My mother and I agree this novel is very much "Miyazaki meets elder scrolls".

She also commented on the destruction of Morrowind, her favorite province. "Well at least they did something exciting."

I'm very glad we have a strong Dunmer character in Sul to balance this tragedy. He shows the warrior and the wizard sides of the Dunmer very well, and also is very human and emotional.

Was anyone else ticked off by this book's ending? I wanted some sort of awseme finale, and as the pages got thinner and thinner, it just sort of....ended, Anniag is still trapped with glim, and really, nothing is resolved too much.

You mean, like the aftermath of the Oblivion Crisis? Meh, that'd be probably borring. With this book we get the best of both worlds; we know what happened after the OC, and we also get this seperate story.

The lore made perfect sense, I thought. After Vivec went away, his powers holding up the moon began to fail, and some dude built a machine that held it up by powering it with souls. Years later, a giant rock with a city on top shows up, flying and powered by souls.


They did that on purpose, most likely. In order to make more money, some people will split the book in half and publish them a half-year apart. Especially books based on a game series like TES - They know we'll pay twice for the same book.

A bit off-topic, but is this book worth picking up?

It's decently fun, so long as you expect it to be much more of a 14 to 24 book than a mature-themed work of literature.

It has multiple threads and is controversial and divisive to the fanbase. So it's probably perfect in keeping with TES games on that score.

Thanks for the quick reply, I think i'll order it tomorrow!

Well I have to say one major cliff hanger . What the hell is going happen now ? Did Umbriel go a tad crazy at the end? Ugh the writing was confusing.

Hey, here's a question about the characters, well, specifically Annaig. As you saw before, I interpreted her character as someone who thinks she's an Action Girl, but is really just an average person. Some people disagree, and make the valid point that she was being characterized as an action girl but then seemed to lose the thread. Now, here's where I think the confusion comes from. The book is written in third person, and I think a lot of people assume third person omnicient. The thing is, it's not. It's not even limited omnicient, the book is written in third person, following each character. I understand the use of the style. It has all the advantages of first person, but in a multi-character story first person can become confusing since it's hard to tell who is speaking. Notice, however, that when the story follows Colin, it actually is him. We as readers do not hear what he does not hear, or see, or feel, etc. Therefore, the character Annaig characterized herself as an action girl, but wasn't.

I could be way off-base with this, but it makes sense to me.

I agree. I think Annaig was interesting up until she reached the kitchens. After that, I had no interest in her character.

I like the kitchens. The last thing I thought I would read about in a book featuring an undead flying city would be its kitchens. It was refreshing and original. I also like the fact that Annaig is not a Lara Craft wannabe. YMMV, of course.

Annaig was probably my least favorite character and I hate how its likely her and Attrebus are going to fall in love and live happily after .

Glim, Sul, and Colin were pretty good characters.

Was it just me, or did Keyes blatantly confirm that both Imga and Tsaeci were as described in Mysterious Akavir? The hobs might not have been Imga, it is implied that they reproduce and are not worm-born like the others, but a golden snake-man is distinctly described at one point in the kitchens...

I remember that and I forgot to bring that up after I finished the book.

Just purchased the book off of half.com.Not a big reader but this is something I could just not pass up.

Annaig isn't that bad a character. The main thing about her is not that she's a natural at alchemy -- it's that she's a survivor, the way the other characters are survivors. In other words, she's brave and clear-sighted when she needs to be, the way that Attrebus is finding he has strengths he never needed to call upon before, because he had been sheltered and catered-to until now.

I don't think it's necessarily a Tsaeci. There's no proof that Umbriel has been over Akavir. But it's possible.

It was never over High Rock, either, but there are apparently assimilated Bretons "onboard". Though I agree it is not definitively an Akaviri, what else could it be?

An Akaviri that had been residing in Clavicus Vile's realm?

As fantasy writing goes it was a bit lack luster. I liked the references to TES but as a standalone fantasy book it was a bit cack. I know that probably 100% of readers are TES fans but with a couple of hundred extra pages and just a slight introduction to the uninformed would have made it a better read. This is the 2nd book I've read recently (the other being Sapkowski's second Witcher book Blood of Elves) that is undoubtedly just half a book.

I got this book today for Christmas, and I just finished cramming all 286-ish pages of it. IMO, it was a great book. Now, I don't really read fantasy novels, so I don't have much to compare it to, but as a piece of TES lore, it served it's purpose very well.

I'm assuming it's okay to talk about spoilers here without hiding them. But if you don't want to read spoilers, then don't read anything after this.

Spoilers!

First off, as a fan of Argonians, I am freaking ecstatic that they now control the entire east coast of Tamriel. If the official map that is released alongside TESV shows Argonia as encompassing both Black Marsh and Morrowind, I wouldn't be able to contain my excitement.

I like how Keyes described the new cities that popped up in Cyrodiil after the Oblivion Crysis. I for one am tired of each province having 7 or 8 cities, no more, no less, so some new cities are welcome.

I've gotta say though, I was waiting for the description of an Akavari that was mentioned in this thread, but honestly, I don't think he did. He threw around the terms "golden skin" and "snakelike" A LOT, so I doubt he meant to describe an Akavari.

I also like how he described Elsewyr. He makes it sound like an awesome place. For that reason I hope Bethesda doesn't make Elsewyr a province in a game any time soon- look what happened with Cyrodiil. The Imperial City was nice, but not at all like it was hyped up to be. I don't want the same thing to happen to Elsewyr. They should wait until they can make it as lore-friendly as possible.

And I really liked Attrebus. Normally I'm not fond of the whole "sheltered prince who finds out the truth" cliche, but I think Keyes pulled it off well. I really hope he survives and becomes Emperor.

Edit: Oh, and I feel bad for Annaig and Glim. I knew they would dissolve if they tried to leave, but I didn't want to believe it. Hopefully they can escape in the second novel.

Edit #2: There are probably a lot of typos, but I'm too tired to fix them all.

It was ok. I liked reading about events in the TES universe more than I actually liked the storytelling, but it wasn't 'bad' as I feared it might be
And it definitely made me more excited about the future of TES, so I think that means the book did what it was supposed to do

Now for the other half, whenever I can get my claws on it.
When was that ever the case?

Have you ever counted the main cities in each province? Each one either has 7, 8, or 9 cities. It's maddening.

http://www.imperial-library.info/maps/n-enc-tamr-map01.gif

That particular map seems to be purposefully constructed to that end. There's many more cities in the provinces, and what criterium is used to determine the 'main' ones anyway?
Although I suppose there might be a bit of a bias to uniformity between the provinces. I got the feeling it was set up that way in Arena. But it's only in Oblivion that we had 'that many cities, no more, no less'.

Well that is basically the official map. That map is a combination of the maps of each individual province that you can find on the elder scrolls site. So those cities are what Bethesda considers to be the "main" cities, or the ones important enough to be on a map. Sure, there are many more, but I'm talking about the "main" cities.

Either way, it doesn't matter because now things are different. Cyrodiil has 2 new cities, and the cities on Vvardenfell have been wiped clean from the face of Nirn.

I think you're mistaken, though. Cyrodiil has two new towns. They're not exactly major cities in the book

Edit: Not that I'm negatively disposed to the development, by the way. It just seems like an odd argument. That map is essentially a 'top cities of' list, not a 'cities of' list. If I limited selection in that way I'd be able to draw a map of Europe with 7 cities in each country as well, since as long as you have at least X number of Y, you can compile a list X entities long