Birthright (Diablo: The Sin War #1), Richard A. Knaak

The Sin War is a trilogy of novel series tells the story of Uldyssian as he is drawn into the battle between the Temple of the Triune, run by the Primus under Lucion; the Son of Mephisto and the Cathedral of Light run by the rebel angel Inarius.

Uldyssian feels that both sides are corrupt and wants nothing to do with either of them. When he is accused of murdering one of their missionaries, he flees his home town of Seram as he begins to discover his own strange powers. He decides to teach others how to use it, and gathers many followers to him, but the Temple and the Cathedral want his powers for their own and will stop at nothing to get them.

تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز هشتم ماه می سال 2016میلادی

عنوان: حق ذانی - دیابلو : جنگ گناه کتاب اول؛ نویسنده: ریچارد ا. ناک؛ مترجم: سید بهداد احمدی؛ تهران، آذرپاد، 1394، در 411ص، شابک 9786006225487؛ موضوع داستانهای نویسندگان امریکایی - سده 21م

سه هزار سال پیش از سقوط «تریسترام»، «الدیزیان»، پسر «دیومد»، کشاورز ساده ای در دهکده‌ ی «سرام» بود؛ «الدیزیان»، راضی از زندگی ساکت و آرام خود، با هراس شاهد رویدادهای تاریکی است که به سرعت در اطراف او در حال رشد هستند؛ به خاطر اتهام دروغین قتل «دو مبلغ مسافر»، «الدیزیان» مجبور به فرار از سرزمین مادری خود، و آغاز سفری میشود تا بتواند بی گناهی خویش را ثابت کند؛ در اوج وحشت، او شاهد ظهور نیروهای عجیب و تازه ای در خود است - نیروهایی که هیچ انسان فانی ای تا به حال حتی در رویا هم ندیده است؛ حالا، «الدیزیان» باید با انرژیهایی که در حال رشد، در درون او هستند دست و پنجه نرم کند، - مبادا آنها آخرین ذرات انسانیتش را از او بگیرند؛

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 23/06/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

dnf

First of I have only played the newest Diablo game so this review may be effected by the fact that I do not know that much about the universe.

I have given this book a total of 3 stars
I thought the characters were very predictable and a bit boring at first. But as the story went on some of the characters began to get a bit more depth and I'm very much looking forward to seeing the conclusion to the struggle.
But all in all the story have potential (mainly because of the setting woth angels and demons) but the story reminded me of a childrens fairytale with a bit more filling (not that that is bad, but I had expected more from it)

I will be reading the next two in the series when I have a couple of spare hours.

Happy reading!

It's a very easy and quick read, which very well sets the scene as to what is to follow as a long journey of a group of heroes in the making. Any Diablo fan would surely appreciate the book for reading the book one can almost feel like being in the game.
The book is great for youngsters - will surely make them want to read more!

As soon as I heard that they were going to be remastering Diablo II, I knew I had to go through the Diablo lore from the beginning. As far as I know, this is the earliest beginning.

This book has a slow start that I've known to dissuade some readers, which is a shame. Somewhere around halfway through the book, there is a quickening, and the rest of the book flies by rather enjoyably.

The book tells of the humble beginnings of several key characters in Diablo lore, including Uldyssian and Mendeln ul-Diomed. The brothers are making their way in the world in the aftermath of the death of their family to plague, and what seems to be a quiet existence of farming and studying soon shifts with the appearance of a young noblewoman in town and a mysterious runic stone in the forest.

I've read in some other reviews that this book can and should be skipped. To that, I emphatically say NO. You cannot skip this one! Like I said before, the beginning is slow, not bad, just slow. But this book really sets the stage for at least the next two books and, in a lesser way, the rest of the lore.

As a side note, I did start to get annoyed at how often the characters were called by their relations, i.e. Diomedes' son or Uldyssian's brother.

I did find the book very interesting. unlike the previous Diablo set novel I read, Legacy of Blood, that I found plainly simple. The Sin War #1 book puts the reader in a nice pace. It is a pity, however, that I am a big fan of the game and I have finished Diablo 3 and Reaper of Souls already. Many of the sweet surprises of the book go a bit spoiled. Yet, I found it very interesting to read and moving away from a spirit of game and a lot more into a spirit of book.
Good one.

Fun fantasy and sorcery set in the diablo world

Can we stop ripping off Greek myth? This book was atrociously blatant in this regard. Come on, the book uses names like Uldyssian, Achillios, the town Partha (for Parthenon), Romus the former cutthroat (because, hey, we need a dash of Roman myth, too), Lillith the temptress, Lucion the son of Mephisto. Yeah, no, I couldn't see the foreshadowing from a mile away if I was blind and dumb. I really hope that most of this was Blizzard's fault and wouldn't have spent a dime on this book had I known it was going to be this bad.

