very good.

This was choppy and all over the place. The build up from powers to destroying everything in his path needed work. Still pretty creative.

Look, this book is obviously pulp. It has lots of aspirational masculinity, lots of advancing plot through ommipitent character thoughts, and lots of regressive characterizations of women. It was commissioned to offer long-form lore for a video game that is more about releasing dopamine via clicking monsters until they explode than telling complex stories about wars between angels and demons. But if you are interested in the world Diablo inhabits because every sequel makes the story more convoluted, then this trilogy is basically the only thing going. It's an easy read and doesn't require much thinking or any introspection (but I had fun thinking about it anyway).

The most interesting thing about this book is that the main character is obviously supposed to be the type of person the imagined audience for this book (isolated adolescent or stunted-at-adolescence men) can both relate to and also want to be. He's the strong, silent type who makes a living doing menial labor because that's his lot in life. He hates religion because he's smart enough to see that it doesn't give what it superficially promises but not smart enough to not take it personally. He has the undying admiration of a woman in town but ignores her because he cannot shed a childish superiority complex—as if he was still a little boy and she was still a little girl a couple years younger, annoying because of those two differences.

But, secretly, he's special, of course. One day, he has magic powers. And a woman who is so completely out of his league that in normal circumstances she wouldn't even make eye contact with him shows up and says she loves him. He immediately assumes a patriarchal, infantalizing, gendered protection role with her, telling her what to do and what her place is, and doesn't question for a moment why she accepts it and worships the ground her walks on. Why wouldn't she, right? The only other eligible woman in town does, despite him having really no desirable qualities, save for maybe thinking about the animals he is responsible for caring for once after he abandons caring for them.

Over and over on his violent quest through (apparently a small part of) Sanctuary he shirks his responsibilities, abandons his friends, and generally runs away when things get tough while telling himself it's the noble thing to do. His narcissistic trauma is the only thing that matters. He hates himself and cannot imagine himself as part of a group—he is literally the main character and thinks of himself that way. Uldyssian strikes me as the kind of guy who would tell his family he was going out to get cigarettes and never come back.

So, I thought it was pretty funny when ultimately this idiot that you are supposed to identify with and even want to be eventually loses his only friend, a pathologically loyal hunter with superhuman archery and showing up at the nick of time powers, and is betrayed by the woman he thinks loves him despite her having no rational, logical reason to do so. Uldyssian would definitely be the kind of guy who gets catfished and scammed out of his life savings by someone pretending to be a Russian supermodel.

The climax of this book is when the protagonist defeats the antagonist, Lucion (surely accidentally close to sounding like Lucifer), the nephew of Diablo himself, and the Pope of one of the two main religions in this world, by wishing he didn't exist and, poof, he stopped existing. Uldyssian's ultimate power represents the simplest, form of imagining control over an object representing trauma, straight from the pages of Freud: summoning the traumatic encounter and then willing it gone (fort—da). Unfortunately, this is tremendously boring for the reader.

I'm not going to keep reading the next two books to find out what happens. Admittedly, I am curious to see what kind of badass necromancer his brother turns out to be, but it turns out I really don't care about the back story to the Diablo games. I don't think Microsoft Activison Blizzard really does either, so it's occurred to me there's not really any point in continuing my studies. I recommend this book to people who like to read novelizations of more superficial media—you already know what you're getting into. You'll really like it if you think women need to be told what to do and that things would be so different if you could just magically make them different. You'll tolerate it if you don't think that but are amused when bad things happen to people like that or just love Diablo.

Rather bland and predictable; not what I'm used to when picking up a Knaak book. Since I will finish the trilogy despite this... tame... start, I really hope the characters will pick up a few interesting traits along the way.

ریوو به زودی

Like the other reviews have mentioned. It's nothing special. There are a few intriguing mysteries to figure out. Characters become inexplicably weak and strong on and off which I found...lame. I'm a fan of the Diablo game series, so I'm trying to pull through.

Stay a while and listen....

This is set before the events of Diablo in Tristram. So being that it is so far before that, my knowledge is limited in the events and the people who inhabited this world. The story itself concerns the awakening of the Nephalem, the spiritual essence or so in humanity. The story is an alright start, but the dialogue between the main characters is rather clunky. Further the main character, Uldyssian, while he was meant to behave a certain way, rather irritated the hell out of me.

