I finished reading the book late last night while babysitting the most recent render jobs for work. I enjoyed myself greatly on account of being a GW fan, but can definitely say that as a stand-alone fantasy work it would be average at best.
It's not a bad book by any means, but its no Neil Gaiman masterpiece either. It's quite astoundingly average.
I do imagine that a lot of readers will be turned away by the amount of historical exposition that got squeezed in. I can appreciate the desire to introduce new people to the rich lore of Tyria, but cramming in lengthy dialogs of one character lecturing another on history just is not the right way to do it. The emotion shown by the Ebon Vanguard towards the Charr and vice verse is a good way to establish their history, and those bits of the book made me feel my Ascalonian roots with a pang of nostalgia. I just wish they had found a way to work in the rest of the lore like that, in a natural fashion that doesn't beat you over the head with a list of dates names and places.
I don't think I've ever read a book before that had a single character talk, non-stop, for more than 2 pages. After a while you just start scanning for the close parenthesis to get it over with.
If you can manage to steel yourself against the random chunks of historical exposition, you just might find some of the interesting character interactions. While all of the personalities were extremely typical of their races and none were particularly deep or unique, they did offer a nice preview of what we might expect NPC personalities to be like when GW2 finally rolls around.
As a GW fan you would be hard pressed to find a single bit of dialog to surprise you, but despite that its difficult to not chuckle at the antics when a Norn and Asura don't see eye to eye. As a GW outsider, you would definitely leave this book having a very solid idea of what to expect from the GW races. And considering that Grubb admitted one of his goals was to stoke up peoples emotional ties to the races themselves, I would say the book definitely succeeded in that regard.
I personally found that whether or not I liked a character would depend largely on what race they happened to be. I can definitely say that had I any question about which race I would like to play prior to reading, I would walk away from this book with my answer.
I did have one rather nerdish complaint about the book. Or rather, about one tiny detail tucked away in one corner of the book.
As background, I absolutely adore the Charr as a species and love to spend hours thinking about what the experiences of non-humans would be like. Because of this I fell in love with ANet all over again when they first released images of the female Charr. The attention put into their gender dimorphism made me incredibly happy. For once! A race of beast-men whose females aren't just the males with boobs slapped on as an afterthought!
Maybe because of this, or maybe because I'm overly too attentive to details, I found an example of the opposite amount of forethought that really bothers me. It's like a sliver that I can't pluck, too small to really matter but irritating enough to become a point of obsession.
Why for the love of all things consistent would a race of carnivores have tastebuds well adapted to the consumption of carbohydrates? I'm looking at you, fine wines! I'm sure a Charr could appreciate the effects of alcohol, but one commenting on the superior flavor of a wine is just jarring. Your little pet kitty can't taste sugar, why would a Charr be able to taste alcohol?
We take for granted our wines and liquors, but when it comes right down to it, they come from fruit and plant sources (even mead originally came from plants, though it was processed by bees before we had our way with it). We can taste them because we are omnivores. Charr are not omnivores. They are carnivores. They would not be able to taste the delicate differences between carbohydrate products.
Taste is a sense we often overlook, so I can see where it probably got glossed over. I think I've just gotten spoiled on the rich lore of Tyria that I expect all details to be perfectly in place with no mistakes what-so-ever. You don't often find such inconsistencies in ANet's work, so when you do, they stand out all the more.
Ranting aside, I appreciate the idea of wanting to show Charr as capable of sophistication, but why not go outside the box a little? Maybe to the Charr fine fermented meats are as prized as old wine is to humans. Imagine the comedic potential for racial friction when a Charr looks down on a human for eating inferior peperoni and not being able to tell.
I guess I'll just pretend over here that one of the other races told that Charr the wine was especially good. That the reason she bought it and drank it was because it was coveted by humans and would be a subtle jab to drink it when she couldn't even taste it...
tldr; If you're new to the world of GW and want to know what separates a Norn from a generic half-giant, a Sylvari from an elf, or an Asura from a gnome, then read this book. If you're a diehard fan trying to distract yourself in the wait before PAX/Gamescom, read this book.
Everyone else, tread with caution.
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