I finished reading this tie-in novel by David Gaider the other day. From what I had read in various reviews I expected it to be decidedly average, but I ended up being positively surprised. Then again, maybe my perception was just skewed by the fact that the last book I had read before was the WoW novel Arthas: Rise of the Lich King, which was a bit of a letdown.
Stolen Throne throws you right into the middle of the action in its very first chapter, describing the flight of young Maric, whose mother has just been murdered. I thought this was a bit clunky actually, as I found it hard to care much without knowing the context or anything about Maric as a character. However, his personality started to show pretty soon, and from then on it only got better.
I imagine that this book should appeal to Dragon Age fans and non-gamers alike - if you've played through the game, a lot of the little details will be familiar, but with the map at the start of the book and the author being quite good at describing the setting, I imagine that it should be just as easy to get into the story if you've never heard of the land of Ferelden before.
There are quite a few well-known fantasy tropes present in the story, but I don't consider that a weakness really. Just like the game itself, the book is happy to embrace certain clichés present in the genre and runs with them, turning them into something new and interesting in the process. For example I really liked what the author did with the "warrior maiden" Rowan, acknowledging that women are rarely as martial as men in Ferelden and that she's unusual, but still not making a massively big deal out of it. The only thing that bugged me a little was the characterisation of the Orlesian ruler, who was just so stupid and evil it was hard to believe, but fortunately he didn't get much page time anyway.
King Meghren aside, characterisation is a strong point of Stolen Throne. Maric starts out as the slightly naive, down-to-earth prince, who is nonetheless competent in battle and charismatic, but has to learn some harsh lessons on the way. You can understand why Loghain often gets annoyed with him but still can't hate him. Loghain himself is also very interesting to observe - you can see how he became the person we meet in the game, even if he's still a bit more focused on his own independence and not quite as jaded in the book.
If you fell in love with the world of Thedas while playing Dragon Age, I can only recommend this book as another way to find out more about the setting, but even if you're not a fan I think that it's worth a read - as a slightly different way of telling the story of a prince who has to reclaim his throne.
