Dragon Age: The World of Thedas Volume 1

It’s still sitting next to me. I’m enjoying it. A buy.

Now let me be less broad. The book is well put together – most of the lore is organized for easier reading. Specifically: the Old Gods, religion, ranks in nobility and even within the Qunari, etc. The timeline running at the bottom definitely gives a better feel of the events happening in Thedas since the beginning (especially for someone who likes the quick review).

You can tell they were wary on including details, like Empress Celene and Cassandra Pentaghast. There’s enough there to wet your whistle, but not enough to guess what’s to come of their fates in DA3. I love/hate the description of the Black City and all vague interpretations of it. If you played DA2, think how much you learned in the Legacy DLC. Yep, that’s still it.

But for now, the current Volume stands on its own and definitely has filled me in regarding items. There’s not a lot about what happened from DA: Asunder, however. I’m curious as to why that is – the Nevarran accord or the White Spire incident. If it’s so we read the original book…well, I can understand that. I can’t vouch for the other comics. At the same time, however, for a book that came out two years ago I’d figure we would get more information put into World on Thedas. But perhaps I’m nitpicking.

Overall, worth it for a person wanting to know more about Dragon Age and before the year of Dragon. I’d probably get this before DA3, however. It will put everything into context.

This book goes into full detail about the world of Thedas, and the type of cultures and species that inhabit this vastly-constructed universe. While reading it, I mused over how it was very similar to a real-life encyclopedia, just a fictional Dragon Age version.

This being volume one, not every single bit of information about the world is in here, but I’m sure we’re to expect more to come. This specific issue covers the nations of Thedas, such as what every culture wears, the classes, how to pronounce some of each nation’s dialect and language, species, and events that have happened since humans first arrived on the continent. (Elves and Dwarves go back much further, and some information is told about life before humans as well, although that time is “less documented”.) Beautiful art is through out the book – we’re able to see what cities or nations we’ve heard much about but never have seen look like. There’s also a timeline of events in Thedas all through out the book – very useful when you’ve read the books, comics, and played all the games, to then fully grasp the structure of when each event occurred. (Before now, I always “knew” the timeline due to fans trying to piece everything together based on general times given to us.)

As some people have already mentioned, some of the information given to us doesn’t exactly add up to things we’ve been told in-game. That being said, for any Dragon Age fan, this isn’t exactly new for the franchise. 😉 As Mike Laidaw said at PAX East, the version that we’re told about now can be chalked-up to the canon of the series. For the most part, any “different” information is very minor, and really doesn’t detour you from the story telling of this giant fictional universe.

Also, there might be griffins mentioned in this book.

This is one of the most comprehensively detailed book on the history of Dragon Age. The level of detail from the religion of Andraste and how is came to be. To the history of the elves and how they lost their immortality and the war with humanity eventually lead to the fall of a once great race. Making them become either nomadic tribes known as the dalish elves. Or the city elves that live amongst the humans but are treated as 2nd class citizens and in many cases slaves. It even details the beginning of the very first blight and how it nearly destroyed the world of thedas. Which also gave birth to the legendary and once respected Grey Wardens that saved the world. If you are a fan of Dragon Age I can’t stress you enough on what a joy it is to have this book and why you should buy it. This is as you saw is the first volume as this covers the world Pre Inquisition. Their is a 2nd volume that covers more details of the world of Thedas and how the invasion Corypheus transformed the world forever.

It was shipped a lot faster than I expected, and arrived in good condition. It provides much enjoyable background information and art for a Dragon Age fan without any significant spoilers or hints on the actual computer games. In part, a great bundle of flavour text, and in part, a gazetteer of the world of Dragon Age.

Comprata per farne un regalo. La persona che l’ha ricevuto è una fan sfegatata e pignolissima. E non ha avuto niente da ridire, anzi! Quindi 5 stelle anche se non per esperienza diretta!