Diablo lore books.

[satheron]

With diablo 3 coming, and being a huge long time fan, and player of both diablo 2, and diablo. I've recently become interested in more of the back story..

So I went to Barnes n Noble, only to find tons of books with two different Authors on diablo.

My question is with the reading, where should I start,and what order should I go in reading the books?

The Sin war trilogy? Others?


any suggestions and advice is welcomed, and thanks in advance.

[Drytchnath]

The Sin War trilogy actually gives a lot of info on the lore and backstory of Sanctuary. Its main shortcoming lies in the fact that the main character, Uldyssian, is extremely unlikeable and down-right irritating most of the time. He gets better closer to the end of the trilogy, but not by much. There's also rampant editing errors and a couple of lines that were just plain awkward to read (mostly in the 1st book).
I recently read the Black Road, which wasn't bad, it just took a long time to get anything done, it was much better written than the Sin War books.
My favorite Diablo novel is the Warlord of Blood (is that the title? Can't find my copy...) which deals with Bartuc's legendary armor and gives insights into some characters and locales from D2. It has a nice blend of action/story, and the characters are pretty nicely fleshed out.
Theres another book called Moon of the Spider or something like that, havent read it but I heard it wasnt too shabby.

Does this help?

[Cyborgasm]

Sin War Trilogy
Legacy of Blood
The Black Road
The Kingdom of Shadow
Demonsbane
Moon of the Spider

[Sylvanite]

Sadly, the writing in most of the books is absolute garbage if you are looking for anything other than cheesey pulp-style fantasy.

I read Legacy of Blood....it was alright, but hard to get into. Moon of the Spider was actually pretty decent, though, once again, the writing was absolute fantasy cliche at its finest. The main strength is that the protagonist is actually really likable and you will genuinely root for him. That does take some skill as a writer, so props on that is deserved.

I also bought all the books once D3 was announced, but I haven't been able to get into most of them. I shall force myself eventually to read all of them before D3 comes out, but I think that gives me about another 4 years to do so :coffee:

[KappaGiBi]

Sadly, the writing in most of the books is absolute garbage if you are looking for anything other than cheesey pulp-style fantasy.

I read Legacy of Blood....it was alright, but hard to get into. Moon of the Spider was actually pretty decent, though, once again, the writing was absolute fantasy cliche at its finest. The main strength is that the protagonist is actually really likable and you will genuinely root for him. That does take some skill as a writer, so props on that is deserved.

I also bought all the books once D3 was announced, but I haven't been able to get into most of them. I shall force myself eventually to read all of them before D3 comes out, but I think that gives me about another 4 years to do so :coffee:


QFT. With the exception that I dived head first on the books and finished 'em all in around a month. They are a must for lore interested fans, wasted money for the other kind of players. Just read them without looking for a new Tolkien or whatnot and you'll be fine. Especially with The Kingdom of Shadows / Moon of the Spider main protagonist, he's bad-*** :D, casts a completely new light on Necromancers ;)

[Kennoth]

I plan on buying one of those these days

[satheron]

thanks for the tips I started reading the Sin war trilogy, I'm only about 30 page in, and I'm enjoying it so far.


Thanks again guys.

[AcidReign]

The Sin War trilogy gets pretty epic in the third book. It's a great read.

[Flux]

Sadly, the writing in most of the books is absolute garbage if you are looking for anything other than cheesey pulp-style fantasy.

I read Legacy of Blood....it was alright, but hard to get into.

That's the only one I've read entirely, after they gave out free copies of it at E3 in 2001 (Bill Roper actually handed me mine) and it was so bad I proceeded to never mention it on the site in any form. I was going to review it; I'd recently reviewed Garwulf's novella, Demonsbane (serviceable, if rather one-note), but I decided to say nothing about the first diablo novel rather than post a dishonest review, or piss people at blizzard off by saying what I actually thought.

It was very mediocre, gory fantasy writing, kind of sub-Salvatore, but the story was competely lame, and had almost nothing to do with Diablo. I forget who wrote it and can't be bothered to check, Knaak or Odom, but I'm quite sure it was an old story the guy had lying around and dusted off and retooled to turn it into "Diablo" fiction. The main plot was about a possessed suit of armor that some hapless warrior put on and got marched across half the world, and there was some ridiculous subplot about another char getting stuck in a magical tree, and then a huge sea monster attacking a boat. All elements that were just not connected at all to the Diablo mythology.

I could deal with the crappy writing; that's pretty much expected in these author-for-hire fantasy video game properties, but the story being so lame, and so unconnected to the game, ruined it for me.

Happily, reviews of more recent Diablo novels have been better, so at some point I'll try to find and read the rest.

[KappaGiBi]

Happily, reviews of more recent Diablo novels have been better, so at some point I'll try to find and read the rest.


I don't think (but that could be just me) that there's any improvement in the other novels for what concerns sheer quality. They are, by all means, mediocre books. As I said, I really think they should be read by a lore savvy player rather than a "normal" player or, god forbid, someone who's looking for a good read and is totally oblivious to Diablo lore :D. Especially The Sin War trilogy, since Blizzard considers it canon for what concerns D3 plot.

[Medievaldragon]

I recommend to get the Diablo Archive. It contains four reprinted Diablo books
- Diablo: Demonsbane
- Diablo: The Kingdom of Shadow
- Diablo: Legacy of Blood
- Diablo: The Black Road

The Kingdom of Shadow, I would say has some stuff you would want to read about in preparation for Diablo 3. As you may have heard, the big building on the mountain shown in the cinematic released on WWI 2008 is the lost city of Ureh. It is located within the jungles where the Necromancers live. Kingdom of Shadows deals with the Ruins of Ureh and Zayl the Necromancer. Good read.