Lore är en intressant sak. Sin War-trilogin är fokuserad runt händelsen i lore med samma namn, som tar plats ett par tusen år före händelsen av Diablo-serien. Och eftersom det är så långt före, har väldigt få av dessa händelser någon större effekt. Speciellt eftersom Sin War skrevs mellan Diablo II och III, och de viktigaste bitarna återberättas i Diablo III.

Men ändå är det fascinerande. Richard Knaak har här skapat en historia utan någon relevans som ändå fångar dig. En av de bästa delarna av Diablo har alltid varit den expansiva världen, och dessa böcker beskriver en värld före den världen vi känner på ett nästan lika bra sätt. Man kan tro att världen ska kunna finnas, och viktigare, man kan tro att denna världen slutligen leder till världen i Diablo.

Jag började läsa denna bok för att lära mig mer Diablo lore. Boken lägger dock inte till mycket förutom det som är relevant rörande det titulära "Sin War", men kriget i sig har en relativt stor plats i lore, så jag skulle säga att den nyfikenheten har blivit behagad. Speciellt gillade jag hur Knaak skriver om de två dominanta religionerna vid tiden, de s.k. Cathedral of Light och Triune. De är helt döda i Diablos nutid (och har ingen lore relevans utanför detta krig), men man blir ändå intresserad i dem och hur de fungerade.

Den svagaste delen är nog karaktärerna? De är alla relativt platta. Uldyssian, vår huvudperson, får lite mer djup, och jag hoppas att han kommer utvecklas mer i senare böcker. Jag hoppas alla dessa kommer utvecklas mer. Två böcker kvar.

Achilios förtjänade bättre.

Lucion är dock en skräckinjagande antagonist. Lite underanvänd men har ändå en stark närvaro genom boken. Hans syster, Lilith, är menad att vara en starkare och mer personlig fiende, och jag gillade atmosfären hon hade i boken men den faktiska karaktären var rätt monoton.

Ett annat problem boken har är att Uldyssian har dessa krafter som gör att han är lösningen till nästan varenda problem gruppen stöter på, vilket ger resten av huvudpersoner mindre chans att lysa. Dock tror jag att denna boken handlar mer om Uldyssian och hur hans krafter ändrar världen och personerna runtomkring honom, och på det sättet är det intressant att ha flera perspektiv och faktumet att Uldyssian har så mycket vikt är en viktig del i hans karaktär. Men forfarande, jag skulle vilja se lite mer av de andra.

Achilios förtjänade bättre.

I sammanfattning, det är en bra bok som har några svagheter men i storhet lyckas med att expandera världen av Diablo och ha en väldigt Diablo-lik känsla som verkligen ger dig inlevande i denna mörka och rika miljö.

4/5, skulle rekommendera denna bok starkt om du gillar Diablo, speciellt om du gillar dess rika historia, värld och lore. Achilios förtjänade dock bättre.

It takes an awful long time to get going, and you don't really start to feel Diablo until nearly 200 pages in, but it really does pick up in the last act of the book. I would not recommend this to anyone but an ardent fan of Diablo. (And, really, if you aren't an ardent fan of Diablo, why would you pick this up in the first place?)

Interesting story, full of supernatural things. It's first part of a series Diablo - Birthright. Main character is a farmer, who gets special powers. Huh, gets is not a right word. He discovers them in himself. I really enjoyed this book, becouse of supernatural things, action and very sophisticated story. When i finished this book, i was very confused and i must read next part.

At first I was floating around the context, getting to know the characters, but this book got very good very fast! If the next books in the trilogy become even better, I can't wait.

This is the best book in the Sin War trilogy and a must read for readers who want to know the back story of the Diablo III game. Though I think the other books from the Diablo universe are leagues better.

The names of the main characters are references to the classical greek odyssey but I can't find other similarities in the story so it just seems strange. The story becomes very repetitive in the next couple of books, where our hero is on the brink of destruction and then he suddenly unlocks untapped power within himself again and again and again so the story never becomes exiting

I like the universe and some of the characters are interesting, but it lacks some of the terror and suspense I would expect.

/Troels