The Stolen Throne – Usurper and Spy

I don’t know why I don’t do these more often. I used to review books and albums all the time so maybe I should get back into it for the sake of writing so here we go!

This is a little review of Dragon Age: The Stolen Throne one of the prequels to DA: Origins. My template for reviewing books differs from games and movies so this’ll be interesting after not doing it for a while.

The story focuses around Maric, son of the queen rebelling against the Orlesian king Meghren who currently sits on Ferelden’s throne. After the death of his mother, Maric meets his betrothed Rowan and an outlaw named Loghain Mac Tir who agree to help him in his aid to overthrow the current king.

I felt like this book started off as exciting once I realized who Maric was and remembered Loghain from the first game.

Loghain started off with a tragic childhood before he became like an advisor to Maric who was on the run for his life and didn’t know about his heritage at that time. I was really looking forward to see how this would go when these two characters came together, especially with Loghain since I knew from the game he was not the most compassionate person out there.

Then I was introduced to Severan, Meghren’s advisor who seemed to be assigned to send spies to track Maric’s conquest. I don’t know why, but he didn’t interest me at first until towards the end.

After the characters came together, I felt like the book dragged for a while. There was no dialogue for a while, just paragraph after paragraph of Maric and company battling Meghren’s forces and their progress. Then they were entering Gwaren which was connected to the Deep Roads. Then Maric becomes smitten with the elf woman Katriel but I was suspicious about her.

Basically, I feel like the story didn’t actually get interesting until the group had to venture into the Deep Roads. Maric fell in love with Katriel despite the fact that he was bethrothed to Rowan, and then Rowan began an affair with Loghain and later they had to battle giant spiders and darkspawn.

After that, a few more drags and I could truly feel how heartbroken Maric was when he learned Katriel was a spy for Meghren and he killed her out of anger over being betrayed, though she genuinely loved him.

Following the death of Severan, the book then cuts to where we see Maric’s son Cailan who continues to ask about how his father eventually overthrew Meghren. I was happy to see Cailan since I remembered him from the first game and watching him be brutally murdered by an ogre was disturbing. Therefore when I returned to Ostagar, I just had to take his body down and build a pyre for him.

Still, I was expecting the book to end with a final battle between Maric and Meghren, but that was not the case. Instead I got someone; a servant I think, describe the victory to Cailan that made me think it should of been better.

I feel this book didn’t live up to the hype of what I expected from the first Dragon Age novel I was to read, but nothing is perfect. I’m onto the next one, this one gets a B- from me.

👽Emily