So, for those of my imaginary readers who aren't either Guild Wars players or just aren't keeping up on the Guild Wars 2 news, here's the sitch: They're releasing books. The first one officially came out this past Tuesday (I've had my copy since Saturday, though) and it's really pretty good.
Game tie-in novels, like many other tie-in novels really, often suffer from bland or dry writing. I attribute this mainly to the difficulty of working in someone else's setting, with someone else's lore, using characters built to someone else's specifications. Although the writing (and editing) in the book is not perfect by any means, it's definitely a cut above the usual, and hopefully that trend will continue when the other two planned books are released.
This one introduces us to a mix of people of different races. Although the story is written mainly from a single human's PoV and we meet several other humans as well, we also get to see glimpses of the other playable races. The two norn we meet are a bit on the overly stereotyped side—loud, boisterous, "Me smash!" types, although the second one is somewhat less cardboard—but we also get a really good glimpse at what the sylvari are like, two charr that give me some more hope I'll find it possible to get into their mindset when I play one, and a couple of somewhat stereotypical (yet also somewhat different from one another) asura.
The book fills in some details about the future world of Tyria, with descriptions of several locations, including (of course) the current state of Ascalon City and environs. A lot of really nice details of places like the human capital of Divinity's Reach and the, erm, independent city of (new) Lion's Arch are a welcome preview of the game. It's unknown as of yet if all the locations in the book will be visitable in the game, but it definitely did a good job of making me want to visit them.
The story itself wasn't bad. It's not anything terrible outré for the fantasy genre, of course, but it doesn't have to be a completely original story to be entertaining, and the interest I have in the world helps make up for any lack in any event. I suspect even someone unfamiliar with the game would find it a reasonably interesting read, though; they did a pretty good job of putting in touches that a GW1 player would find familiar while still making it accessible to new players.
Overall, I'm fairly pleased with the book, and am hoping the next one will be just as fun a read.
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