David Gaider

I picked this up because I didn't like Cole as much as I thought I would while playing DA:I, and because I wanted to know more about the story behind the "Locate Rhys and Evangeline" mission. This helped on that front, and I do like Cole a bit more, or at least find his story more compelling.

The book is a bit of a slow build that frankly isn't written that well at all. It's about on par with Blizzard's "Diablo" and "World of Warcraft" books, which is not glowing praise by any means, although "Asunder" has the benefit of including Shale and Wynne interacting, which is lovely. Shale brightens anything she's in, and the book's perhaps only saving grace is that it almost perfectly captures her personality (both stars are for Shale, but she unfortunately cannot save the book). What I mean overall is that I had a low bar for "video game related book" already, and on the scale of what I've read... this probably hits around the lower middle for quality?

The plot itself perhaps suffers from being a mix of badly written originality with some of the same centrist nonsense ("everyone is the same, what is the point of trying to change the status quo because everyone who does so is always awwwful see I'm a 'progressive' but actually I think we're better off with nothing changing and actual progressives are as bad as conservatives") and plot fumbles from DAII. It was at the point where I was missing the centrism nonsense because they'd gotten into trying to justify the nonsense of DAII's climax that I knew something was deeply wrong.

None of the protagonists are particularly compelling. Cole is interesting, but his sections are largely boring. The relationship between Rhys and Wynne is the only one (outside Wynne and Shale) that's at all enjoyable to observe, and it's so bumpy and barely present that it's not really something worth holding on for. Leliana pops up, and Divine Justinia is great.

Also: the cover for the apparently regular version for this is so bad? I actually accidentally discovered that it's apparently supposed to be Lord Seeker Lambert, who is one of the primary antagonists. Just a profile image of his face where he looks kind of like a zombie in armor he doesn't wear for most of the book, and he isn't a POV character for most of it, either, and the one time he is, he's not wearing his helmet (at least for most of that section). This tells me nothing about the book, and honestly why not draw Cole? Or Rhys? Like I'm used to bad covers, particularly for video game adaptations, but please, please, there are so many good cover artists out there, PLEASE HIRE THEM! Not that the deluxe edition is much better. I mean art-wise it's at least not ugly to look at, but it's kind of plain, and says nothing about the content of the book.

Overall, if you want a relatively meh backstory on Cole, this is for you. Otherwise, reading the game wiki is probably fine. If you want more "Dragon Age", "Until We Sleep" is a nice story. The art is a roller coaster of quality, but well, most of the story is good, and it's got a great cast.… (more)