Blizzard Entertainment, $29.99, ISBN 978-1-945683-20-6
Media Tie-In, 2018

Book of Adria is released around the time when Blizzard Entertainment turned the Diablo franchise into a meme about mobile games, so don’t get too excited about its existence. It’s not a sign that there is another expansion or even Diablo 4 coming out soon, it’s likely that those guys forgot to publish this one until recently because they were too busy trying to decide which Overwatch character is the next gay or lesbian or genderqueer big thing.

Oh, and this one is not going to be of any use to folks who don’t have any interest in the Diablo video game lore, and if the first paragraph of this review weren’t already an indication, this review is also going to be gibberish to these same people.

This one is marked as a bestiary, and its gimmick is that it is supposedly penned by the great evil Adria herself. However, the articles about the monsters and what not (including the Prime Evils, their minions, and the angels too) are superficial to the point that these are just words to accompany the pretty artwork. While I don’t expect details to the degree of those found in a typical tabletop RPG bestiary, I feel somewhat cheated that the details here are so… shallow and flat. This one also details about the rituals used by Adria to bind the Prime and Lesser Evils into the Black Soulstone, again in a superficial manner that makes me wonder just how cheaply they are paying the authors. They certainly didn’t put much effort into the content, that’s for sure!

On the bright, one gets to know a little bit more about Adria, although given that she’s dead by the end of the most recent game, who cares really. The pages are made to look like old parchment, and the artwork style is nice to look at (it’s similar to that in the previous media tie-in Book titles), so in a way Book of Adria is a nice addition to my collection of video game coffee table hardcovers. I’ll look at it now and then, but there’s nothing to read between the overs. And that’s that – I can’t think of any other reason to buy this pretty but overpriced and unnecessary paperweight.

Now, who’s excited to play that upcoming Diablo game on the mobile phone?