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Demonsbane was the first book published set in the Diablo world. It was published on Halloween 2000, and it was part of the first e-book "revolution." Unfortunately, as history has shown, the market for e-books was quite small at the time, and so while Demonsbane was advertised for some months on Battle.net, the sales were in the hundreds, rather than the thousands, and it ended up being more or less a "lost gem." I am delighted beyond words that Demonsbane can now be enjoyed by the public as I had always hoped it would be.
Demonsbane is, of the entire collection, the story that is set earliest in the Diablo story line - it's set right after the defeat of the Warlord of Blood in the Sin War, and tells in part the story of Sarnakyle, the Vizjerei Lord who brought his people back to elemental magic. It also introduces Siggard, a character I am very, very fond of, and one of the little known but vital battles that kept the demonic powers from taking Sanctuary and using it as a base against the Angelic hosts.
Because it was the first piece of Diablo professional fiction (and my first book sale, for that matter), and because we really did expect e-books to be a lot bigger than they turned out to be, it felt like I had to set the tone for the series, and help establish Sanctuary not only as a living and breathing game world, but also as a living and breathing world in literature. So, I did a lot of world building using flavour quotes at the beginning of each chapter - in effect, I built up a body of literature written by people from the world of Sanctuary like Godfrey of Westmarch, Gesinius of Kehjistan, and even King Leoric himself. This was a bit of a necessity, as since Demonsbane was an e-book, it was limited to being only about a quarter of the size of one of the print books, and there wasn't a really good way to do massive world building otherwise. In the here and now, I hope those quotes are something that Diablo fans will be able to sink their teeth into, and imagine how the rest of the Lay of Arkaine might have gone, or what else King Leoric would have written about the art of war.
Has anyone here ever given these a read? I just might pick this up.