Dragonlance. Conan. WarCraft. Shattered Light. Diablo. All formidable names (Well, except for Shattered Light). Richard owes his career to the first, but by continuously writing within this universe of media tie-ins he has eternally chained himself to them. He does have his own works — four stand-alone novels and a ten-book series called The Dragonrealm — but they get nowhere near the amount of press these other works do. Even with the exposure he’s received by associating with such media giants, I know no one else who reads him let alone recognizes his name when I mention it. By writing in these other worlds and within other author’s guidelines, Richard Knaak has deprived himself of developing his own brand. I have read enough decent books by him that he should be a larger draw than he currently is, and there seems to be no other explanation for this.

Which is rather sad, as Knaak does provide an excellent story — on occasion. I discovered Richard in the Dragonlance series in his terrific books The Legend of Huma and Kaz the Minotaur and followed him into his own world, The Dragonrealm. I enjoyed the first six books of this series, but the stories steadily decreased in creativity and sustainability after that. I’ve read two of his stand-alones, rather enjoying Frostwing but finding King of the Grey to be simply okay. For me, his best work by far has been within the Dragonlance collection. Despite the hit-or-miss quality of Knaak’s books and the narrow spectrum within which he allows himself to write, I really haven’t read a ‘bad’ book by him. Until this one.

Knaak should have swapped his Birthright for a bowl of porridge. He would have been better served.

There is not much good to say about this book. Every single character but the protagonist is interesting. Yet only one of these secondary characters is worth further reading — and my curiosity has not been aroused enough for me to read any further in this proposed trilogy.

The novel tells the story of Sanctuary (the name the devils and angels know earth by) and the eternal war between what passes for heaven and hell in Diablo. It is the story of one man, hunted for heinous crimes he did not — could not — commit and the path to justice and redemption he is forced to follow, first as an unwitting pawn of the combatants, then as an unwitting pawn of his own boringly dull lack of intelligence and his sheer dumb luck. We are also forced to follow along, not with our character and his obligatory sidekicks, but as detached observers. Something separates us from Knaak’s characters; there is no empathy, no collaboration, no living vicariously through any one of them.

Every step our trepid ‘hero’ takes in the right direction is through the inadvertent guidance of his friends or plain old luck — the kind he considers bad luck and is too dumb to realize it’s saved his backside yet again. And no, sadly this novel is neither spoof nor humor piece.

Our hero is arrested, duped, ambushed, injured, defeated, victorious. He kills, he loves, he tries to think, he tries to be a friend, he sees friends die and grotesqueries abound. He faces demons and devils, warriors and women, worship and wonder. He overly-discusses every single one of these occurrences with himself and without learning a thing from any of them. I weary of his thoughts long before the end of the book draws near. From first word to last, Knaak elicits within me a tearless ennui.

The book is loaded with blundering prose. There is a heavy attachment to -ly words, childish phrasing, and extraneous unnecessary and convoluted wording. There is lots of very poor, redundant, and often ridiculous word usage. There are even numerous mistaken identities, naming a character on one page and then, on the ensuing page, having a different character (sometimes not even present in the scene) continuing the action in question. This book is a prime example of careless writing in my opinion. These weren’t errors caused by typesetters and printers. These are definitely author errors and possibly editor errors, depending upon whether or not the editor’s job description still mentions story continuity.

“I will say this succinctly and clearly only one more time!” (p. 47)

This is a bad book, filled with hokey writing. Please don’t waste time reading this! Would I recommend Birthright (Diablo: The Sin War, Book I) by Richard A. Knaak to my friends? Absolutely not – NO!

I first became aware of these books around the time of the Diablo IV release (June 2023), after listening to/watching some lore-related podcasts & videos. Unfortunately, the way those other sources told the story was far more compelling than this book. It’s an interesting story, but the writing is so contrived it’s almost painful. Imagine someone writing a book based on the pseudo-medieval language style of the game. It’s fun in-game, because it’s intermittent. It gets old and clunky really fast in book form.

Three and a half stars. I already own the other two, so I’ll read them. I *do* want to see how the details play out. After that…I might just donate them to the library. And I’ll definitely check reviews before buying any other novelizations.

This is the first novel I'm reading since I was in high school. I've been playing a lot of Diablo III and I'm a huge fan of the Diablo-series in general so I decided to tryout The Sin War novels since they're the first ones chronologically.

I found the story really interesting since it takes place in a time period not seen in any of the games and long before the first Diablo game, thus there's a lot of backstory regarding the birth of the nephalem and the angels' and demons' roles in the creation of Sanctuary. You won't know most of the characters in the trilogy but there are still a few familiar faces and quite a few characters related to them which was really cool to read about. I instantly fell in love with the main characters and Knaak is doing an excellent job writing in detail about all the characters and places so that you really feel you're there. The beginning of Birthright, taking place in the small, cosy village called Seram, and the events panning out there was my favorite part and it really set a good tone for the rest of the trilogy.

A decent enough plot, but poorly written by Knaak. I know this is supposed to be light reading, for a juvenile audience, but having read many books from this author before, also inspired on Blizzard's games, I felt kinda disappointed. Will finish the trilogy because why the hell not, but wouldn't recommend anyone starting it. At least, like I said, the plot is somewhat interesting. Too bad characters are bland, predictable, there are no twists, and you pretty much figure everything out on the first 25 pages.