Diablo: The Sin War #2: Scales of the Serpent: Diablo Sin War Book 2 (Diablo Sin War, Book Two) [マスマーケット]

I bought The Sin War trilogy with no knowledge of the games on which it is based, so my opinions here are of the novels as standalone fiction.

I was pretty tired of the main character, Uldyssian, about midway through the first book. He spends all his time either brooding or thundering around like a big baby - making the scenes devoted to him the sort you wish you could fast forward through.

But the strength of the supporting characters makes this book worth reading - his brother who sees dead people, his old friend the undead hunter, the informative bone chip, the helpful void dwellers - it's just too bad the author didn't kill off Uldyssian in the first book and concentrate on them instead.

I also wish the author would just call people by their names. His habit of referring to them as "the son of (insert dad's name)" or "the brother of (insert sibling's name)" wears very thin. He does it every three to five pages!

But if you're a fan of fight scenes, you'll probably like Scales of the Serpent. It offers plenty of demon-head severing and arrows to the eye socket.

I'm excited to read The Veiled Prophet to find out what happens with Mendeln, Achilios and Serenthia. I just hope not too much attention is devoted to that dolt Uldyssian.

I first want to say, I didn't intend on writing a review for these books. But between just finishing the third book, the impending release of the next game they are based on, and the small number of reviews up here, I figured I should review it to give some more feedback to fans of the game on whether this is worth their time and money. I would also like to say I am a big fan of Blizzard's games, and have read now all the Diablo and Starcraft books. I'm going to copy and paste this review across all three books, but don't worry, I won't give you any spoilers (not that there is much to give).

To get right down to it, the books are based on a man named Uldyssian, his brother Mendeln, and a woman named Serenthia and their fight for freedom for their world basically from angels and demons. The angels and demons have set up followings in the world of Sanctuary to recruit worshipers. It sounds interesting, the execution was poor. Uldyssian and Serenthia basically have a magic power that allows them to do whatever they want, and all they have to do is think it hard enough. Mendeln is pretty much the first necromancer and while his magic isn't the, "just think it hard enough" type, he just magically has the right words pop out of his mouth to get the job done with very little actual training. The ties into the actual games themselves are pretty slim and as a stand alone to someone who hasn't played the games, the books don't hold up well and they add hardly anything to the lore of the universe itself.

The first book is decent, but slow. The second book is slow and slightly less decent. The third book is slow, and the ending is atrocious. I can't say much more without spoiling the ending unfortunately. As others have mentioned, Knaak says on basically every other page that this person isn't their name, but the son of, the brother of, the daughter of. It gets really old, really fast. You never at anytime think the characters are in any real trouble for their lives and this also applies to the atrocious ending the the books, which I promised not to spoil. There is no character growth hardly at all except that they devolve slightly as their powers grow stronger, but it is never expanded on or anything. For some reason I can't understand Knaak and Chris Metzen (who is basically lore master at Blizzard and approves everything that goes into all Blizzard books) seem to go out of their way to reverse typical thinking and make the angels out to be worse than the demons. They did something similar in the Warcraft universe where they went out of their way to make the orcs less evil, except they didn't do it nearly as well. Maybe they thought they were being original, all they ended up being was boring.

Really that is all I can comfortably say without spoiling anything, but otherwise, I strongly recommend avoiding these books to everyone, even the hardest of the hardcore Diablo fans who want to know everything about the universe the game is set in. What makes these books even more disappointing is how well Richard Knaak did the other books in the Diablo universe and how good my friend said he did with the books in the Warcraft universe.

Like the previous book "Birthright", this book was difficult to get through and took several weeks to finish, whereas a more inspired works such as Knaak's "Tides of Blood" or "The Legend of Huma" can easily be read in a week.

So far, the first two books of The Sin War trilogy feel like just a story that tries to expand upon the Sin War (which is briefly mentioned in the documentation for the original game of Diablo). While it is interesting to see how particular characters (such as Rathma or Trag'Oul) are integrated into the storyline, the story itself hasn't captured my interest too much. The main character, Uldyssian is a former farmer who now has near-god-like powers. Wow...a farmer turned savior of the world. Sorry, but that is about as cliche as it can get. Perhaps if it had been a blacksmith or a cobbler, or something a little different, it wouldn't be quite so bland.

As another reviewer also noticed, half of the time each character is referred to as Son of This-Person or Brother of That-Person or Someone-Else's Daughter, and it gets really annoying reading that every other page. I wish I was even slightly exaggerating, but I'm not.

This is a story, but not necessarily a story that needed to be told. Knaak's writing tends to be much more interesting and inspired when he is writing for Dragonlance or one of his side projects (Dragonrealms, the Chicago-based novels, etc.). Recommended reading for die-hards of either Knaak's writing or the Diablo world. Otherwise, one would be better off reading "Kingdom of Shadow" if they want to read a Diablo-themed novel authored by Richard A. Knaak.