So the first book comes out in November and is there any hint for the 2nd one?

I don't think it's been announced, but maybe someone will chime in to confirm.

Oh, dear God. I do not like the description of the first novel one bit. Mommy...

Well, remember, don't judge a book by its one-paragraph plot blurb. Though I can certainly understand the reaction; everyone freaked out hardcoe when the novels were first announced.

Umbriel? Not a very intimidating name. And that floating city in the cover art looks like a vacation destination, not an "Infernal" city. I'm getting a lot of mixed message. Oh, and that blurb is so cliche I don't know whether to laugh in mockery or cry in despair for the future of TES. It just screams "I'm a crappy pulp spin-off with no originality whatsoever!" I'm not saying the book is like that, but if I never heard of TES and I picked up the book and read the blurb, I'd put it back down and pass it by without a second thought. Because I do know TES, I'd still put it down and pass it by.

Besides, there are birds on the cover art. Everyone knows there are no birds in Tamriel.

EDIT: @ThatOneGuy: The blurb has to hook the browser of the book. As in, I'm picking up books at the store, and reading the back to get an idea of what's going to be inside, and if I want to spend $7 USD on it (which I could spend on a nice meal, a bargain video game, or some comic books). The whole "man with a secret" "little girl that holds the fate of the universe in her hands" and "mage obsessed with power" - I've seen dozens of blurb set-ups like that. There's nothing about it that makes this book stand out from the crowd and grab my attention.

I don't get the feeling that Annaig is a little girl; more likely she's a teenager, similar to the princess who was in his series "The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone". The latter was willful but forced to grow up when she had to flee for her life, discovering her destiny. I also don't think Keyes' TES characters will be cliches, judging from the two books in this series that I've read so far.

I really hope Bethesda laid out the parameters for Greg Keyes. I'm not expecting the book to draw on every aspect of Elder Scrolls lore, but it should fit perfectly and draw on it when needed. Also, its four decades after the crisis, so there is a risk of it conflicting with ESV if not handled well. Lets hope it not "The Empire Managed to rebuild, and all was well until..."

Awesome cover-art for a video game novel though, not to gaudy, real elder scrolls like.

The thing is that it would only take a coupe days for him to read the relevant lore, you don't have to have been around the forum for years or played all the games to know the basics (or even the bigger things). Hopefully he's competent enough to have familiarized himself with the setting in which he's working, something that's not that hard to do - if I were him I would have registered a false screenname and asked questions over in the Lore Forum, that way he'd know that he was heading in the right direction (then again who knows, maybe was smart and did just that :ninja: )...

I have surprisingly high hopes for this series to be honest. He's demonstrated his ability to write high fantasy, and to do it very well. To be perfectly honest, I'm quite surprised that they've managed to get him at all. :shrug: I don't usually expect an author who's been nominated for NINE Locus awards to write a video game novelisation...

We can only hope.


Heh, Lcyanthropic Nerevaer wrote this brilliant rant about how TES was dead, it had sold him out as writer, and that he was going to boycott the series forever. Calmed down a bit since?



Who knows, maybe UnknownK is really someone else... Or maybe he just read the timeline on UESP. Or maybe he played Oblivion. there's a lot of ways he could get into the lore, and some would be worse than others.

You can't just read the lore, you have to experience it by playing Morrowind and/or Daggerfall! It'd only take the guy a few weeks to get through Morrowind, if he gamed for 10+ hours a day.

That was quite a arant, wannit? However, I think I should explain: I didn't hear about the books by themsleves, I heard about them as an aside to "no new TES for a while." Not to mention that same day the girl I'd been wooing was making out with another dude, so give me some leeway. Also, I hadn't read any Keyes yet and didn't know that he's actually a very good writer.


Basically my current way of thinking.

A lot of the naysayers have some good points, but mostly points that can only be resolved by reading the full book once it's released which, whatever we say here, I'm dead sure almost all of us will do. I respect those people's opinions personally because at least until I read some of Keyes' other books I shared those reservations.

Of course, then there's the totally crazy group of people who won't be satisfied no matter how good or bad the book is because they don't care about content as much as who is or is not writing it.

This is what I imagined the book cover was going to look like:
http://img34.imageshack.us/img34/5182/fakebook.jpg

Hey, no explanation needed. We were ALL pretty pissed for quite a while. Really, those were two announcements they should probably have not made in tandem.

'Twas an exceptionally good rant, though.

One of my best

Am I the only one who thinks 304 pages seems kinda short?

lol, just heard about this today as I was flicking through UESP. I was looking through the Fourth Age page and came across the entry about "Umbriel" and the "all consuming evil" yada yada yada and immediately was like WTF. I then used the ever reliable Google to find out that this all happened within a book to be written about TES and then checked here to be sure.

I'm still a tad hesitant about it. I really don't know what I expect or what I'm afraid. I guess it's just the prospect of a defined story being written in a time that has remained ambiguous. A time I would have liked to learn more about when playing ESV. However, I'm fairly excited for it and can't wait to see the direction that it goes in.


I believe so as well. Especially when it comes to fantasy where the novels are massive as a standard. Maybe it will manage to be interesting and succinct at the same time?

Ive seen this book for sale already on ebay. Anyone willing to get it to let us in on some detail?

Err.... The first book isn't released for almost another two months. And a rudimentary Ebay search bears no fruit.

Link?

The amazon link is in my sig, but it's the "hey we will have this book when it's out" thing.

I think keyes' website might finally be being updated (for the first time since 2006, I might add), so perhaps we'll get new info when it's done. Just a note.

I got mine on eBay a few weeks back, it was not even the final and corrected release, just stuff for reviewers. Not sure if I'm allowed to post a photo of it or something like that here? :confused:

There's nothing wrong with posting a photo of your own book.

Seriously, is anyone else getting the blank "offline" when they go to Keyes' official site? Is that how some sites update? Does this mean we're getting a prologue soon?

I'm getting it too.

Yes, there are many sites that go completely offline when updating, so that could be a possibility. Hopefully it is something of that nature.