The novel starts with a squad of armed Orlesians entering the royal palace in Ferelden and demanding that the king or his general come with them on a suicide mission into the Deep Roads because they went there that one time. At least Julien was able to spark some emotion in people, and his relationship with Nicolas was far more believable than Fiona and Maric.Īpart from the characters, there are also significant problems with the plot and lore. But the rest… Genevieve is stupid, Fiona is annoying, Duncan doesn’t feel like Duncan, I constantly forgot Utha existed, and everyone else dies. And I feel no attachment to these characters, other than Maric, who I spent the previous novel getting to know. The characters don’t grow gradually over the course of the story, they rapidly change their minds, despite passionately throwing themselves down a particular path. There is no reason to get so many different perspectives if these perspectives don’t offer any useful development to the plot or characters. All of them, even Bregan, are simply along for the ride, blindly following Geneveive and the Architect until nearly three-quarters of the way through the book. This can be a good technique, but I understand it’s very difficult to execute well, and I feel like The Calling failed in this regard, especially considering the viewpoint characters’ lack of personal goals. Gaider narrates the story with a third-person limited perspective with multiple switching viewpoints (some of them completely unnecessary and counter-intuitive). Only Geneveive fits this role, but we never get her perspective, and she spends most of the story off to the side, while the narration drives us to pay more attention to Duncan, Maric, and Fiona (and Bregan, for some reason). Normally in storytelling, the protagonist is the character whose needs and desires drive the story. I’ll start with basic storytelling, since I was nearly halfway through reading John Truby’s Anatomy of Story prior to reading this. Now for the bad, and there is a lot of it.

And as always, Loghain remains the best-written character, though he sadly wasn’t present for most of the book.

For the first time, we’re granted a unique perspective of the mental effects of the darkspawn taint and what the Calling feels like, something Origins wasn’t able to accurately convey to players. Gaider managed to take advantage of a great opportunity that the tie-in novel offered, further detailing the experience of the Grey Warden in a way you couldn’t execute in the games. There are a few good points about The Calling, which I’ll start with. I haven’t been so angry reading a book since Lost Gate, and I’m forced to question how Gaider ever managed to make a living writing stories. After reading The Stolen Throne, I was hesitant to read David Gaider’s next Dragon Age tie-in, The Calling, evidently for good reason.

The Calling by David Gaider