meanwhile an evil general Augustus Malevoline has had the helm all along and he is searching high and low for the armor. When he finds out the armor is on the move and heading in his direction he is elated, because he is already happily wielding the evil powers bestowed on him by the helm.
Our adventure revolves around these three main characters and they are not too bad of characters to be honest. In these kinds of high fantasy fluff novels I am not expecting the deepest character development here, I am primarily expecting action level popcorn in a fantasy realm and Knaak pretty much delivers that. I really had a couple major gripes with the novel as I went, the main one being that Kara made no sense as a novice. Anything involving something like Bartuc was clearly not meant for a novice. It's an epic level quest at best, but here she is trudging along, almost always dying because she's a low level character trying to do a quest beyond her level yet. She really needed to grind some more levels before dealing with this one and whoever her necromancer leaders are were fools to send her on this. It just makes no sense in this setting. It was more like Knaak was like "oh, the game starts you at level one, so I should start there." Kara's skills never even grew as she completed more things.
The other thing that got a bit tedious throughout was how often Knaak reminded us of how hot the fantasy women were. I get it, Kara is a hot goth chick, I really don't need a constant reminder of it to be honest. I mean, most fantasy novels have attractive people that is nothing new, even Norrec is a decent looking bloke and Augustus is a clear hottie. But between Kara and the general's sorceress helper, we get told about how hot these women are way too often. I appreciated that he bothered to tell me the men were hot too, but the volume ratio just wasn't proportional.
The main quest takes a head around Lut Gholein, which was very cool, and very intentional because it was a major location in Diablo 2. But, we never really got to dive much deeper in to the world of Lut Gholein, again, probably because Knaak wasn't allowed to flesh out the lore like that, which was the real problem with the novel in the end for me.
In the end, this was a bit of a run of the mill fantasy book. It wasn't amazing and it certainly isn't a must read. It's not terrible if you need to read everything Diablo, but don't venture in thinking it will bring more insight into the realms of Diablo. If you're already a fan of the Dungeons & Dragons books published by TSR, then you can expect this to be of similar quality and style.
This is a re-read for me, because I read this so long ago it was before I was writing reviews of books I read. I started playing Diablo IV again and one of the adjustments they made is a new section of the game where you can do a challenging battle and then you can choose a demon to fight in the end. One of the demons you can fight is Bartuc! I remembered he was a major part of this novel, but that's about all I remembered. So, I decided to re-read the book while I was thinking about it.
Now, even when I first read the book, I did not find it to be a great book. It sort of suffered through some of the more typical "first novel" in a new setting kind of things. While Knaak is fairly experienced Fantasy author from Dragonlance when you first start working on a licensed work, I do wonder how much freedom he had in crafting this story. This is coming in on the heals of the Diablo 2 expansion pack "Lord of Destruction" and I have very fond memories of playing that game. Diablo 2 was awesome, and the way they expanded the lore from the first game was impressive. So, I'm not surprised they decided to flesh things out into a novel. Unfortunately, I suspect Knaak couldn't make any major changes to the lore or flesh out major parts of it, so all we seem to get is a side quest at best. In fact, this reads massively like a run of the mill Dungeons & Dragon tale.
Some new classes of characters you could play had been added to Diablo 2, one of which was the Necromancer. If Knaak actually played through the games, I suspect this was his character choice. Here we primarily follow the tale of Kara, a novice necromancer, who is tasked with trying to track down some cursed armor. I actually can't remember if she was checking in on it or if they knew it was gone... either way. When she gets to the caves where the armor is hidden, she finds that it is gone, which is very very bad. For this armor belongs to the famed Warlord of Blood, Bartuc. The armor is enchanted and nearly sentient and can grant its wearer untold powers.
What we learn in the first chapter is that the armor was not taken by choice. Instead a fighter named Norrec, who was technically there to loot the caves, but wasn't after the armor specifically finds himself wearing the armor against his will. Unfortunately for him, the armor is aware it is missing a piece, the helmet and it seeks to reunite itself with the whole set. So he is forced on a harrowing journey, partly on foot, where he serves as host to carry the armor from point A to B.
Meanwhile an evil general Augustus Malevoline has had the helm all along and he is searching high and low for the armor. When he finds out the armor is on the move and heading in his direction he is elated, because he is already happily wielding the evil powers bestowed on him by the helm.
Our adventure revolves around these three main characters and they are not too bad of characters to be honest. In these kinds of high fantasy fluff novels I am not expecting the deepest character development here, I am primarily expecting action level popcorn in a fantasy realm and Knaak pretty much delivers that. I really had a couple major gripes with the novel as I went, the main one being that Kara made no sense as a novice. Anything involving something like Bartuc was clearly not meant for a novice. It's an epic level quest at best, but here she is trudging along, almost always dying because she's a low level character trying to do a quest beyond her level yet. She really needed to grind some more levels before dealing with this one and whoever her necromancer leaders are were fools to send her on this. It just makes no sense in this setting. It was more like Knaak was like "oh, the game starts you at level one, so I should start there." Kara's skills never even grew as she completed more things.
The other thing that got a bit tedious throughout was how often Knaak reminded us of how hot the fantasy women were. I get it, Kara is a hot goth chick, I really don't need a constant reminder of it to be honest. I mean, most fantasy novels have attractive people that is nothing new, even Norrec is a decent looking bloke and Augustus is a clear hottie. But between Kara and the general's sorceress helper, we get told about how hot these women are way too often. I appreciated that he bothered to tell me the men were hot too, but the volume ratio just wasn't proportional.
The main quest takes a head around Lut Gholein, which was very cool, and very intentional because it was a major location in Diablo 2. But, we never really got to dive much deeper in to the world of Lut Gholein, again, probably because Knaak wasn't allowed to flesh out the lore like that, which was the real problem with the novel in the end for me.
In the end, this was a bit of a run of the mill fantasy book. It wasn't amazing and it certainly isn't a must read. It's not terrible if you need to read everything Diablo, but don't venture in thinking it will bring more insight into the realms of Diablo. If you're already a fan of the Dungeons & Dragons books published by TSR, then you can expect this to be of similar quality and style.