Fable: Blood Ties and Fable and The Balverine Order

Hello cats and kittens and welcome to the first ever Sidewinder Reviews.  For this session we are going to focus on the Fable tie-in novels.  With only two currently to its name, it’s a really easy series cut through.  So upgrade your weapons and get your health potions ready, and let’s dig in!

Some might wonder why I’m lumping these particular books together.  Both are written about the same fictional universe, that of the Fable games which feature predominantly in the land of Albion, and add, in their own way, to the general mythos of the games themselves.  Also both were written by Peter David, so they have a kind of continuity within themselves.

 

            The Balverine Order came out first, and is set up as a bridge story between Fable II and Fable III, offering us our first look at the new regions.  One of my problems with Fable III, and as it turned out was a similar problem I had with Fable II is that while we have the basic locations still in place, some of the out lying areas are gone.  There are regions featured in Fable that never made it into Fable II, and likewise with Fable II having regions that we never see or hear from again in Fable III.  So the Balverine Order offers us new regions that we will doubtlessly never hear from again come Fable IV.

Now I’m a bit more forgiving of this between Fable and Fable II because several hundred years have passed between the two points.  It’s completely believable that some locations would have been lost to time.  Oakfield, for instance, which featured prominently in Fable is all but forgotten in Fable II, but they bothered to explain that.  Where the heck is Bloodstone Island in Fable III?  It’s only been fifty years between the two stories so there should be some trace of it.  Did the hero king just wipe it off the face of Albion in some early campaign as ruler?  Did the pirate infested land mass just finally implode under its own overwhelming sense of debauchery?  Did the monsters of Fable get together and tear it apart?  Or is it still there doing its thing?  We never find out and that, to me, is frustrating.  It’s not like it was a one off local where you completed one or two quests and then never went back.  It was the home of a central character, which shows up in the next game, and we never hear from it.  But that has nothing to do with the book and more to do with my own rants.

Back to the Balverine Order.  Our story follows Thomas and James, boyhood friends and, more directly, master and manservant, as they trek across Albion in search of the Balverine what killed Thomas’ brother.  Along the way they run across one Quentin Locke, run afoul of several locations that are featured in Fable III, come across some interesting weapons, and uncover a secret society and conspiracy.  The story itself is told from the point of view of an unnamed narrator as he relates the story to an unnamed king of an unnamed country.

For as much impact as the book has on the game, they might as well have not named any of the characters.  Seriously, Thomas and James are never addressed or touched on in Fable III, and the closest you get to Quentin Locke in the game is a side character named Ransom Locke, a detective of sorts who may or may not be related to Quentin.  We don’t know, and frankly after the fact, we end up not caring.  For all the impact the characters and story have on the game itself, you could have summed it all up with a travel guide pamphlet stating “Come See Enchanted Albion!”

Now one selling point for the book is the unlockable weapon code you get with the book.  I’ll touch more on that in a bit.

            Then there is Blood Ties.  We can assume that, by this point, if you are bothering to read this review, you’ve played Fable III.  If you haven’t, I won’t spoil any of the story notes for that game save to introduce some the characters that star in this book, also by Peter David.  This takes place after the events of Fable III and features some side characters from that game in starring roles; namely Ben Finn and Bowerstone Resistance leader Page.  Here we get to know these characters a bit better.  Well, we get to know Ben Finn better, since the book is narrated by him thus giving us unbridled access to his train of thought.  We also get a sidekick character by way of a gnome.  Yes, a gnome.  If you’ve played through the Fable III, you likely ran across a few of these foul tempered miscreants and have blown them back to Brightwall, which is apparently their idea of Hell.

The plot of the book is pretty predictable, but it’s the character interaction that is really entertaining.  The dialog is pretty original, especially between Ben Finn and the gnome, and Reaver, who features prominently, is always entertaining.  Reaver, if you’ll recall, became quite the breakout character from Fable II and was one of two characters to cross from that game into Fable III (so far the only character to feature in all three games has been Theresa).  Reaver is still the prominent businessman he’s been in the game and has a huge role to play as antagonist of this story.  So what can I say?  Plot threads are rewarded, characters are portrayed accurately, and, while the plot is straight forward with few twists, it’s still an entertaining read.

It really feels that Peter David found his Fable groove when he worked on this book, and the overall narrative feels a lot more improved over the Balverine Order.  That book felt more like a market piece rather than an intended narrative and wasn’t intended to add anything to the overall story of Fable other than a brief introduction to new locations.  Blood Ties is more of an expansion of the characters we’ve already met and their views of how things unfolded after the events of Fable III.  That is one thing I really liked about Blood Ties, that it acknowledged that stuff happened in Fable III and that it left an impact with the characters you, the player, ran across during the course of your game.  Ben Finn makes repeated references to fighting along side your character, and Page regularly comments on the state you left Albion in after you took the throne.  It’s the fact that, assuming you’ve played the game, that they are referring to events you brought about and working along side you that makes you feel like you have some effect in this story.  They discuss how working with you affected them emotionally. 

That said; I was skeptical when I walked into this book.  It was told from the point of view of a character I cared nothing for, involved him interacting with a character that I cared nothing about, and featured prominently one of the more annoying side quests of Fable III (gnomes).  I was pleasantly surprised by the outcome.  The narrative was engaging, the plot was well thought out, and for the most part the characters themselves were fun to read about.

For the most part.  There are two that I have to say felt a little flat to me.  First there is Droogan, some non-descript warlord who serves as antagonist alongside Reaver.  He is bland and cookie cutter, and that may have been the point.  He wasn’t meant to be anything really special and so he wasn’t.  Page, on the other hand, should have been given some more depth.  Instead we get a rough back story for her that kinda/sorta explains her motivations, but still, I felt she could have been given a bit more depth.  Part of the appeal of game tie-in novels is to add depth beyond the game and really I didn’t feel that happened for Page.  We got that with the gnome, with Ben Finn, and even to an extent with Reaver, but not with Page.

            Downloadable content: Remember how I said I would come back to the downloadable weapon?  Well, here we are.  With the Balverine Order, you get a scratch off that gives you a unique code to unlock the Sharbourne Sword, which is about the only salvageable thing for me in this book.  Alright, I might be a bit harsher than I need to be for this one, the story wasn’t bad, the characters weren’t horrible and the plot flow, well, flowed.  But I have to look at how the books tie in with the overall game and frankly Balverine Order offered nothing to the game itself outside of a nice weapon.  And to be fair, the sword is nice.

Now Blood Ties, while it offered a lot of interaction wit the game, offered a relatively lame download.  It’s a dye pack.  You get…extra dyes to change up the look of your character.  When I saw that I was of the “Um…what?” crowd.  But I guess it’s a fair enough exchange.  You don’t get a cool weapon, but you get a good book.

So what can you do?  I mean, you can pick up Balverine Order and enjoy a decent enough story and get a nice weapon for your character, and you can pick up Blood Ties and get a good story and a dye pack.