Scan barcode
Reviews
Desert Oath: The Official Prequel to Assassin's Creed Origins by Andrew Holmes, Oliver Bowden
lifeandtea's review against another edition
5.0
Review link: https://lifeandteablog.wordpress.com/2019/01/28/book-review-assassins-creed-origins-desert-oath-by-oliver-bowden/
Set in 70BCE in Egypt, a killer stalks the land in order to eradicate the last members and the bloodline of an ancient order called the Medjay. But in peaceful Siwa, the town’s protector leaves suddenly and his teenage son Bayek soon discovers his purpose and goes out to discover more about it and about the Medjay and his own destiny. This book is based around the Assassin’s Creed Origins game, and although I have never played it, I do enjoy the concept and books of Assassin’s Creed. I have read Renaissance before, and this is in theory the prequel to it, so I decided to start with this before attempting to complete the series (including rereading Renaissance). This book switches points of view a fair bit, one minute it is first person and we are reading it from the view of Bayek, the next it is in the third person and we’re somewhere else. I think this would annoy some people but I actually enjoyed it. I think that for this book it is very important to have the sections involving Bayek to be from his perspective as it enhances the story if we know what he’s going through and his thoughts and feelings on the entire thing. Yet, we wouldn’t understand the book and the story as well if it was only from his perspective. Having this third-person viewpoint when discussing the other characters in chapters where Bayek is not present helped us gather more understanding of why certain events occurred, we gathered more information about certain characters, and we knew about things that we wouldn’t have known about if the entire novel had been from Bayek’s perspective. I thought this book was really well-written, the plot was action-packed and just overall it was an enjoyable read, especially if you are a fan of the Assassin’s Creed series. One friend even told me that after he read Renaissance, he felt as if he understood the plot of the first game way better than he did through actually playing the game, and I think that says a lot about Oliver Bowden’s writing and how closely he would have worked with Ubisoft to produce these books. I am awful at Assassin’s Creed type games, so I tend to stick with the books and I am really glad they exist for each game, as I feel like I’m not missing out. I have no idea if this book in particular is actually relevant to the plot of Assassin’s Creed Origins, but either way it’s an interesting story to read maybe alongside the game, but it’s also an action-packed book to read even if you don’t play the games but are interested in the concepts. I will warn you that there is a lot of violence in these books, but I think that is to be expected. Overall, I loved this book, it kept my interest, I think it was well-written, it felt educational even though it’s based off of a video game and it was just a great book. Like I said before, if you are a fan of the Assassin’s Creed series of games then you’ll definitely be interested in giving these books a go, and I’d definitely recommend this one!
Set in 70BCE in Egypt, a killer stalks the land in order to eradicate the last members and the bloodline of an ancient order called the Medjay. But in peaceful Siwa, the town’s protector leaves suddenly and his teenage son Bayek soon discovers his purpose and goes out to discover more about it and about the Medjay and his own destiny. This book is based around the Assassin’s Creed Origins game, and although I have never played it, I do enjoy the concept and books of Assassin’s Creed. I have read Renaissance before, and this is in theory the prequel to it, so I decided to start with this before attempting to complete the series (including rereading Renaissance). This book switches points of view a fair bit, one minute it is first person and we are reading it from the view of Bayek, the next it is in the third person and we’re somewhere else. I think this would annoy some people but I actually enjoyed it. I think that for this book it is very important to have the sections involving Bayek to be from his perspective as it enhances the story if we know what he’s going through and his thoughts and feelings on the entire thing. Yet, we wouldn’t understand the book and the story as well if it was only from his perspective. Having this third-person viewpoint when discussing the other characters in chapters where Bayek is not present helped us gather more understanding of why certain events occurred, we gathered more information about certain characters, and we knew about things that we wouldn’t have known about if the entire novel had been from Bayek’s perspective. I thought this book was really well-written, the plot was action-packed and just overall it was an enjoyable read, especially if you are a fan of the Assassin’s Creed series. One friend even told me that after he read Renaissance, he felt as if he understood the plot of the first game way better than he did through actually playing the game, and I think that says a lot about Oliver Bowden’s writing and how closely he would have worked with Ubisoft to produce these books. I am awful at Assassin’s Creed type games, so I tend to stick with the books and I am really glad they exist for each game, as I feel like I’m not missing out. I have no idea if this book in particular is actually relevant to the plot of Assassin’s Creed Origins, but either way it’s an interesting story to read maybe alongside the game, but it’s also an action-packed book to read even if you don’t play the games but are interested in the concepts. I will warn you that there is a lot of violence in these books, but I think that is to be expected. Overall, I loved this book, it kept my interest, I think it was well-written, it felt educational even though it’s based off of a video game and it was just a great book. Like I said before, if you are a fan of the Assassin’s Creed series of games then you’ll definitely be interested in giving these books a go, and I’d definitely recommend this one!
elfeeza's review against another edition
2.0
We follow Bayek of Siwa in his journey to becoming the character he is in the game Assassin’s Creed Origins. So this is like an origins story for an origins story.
I did not like this book. I really enjoyed reading the other books in the series of the Assassin’s Creed novels by Oliver Bowden and the ones by Christie Golden but Desert Oath was hard to read. Not because it was long—the boon is only 378 pages and the words weren’t that small—or that there was an overflow of information. No. In fact it was how short and lacking in anything important and therefore choppy and sometimes too convenient how the events in the book happened and enfolded that made it painful to read. And it doesn’t help that the main protagonist is depicted as shallow, selfish and at times a little stupid. I get the feeling that Oliver Bowden was rushed to put out a book that compliments the game and he just wrote it for the sake of writing it. Very differently written comparef to the other Assassin’s Creed novels before this one.
I gave it 2 stars. Very disappointed :(
I did not like this book. I really enjoyed reading the other books in the series of the Assassin’s Creed novels by Oliver Bowden and the ones by Christie Golden but Desert Oath was hard to read. Not because it was long—the boon is only 378 pages and the words weren’t that small—or that there was an overflow of information. No. In fact it was how short and lacking in anything important and therefore choppy and sometimes too convenient how the events in the book happened and enfolded that made it painful to read. And it doesn’t help that the main protagonist is depicted as shallow, selfish and at times a little stupid. I get the feeling that Oliver Bowden was rushed to put out a book that compliments the game and he just wrote it for the sake of writing it. Very differently written comparef to the other Assassin’s Creed novels before this one.
I gave it 2 stars. Very disappointed :(
smol_charlie's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
2.5
voidslantern's review
adventurous
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
More...