The story in this book is tolerable but only because the plots are largely supported by the fantastic game content of the Elder Scrolls series. The main characters are shallow and the side-characters are mostly mysterious types (read: also shallow, due to the fact that 'unknown past, unknown emotions, unknown motives' is a fantasy cliché since Aragorn). It's a shame, since I expected a lot of a novel that builds on the enormous collection of lore, lands, creatures and races that the Elder Scrolls comprises. The abrupt end of the book is frustrating because it smells of cheap soap opera. I'm going to find out if the sequel is any better. If not, I won't be surprised. If it turns out that the ending of the series is deeply inspiring, this book was just the authors way of finding his pace. After all, it's not easy to write a novel about such a popular and well-loved game setting, just as it isn't easy to make a good movie out of a good book. ( )

i was pleasantly surprised by just how much i enjoyed this one. my expectations for videa game based novels are certaintly not high, but I genuinely thought this was pretty good. i adored the characters, i was hooked from the prologue, it was an all-in-all solid entertaining read.

that being said, this novel does play around with some of the weirder aspects of TES lore so i would say you have to plays the games first to really have any idea of what is going on. ( )

I can’t believe how boring this was. When I finally tapped that “I’m finished” button on my goodreads app and looked at the two dates, I realized it had taken me one day short of an entire year to read this book. And it’s 280 pages long. And I read epic fantasy a lot.

And maybe that’s the problem, because this was like baby’s first epic fantasy. Unfortunately I’m not a baby, and this was far from my first epic fantasy. Maybe if it was I would have enjoyed it a little bit. Unfortunately, as someone who has read his fair share of epic fantasy (did I mention that?), I found it cliché, adequately written at best, and boring beyond all measure. And it’s short for an epic fantasy. I’m used to books that are several hundred pages longer than this, and yet it took me forever to slog through this thing.

My first issue is that the author obviously doesn’t understand what makes an Elder Scrolls game special, or at least me and him have a disagreement in that area. There’s a reason the main quest of Oblivion is everyone’s least favorite quest line in the game—it’s a cliché fantasy story about saving the world from a massive evil from another demesne. Just like this book. Do you see my issue yet? He picked the worst part of an Elder Scrolls game to base his plot on.

If you want to write a great Elder Scrolls story, why not write about the Dark Brotherhood? That was the best quest line in Oblivion, after all. Why not write about literally anything besides a world-destroying evil whose origin isn’t even hinted at for almost the entire book? Are you trying to be a boring cliché? Not only that, but hey, let’s set it far into the future from Oblivion and spend lots of time in Black Marsh where no Elder Scrolls game has been set, just so that fans of the series have even less common ground to grasp onto.

-Sigh-. All that being said, I’m probably going to read the sequel, Lord of Souls, because:

A: I bought it when I bought this

B: The end of this book, and I mean like, the very end, offers some actual promise. We get to finally find out something about Umbriel, the floating city. We go to Morrowind. We get to briefly see different planes of Oblivion. The second book, as much as it pains me to say it, might be something worth reading for an Elder Scrolls fan like me. Too bad I had to get through this one first. ( )

OK, I have to admit that I'm not a video game player, and I'm not at all familiar with the Elder Scrolls game, so I'm not the target audience for this book. It was actually better than I might have expected for a video game tie-in, however, I couldn't avoid having very high hopes due to the 4 Keyes books I previously read - the Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone epic - which are all fully 5-star novels!
I just couldn't really get into this, though. Although it had some good writing (nice turns of phrase and original imagery), for such a short book, it had too many different characters in different places, without enough development. A lot of the plot episodes seemed very abrupt. The female lead being stuck in the kitchens was just a little too goofy. And of course, it ends with an obvious sequel set-up.
I'm still planning on reading more Keyes - but I think I'll skip the tie-ins. ( )

Un libro no muy sobresaliente de fantasía, pero si has jugado a los elders scrolls, entonces los disfrutaras ( )