The Elder Scrolls Novels Announced

[General Crespin]

Press release here. [http://www.bethsoft.com/eng/news/pressrelease_042709-3.html]

Content:

BETHESDA SOFTWORKS AND DEL REY BOOKS ANNOUNCE NOVELS
BASED ON THE ELDER SCROLLS VIDEO GAME SERIES

Rockville, MD ? April 27, 2009 ? Bethesda Softworks®, a ZeniMax® Media company, and Del Rey, an imprint of Ballantine Books at the Random House Publishing Group, are pleased to announce that Del Rey Books will publish two novels based on Bethesda Softworks' award-winning, high-fantasy video game series, The Elder Scrolls®. The best-selling game series is known for giving the player the ability to choose how their story will play out and unfold, and for the incredible amount of lore and depth found in these rich game worlds.

Penned by New York Times bestselling author Greg Keyes, the novels will be all-new, original stories based in The Elder Scrolls universe. The first novel ? The Infernal City ? is set to be published in Fall 2009. Among Keyes' prior works are the Age of Unreason tetrology (for which he won the prestigious "Le Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire" award), and three New York Times bestselling Star Wars novels in the New Jedi Order series.

"We've been big fans of Greg's work for a long time, and we're thrilled he agreed to bring his talents to The Elder Scrolls," said Pete Hines, vice president of public relations and marketing for Bethesda Softworks. "We see these books as a natural extension of the franchise and think fans will love the stories and characters Greg has created."

The Infernal City is set after the events of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion®, the latest game in the video game series, and finds the citizens of Tamriel once again facing an uncertain future. Floating high above the land is a strange and mysterious city that is casting a horrifying shadow ? wherever it falls, people die and rise again as undead. It is up to an unlikely duo ? a seventeen-year-old girl named Annaig and the Emperor's young son, Prince Attrebus ? to rescue the kingdom from doom. Annaig and Attrebus' quest will take them through the Elder Scrolls universe and their adventure is sure to add to the series' already magnificent mythology.

I like Greg Keyes' NJO novels, so even though the plot doesn't sound so hot I'll reserve my final judgement until I read this first book.

I hope they grounded him in the lore, or what's left of it..

 

[The_Prophet]

Sounds nice.

 

[Jupsto]

cool. TES is pretty generic high fantasy but if its well written it will be enjoyable, like eragon was. never heard of this writer but he sounds pretty decent. I'd rather TES 5 than a book though.

 

[The Shade]

Mmm...generic fantasy novel. You can never have too many of those.

 

[About To Crash]

I don't know. I'm often put off by game worlds used for a book setting. If we were to take a book setting into the game world, then that's different. A game world is already made, visually. A world specific to a novel is open to the interpretation of the readers, while a game world has a very specific image.
My overall point is that if I read a book, I like to establish my own sense of the world, but if I play a game based in that world, or I see the movie version, it colours my imagining of the book. So, I'm saying I'm not enthusiastic about the idea of an Elder Scrolls book series.

 

[Anachronism]

Considering the quality of Oblivion's main story, and the quality of novels based on games as a whole, I don't have high hopes for these. Not that I'll read them anyway, but it's always nice to point out that they'll be crap in advance so that I can say "I told you so" later.

cool. TES is pretty generic high fantasy but if its well written it will be enjoyable, like eragon was.

You liked Eragon? Are you feeling ok?

 

[Pandalisk]

Have i died and gone to fantasy heaven?

 

[johnman]

"As i widly hacked at the bandit who had somehow accquired a full set of ebony armour and an elven sword, i noticed my blade skill leveled by another point. Distracted by this, the bandit managed to land a solid blow across my temple, my life only saved by my enchanted helm "PRoteCSHun". I quickly spammed my weak healing spell and reassumed the fight."

An elder scrolls book? No thanks.

 

[Flying Pilgrim]

Sounds very Generic,but might as well give it a shot you can never judge a book by it's cover.Wait a second did'nt all of the Emperors sons die?

 

[Kiutu]

cool. TES is pretty generic high fantasy but if its well written it will be enjoyable, like eragon was. never heard of this writer but he sounds pretty decent. I'd rather TES 5 than a book though.

Oblivion was genericy, but you must have not known of Morrowind.

Anyways, I know I will be getting and reading both. Though, I hope the second is a darker novel than this first one sounds. TES has a skill of having stories with dark twists that I love reading in-game, but those are only a few pages long, small pages too.

 

[The Infamous Scamola]

Milk the money cow Bethesda, milk the money cow.

 

[Bibliomancer]

Sounds very Generic,but might as well give it a shot you can never judge a book by it's cover.Wait a second did'nt all of the Emperors sons die?

It takes place after Oblivion, so they probably had an emperor between the time the game ended and the book. Looking forward to it.

 

[goater24]

That has the faint whiff of excellence to it! I shall try and follow this.

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

Well, time for me to learn to read books again. I'm used to reading off of screens, so paper will be new to me.