I'm just here to say that I love the book!

At first, I had my doubts: I never knew who Greg Keyes actually was, and he didn't appear to have written much; I thought that it might not be lore friendly; and that it might just now be good writing overall.

Thankfully, those fears were washed away! The story is wonderful and most things seem to be lore correct; the characters are brilliant, each with their own interesting personalities; and Keyes does a very good job of describing each scene. Brilliant, in my opinion.

My only complaint is that it seems to be quite short; I've only had the book a few days and I'm already over halfway through -- and I haven't had much time to read it, either.

hey, i just joined the forums after reading them for months[not very computer savy,type with one finger] and i thought i rememberred reading in that blurb about the books bridging the gap to the next Es game that the next book comes out in june.never read the book,but always felt bad for people asking when the next one's coming out.

A few days!? How can you last more than one day reading such a small book!?
And yeah, the book is passable, though I must disagree with you about the brilliancy of the characters. Althought interesting because of the story, their personalities and some of their speeches felt awfully clich?d...

Really? Where'd you hear that? If this is true, then an E3 announcement for the next game seems even more likely.

Ok Betheseda when are you going to announce the next book?

I'm not asking because i'm because i'm anxious to see what's next, but rather because I can't stand starting something and not being able to finish it, especially when said something was deliberately split in half to create more money. I honestly feel a little bit cheated.

ok to start with, i like the book no doubt about that.

but i did kinda feel like he made it up as he went along, i mean it seemed like he tried to cram everybit of awsomness from TES but didnt make it mesh, i mean why would sul just get transported to a plane of oblivion only to meet one of the strongest warriors as soon as he came throught the gate and then all the stuff with both umbra the sword and the person, i thought it wasnt laid out very well. it felt like he hop skipped and jumped off the main story line to much just to include anything he could like the thing with hircine, it didnt make much sense and was kinda irrelivant to the storyline except for the fact that a few of the good char's got killed off.

but in the end the overall story was amusing and kept me occupied, i just hope Mr. Keyes puts a little more time and effort into the next one, i really wouldnt mind if it took him 6 years to write it, it would actually prefer that because the product of that much time would be a great peice of literature.

ohh and id love to see the next book reach at least 800 so pages.

Since Umbriel is heading for the Imperial City, I wonder if Bethesda is going to erase Cyrodiil (in the second novel) the way they destroyed Morrowind. (I'm not saying I disagree with the changes to Morrowind and the Dunmer; I got used to it after thinking about it for a while and reading these threads.)

Maybe it's just the Imperial City that will be destroyed.

It's not necessarily true that either will happen, of course, but it might. I'm eager to see the direction they go, both with Umbriel and with Nirn. Which means I'm eager for the second book.

This is especially true given that White-Gold gives structure to the world, it makes Cyrodiil the center of the world so removing the Imperial City (or at least White-Gold) would have major geographic consequences (apart from the whole Daedric invasion thing).

Then again I don't think Umbriel wants to destroy White-Gold or the IC - the goal is to free Umbriel from Clavicus Vile's power which as I would assume means trying to make it no longer part of Vile's realm. Weakening the barrier between Oblivion (Vile's realm specifically) and Mundus by destroying White-Gold would be counterproductive as it would make Umbriel closer to Vile's realm rather than farther apart. My guess is that they want to harness the power White-Gold has over the barrier in order to concentrate it and completely break the connection between Umbriel and Oblivion, thereby making Umbriel a completely free entity (or at the very least part of Mundus) so that it can settle down.

Those are good points by Luagar and TengenToppa. I should have thought it through better. The life-forms on Umbriel are so strange, though, that it's hard for me to picture the city becoming part of the Mundus. I guess it's possible, though. (And hopefully near the Imperial City, not on top of it!)

I am actually wondering about what Luagar said here. It's true that destroying the Tower will be counter-productive, but why evacuate the Imperial City if Vuhon doesn't beleive that something very bad will happen? Will using the tower level the surrounding buildings? Will Umbriel instinctively glut itself on the souls of the residents? There's still a lot we don't know about it.

Yea, I thought the point of the evacuation was to stop the zombies beneath Umbriel from killing everybody, because until Umbriel is free it'll keep the zombies, which means that its gonna have to take a horde of them straight to White-Gold killing everybody in the path.

I'm sure Vuhon considers that acceptable collateral damage. As far as I can tell, the horde of walking dead and the soul-eating tentacle things are really what will harm anyone, not the actual use of the Tower. But I've been wrong before.

This would be cool

But, if Umbriel were to really destroy Imperial City, what would keep Dagon from getting into Nirn?

For the sake of entertaining wild theories, Umbriel might very well be able to take its place as tower - it might even throw a few neat metaphysical tricks into the mix given that Umbriel seems to have a mini-dreamsleave function within it.

I can picture the Imperial City region becoming strange enough that the "normal" mortals will be left looking on from the outside; from Skyrim for example. But maybe this is all speculation. It could be the second Keyes novel will have Umbriel fail at joining the Mundus.

Wouldn't Umbriel becoming a tower change Clavicus Vile into an Aedra?

No. The premise rests on Umbriel successfully separating itself from Vile, meaning at that point it would no longer be connected to him. And either way, why do suggest it would make him an Aedra?

Why would he become an Aedra?

The whole wheel thing:

Aren't all the towers representing an Aedra while all the spaces represent the Daedra? A piece of Clavicus's realm would be set down as a tower and it seems to me that all the towers correspond to certain Aedra via artifacts, blood, etc. A big rock/city would be Clavicus's corresponding tower. Maybe turn Akatosh into a Prince since his corresponding tower is being replaced. That would be interesting.

That is going off of IF that happened and Umbriel became a tower -- a pretty big if!

Close, but not quite - the spokes of the wheel represent the Aedra, the spaces the Daedra. The towers don't factor into the Wheel model (apart from the Wheel sideways looking like a Tower, but that's not these towers). As far as we know apart from Adamantine and Red Mountain (Akatosh and Lorkhan respectively) the towers don't correspond to any certain dieties.

Ah, well never mind I guess. I thought of the towers and the spokes as the same thing; the white gold tower being Akatosh's, and I was thinking that the keys for each tower were related to the Aedra. My whole perspective is off!

So there's nine aedra and nine daedra?

Aren't there 18 or so Daedra? I am just thinking about how the spaces between spokes are twice as many as the spokes themselves haha.

STRIKE THAT. The 9 divines have one tower in the very center and 8 spokes to the other towers.
So 16? I think?

16 Daedra and 9 Aedra.

Eight and sixteen. Each of the eight spokes crosses the wheel, covering the diameter rather than the radius and thereby making sixteen spaces between them - like how cutting a pizza eight times gives you sixteen pieces.