The Infernal City: An Elder Scrolls Novel

Greg Keyes

Nov 2009 · The Elder Scrolls Book 1 · Sold by Del Rey

About this ebook

Based on the award-winning The Elder Scrolls, The Infernal City is the first of two exhilarating novels following events that continue the story from The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, named 2006 Game of the Year.

Four decades after the Oblivion Crisis, Tamriel is threatened anew by an ancient and all-consuming evil. It is Umbriel, a floating city that casts a terrifying shadow—for wherever it falls, people die and rise again.

And it is in Umbriel’s shadow that a great adventure begins, and a group of unlikely heroes meet. A legendary prince with a secret. A spy on the trail of a vast conspiracy. A mage obsessed with his desire for revenge. And Annaig, a young girl in whose hands the fate of Tamriel may rest . . . .

Ratings and reviews

While I believe that it is good to warn potential readers that they may not understand this book without having first played any of the Elder Scrolls games, to give this book a low rating simply based on that fact is simply not rational. If you are not familiar with the series of video games that this book is based upon, then do not read it. If you are familiar with The Elder Scrolls universe, there is probably nothing in this book that will confuse you. That said, I will rate and review this book with the perspective I just described. That said, I found the book fairly entertaining. The only serious flaws I see in it are 1) that it is not quite long enough, and 2) that it is strictly a two-part book. In other words, do not plan on buying a copy of this book if you don't want to buy the sequel as well. A few other minor flaws with the book are as follows: the characters (besides Prince Attrebus) are all a bit shallow, the plot can be a bit difficult to follow at times with the constantly changing narrative, and occasionally the lack of description can leave the reader with a rather vague picture of the action at hand. On top of these flaws, the story takes a quite a long time to build up into something interesting; in other words, the bigger picture will only start presenting itself about 200 pages into the story, and there are only 291 pages in the entire book. Nonetheless, there is quite a bit of fun to be had in the reading of this book. Fans of the series will appreciate the opportunity to witness new insights into some of the larger mysteries of The Elder Scrolls universe, such as the inner-workings of the kingdoms of Black Marsh and Elsweyr. In addition, the novel helps to provide an understanding of what happened during the 200 year time lapse between the latest game in the series, Skyrim, and the game before it; the character dialogue is entertaining at times; it is fun to watch Prince Attrebus develop as a character; and the plot, once it begins revealing itself, is pretty well detailed and rather intriguing to boot. In closing, I would like to restate the argument that you should not give this book a lower rating than normal simply because it is based on some pre-established video game lore. If you are a fan of the series, you will enjoy this book. If not, then there is nothing here that you would care to miss.

Given that i am an avid player and lover of the elder scrolls games, I had to try this book. It gave me alot of insight to what happened between oblivion and skyrim. Character development was done well and greg kept continuity with the games making the events here feel as if they fit well and could have happened. The ending is a massive cliff hanger making me want to hunt down and read the second book if only it was on play books.

Bought it but it didn't get placed in my library. Followed all support steps and got no results so i started reading from this actual page. Now it wants me to buy it again for $9 but when I try I get a message saying "order processing". That was 3 days ago with no changes. Update: Support canceled my order with a refund. I bought the book again and it's in my library. I'm only 50 pages in but it's turning out to be really good. I would like the second book so I don't have to buy a real copy to mismatch.

About the author

Born in Meridian, MS, in 1963, Greg Keyes spent his early years roaming the forests of his native state and the red rock cliffs of the Navajo Indian reservation in Arizona. He earned his B.A. in anthropology from Mississippi State University and a master's degree from the University of Georgia, where he did course work for a Ph.D. He lives in Savannah, GA, where, in addition to full-time writing, he enjoys cooking, fencing, the company of his family and friends and lazy Savannah nights. Greg is the author of The Waterborn, The Blackgod, the Babylon 5 Psi Corps trilogy, 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.