[Apocalypse]

is this site going to have the lore from the books added to the wiki or anything? i notice the ingame lore has been going up and thats great for a refresh but what about the lore from the books? i am sure alot of that has been missed by many who visit this site, me being one of them.

[Bad Ash]

I think that is what a main post on the front page was talking about apoc. People who have or know info about the Lore to feel free to add/update any of the Wiki. I was never interested in these books, but for some reason am defintely in the mood now even though these posts havent been "omfg go buy now" haha.

[Apocalypse]

yeah, i was gonna get the books til i heard they were not that good. really i just want to know the lore, the story i may have missed that will play a part in d3

[Brother Laz]

If you want a decent book - Kingdom of Shadow is the only one worth reading. It's no Tolkien but it does convey the Diablo atmosphere pretty well, especially when half of the party gets eaten by the jungle before they even get to Ureh, and the fate of Ureh itself.

If you want lore - the Sin War trilogy has a lot of it, though it seems to turn the actual game lore on its head. (Spoiler: the Heavens wanted to destroy Sanctuary. Twice. Also, the Worldstone is evil) The story itself isn't worth it because nothing really happens other than the protagonist's rampage for three straight books.

......

Avoid the others. I read them all except Moon of the Spider (no, I'm not interested in Lloth and spider demons are not Diablo). They have little to do with Diablo, and when they do occasionally intersect with the Diablo world, they butcher it. Legacy of Blood has the Arcane Sanctuary... only it's underground tunnels and hallways. Doh.

......

The Sin War summary: the world was created by angel Inarius and demon Lilith who were both tired of the Eternal War to serve as their refuge, or Sanctuary. Inarius wanted humanity to serve him, but because humanity was the spawn of an angel and demon they could be as powerful as both combined. Enter the Worldstone, which served both to keep Sanctuary invisible for the heavens and hells and to subdue humanity's otherworldly powers as nephalem, children of angels and demons.

When the books start, Inarius is at the helm of his own Cathedral of Light as 'the Prophet' and the other important religion is the Triune, led by the Primus (oh yeah, it's Lucion) who serve Mefis, Dialon and Bala, respectively the god of love and other such inversions.

Lilith, who was out of the game for whatever reason I forgot, tried to raise an army by causing some humans - notably farmer Uldyssian - to rediscover their ancient powers. Uldyssian goes prophet, emerges from hometown Seram and assembles a legion of followers - the edyrem - who proceed to attack first the Triune and then the Cathedral. Of course Uldyssian discovers about Lilith and kills her. He also kills his supposed nemesis, Triune priest Malic. Three times. Anyway, Uldyssian's rampage stretches across three books, and by the time they get to the Cathedral they've gone super saiyan and can do anything. They also fight off a Vizjerei in passing.

Inarius proceeds to nearly kill them, but they defeat him anyway. In the meantime, however, heaven and hell have discovered Sanctuary despite the best efforts of the newfound friends of Mendeln, one of Uldyssian's partners. The guy apparently was called by Trang-Oul and his nephalem friend Rathma from the plane of the void, because heaven and hell were moving in to stumble upon Sanctuary and Trang-Oul is the guardian of Sanctuary and wanted to keep them out. Trang-Oul, by the way, looks like a dragon made of stars. I'm not sure how Mendeln was supposed to be useful to them.

Anyway, Uldyssian easily kills Inarius, then the angels and demons invade. The angels were there to destroy this 'taint on creation', the demons to burn it to the ground. Amazingly our edyrem actually stand their ground and kill a lot of angels (!) until Uldyssian goes Akira and explodes. Time freezes and the rest of the party end up in heaven where the Angiris council decides on the fate of Sanctuary. Malthael and Imperius support pre-emptive destruction, Auriel and Etherael support allowing humanity to develop in case something good comes out of it. The vote is decided by Tyrael, who was a bad guy all along (doing things like reviving Uldyssian's ranger partner Achillios as a zombie to assassinate Uldyssian) but was so moved by Uldyssian's Heroic Sacrifice™ of blowing himself up to keep his out of control powers from blowing up everyone else. (As opposed to the heroic sacrifice of a thousand other red shirt edyrem, I suppose) This taught him that humanity has a heart and should be saved and allowed to exist and eventually 'make their own choice' (read: fight for Heaven, otherwise kaboom).

Angels sign a blood pact with Mephisto to leave Sanctuary alone. (Yeah, he sure kept his side of the deal) Everyone magically forgets the destruction. End of story.

Unsolved threads: Worldstone still exists, humanity goes back to being suckers again and getting owned by demonity.

[Flux]

is this site going to have the lore from the books added to the wiki or anything? i notice the ingame lore has been going up and thats great for a refresh but what about the lore from the books? i am sure alot of that has been missed by many who visit this site, me being one of them.

that's the plan. MD is pretty good on lore, and Leord is into it too. Plus he's reading the books and is going to be putting info from and about them into the wiki.

I should get through them myself: I read an hour or so at the gym most nights, and have gone through a bunch of crappy fantasy in recent weeks. I could at least read fantasy that would assist my with my "job" while I'm at it...

[Apocalypse]

i guess i am just not the reading type, now if they made a movie i would be all over it (even though it would be ruined like doom and the million other crap vid game movies). anyway i appriciate everyones work in the wiki, its been great so far and with all the lore up i will spend plenty of time there

[Leord]

Brother Laz, I took the liberty of adding your synopsis to the Sin War Trilogy wiki article. If you could help me with the names of the three books at the top, and perhaps split the synopsis over the three books, I would be extremely happy =)

If anyone else wants to write a synopsis for the novels, they are more than free to do so. Same thing goes for the other Novels.