The first volume felt like they simply organized the codex and, don't get me wrong, it was nice. I like when knowledge is neat and easy to access. But it still felt like a cheap way to capitalize on the games' success. It came short, especially when compared to other extended universe books. The World of Thedas, vol.2 is the exact opposite of its big brother.

Bringing more lore to the table, this volume also takes its art a lot more seriously, and it's nice to see the artists finally getting the respect they deserve. Thedas has more substance thanks to the space given to the concept art of landscapes, fashion styles, architecture, etc. Great additions are the painting styles from different cultures, and mentions of in-universe artists. Where the first volume made it look like the art and texts were scrambled together at the last minute, this one has obviously been crafted thoughtfully, with a clear final look in mind. It's still nowhere near A World of Ice and Fire's level of mixing art and lore, but it's way cooler than I thought it'd be.

Contrary to a lot of people, I feel like the excerpts from The Chant of Light were a smart addition. It gives material to the theory lovers among us, adds considerable chunks of lore that make the world feels tangible, and makes for very smooth transitions between the "sorted by game" sections. I've seen a lot of negative comments about these pages, but it's a detail that says a lot about the actual planning that went into this book (again, as opposed to vol. 1). They took this seriously, and it shows.

As someone who loves character-driven stories, it was amazing to get so many details about our beloved companions. I'm also impressed and appreciative of how they've dealt with the OCs. I like that Bioware has its own canon for the comics and books, but in a compendium it makes more sense to remain vague. Plus, it works in-universe too, since the technology doesn't allow for proper informations to be relayed all over Thedas. I'm sure that between the Shaperate and the return of the Eluvian network, scholars and future archeologists will be able to write the truth down at some point. But as of 9:45-9:46 (Tevinter Nights timeline), details about the game events being blurry for most people sounds about right.

All in all, I think that the extended-universe publications done while David Gaider was still working with Bioware felt like the DM of a tabletop RPG had tried to turn their notes and sessions into stories adapted to the litterature medium. Everything that has been published under Darrah, and especially Patrick Weekes' books/lore excerpts, have felt like a proper extended universe. The quality of the publications has skyrocketed, and I can only hope we get a volume 3 someday.

I found this one a LOT less enjoyable than the first world of Thedas book, for a lot of reasons.

1) massive chunks of the book cover the events of the game and the characters within - I found the rehashing’s of such to be a huge slog. most of the information was stuff you could find out by playing the GAME, with very few parts being new information - the two parts that stuck out to me were the backstory of the Hawke parents (LOVED and felt very real), and the fact that Merrill was determined to be a perfectly normal elf, no blood mage here! Otherwise it was very boring, except…

2) World of Thedas is written from an in-universe perspective, which normally works really well, but had me tearing out my hair here. There was SO much information that the writers quite simply SHOULD NOT KNOW! Are you telling me that Leliana consented to an interview about her abusive ex? Are you telling me that Fenris broadcast every detail of his past to the world? The amount of times I was like “THERE’S NO WAY YOU SHOULD KNOW THIS!!” made me so deeply frustrated.

3) It just wasn’t as fascinating or entertaining. I feel like it was a slog and I learned very little. When reading volume 1, I was CONSTANTLY sending pages to a friend, delighted over so many tidbits and pieces. I only did that a couple times with this book. Plus, it was published after Inquisition and thus incorporated its retcons and stuff, and I hate Inquisition. That didn’t help.

I might purchase volume 1 to have in the future, because it was lovely and fun, but I see no need to ever touch volume 2 again. It wasn’t worth the time I spent reading it.

This is a hell of a big book in several different senses, including regarding the size of it, and this might well be one of the reasons why it took me so long to finish reading it: it's a huge book. For it was a rather larger hardcover with lots and lots of text, it just wasn't practical to read. For several times I was wondering it it really was necessary for it to be so large and clumsy. The amount of text that this volume contains against the amount of images does make you wonder if the large hardcover format is really necessary. And while this book was a bit more character-centric than the previous one, it read really, REALLY slowly.

The parts of the book that talked specifically about the Hero of Ferelden, the Champion of Kirkwall and the Inquisitor were really fun to read, but before I got to that point, I had to read about 100 pages of Andraste's story retold, which did drag back the reading experience for me.

Still, for fans of the Dragon Age series, it may be an interesting reading choice.

I had a lot of fun with this, especially the illustrations. I like how it had quotes and letters like a "real" history book and I especially enjoyed the recipes section. This is a must have for fic writers who are in way too deep, such as yours truly. One thing I didn't see that I was hoping for is info about the Dalish/Elven patheon, even though the Andraste section is pretty extensive and we even learn about the Dwarven Paragons. With everything that happens in DAI involving the Dread Wolf and Mythal, more background on their beliefs would have been cool. (Maybe it's in Volume 1?)

RTC