Renaissance

Assassin's Creed, Book 1

By: Oliver Bowden

Narrated by: Gildart Jackson

Length: 12 hrs and 44 mins

Publisher's summary

Betrayed by the ruling families of Italy, Ezio Auditore embarks upon an epic quest for vengeance. To eradicate corruption and restore his family's honor, he will learn the art of the Assassins.

Along the way, Ezio will call upon the wisdom of such great minds as Leonardo da Vinci and Niccolò Machiavelli, knowing that survival is bound to the skills by which he must live. To his allies, he will become a force for change in his fight for freedom and justice. To his enemies, he will become a threat dedicated to the destruction of the tyrants abusing the people of Italy. So begins an epic story of power, revenge, and conspiracy.

©2010 Ubisoft Entertainment (P)2012 Tantor

its an amazing continuation of the games. excelle

the audio book is a great continuation of the game. its a nice recap for some one who hasnt played the gamea in years.

Entertaining mix of alt history, scifi and fantasy

a fun mix of historical characters, places and events, mixed with intrigue, action fantasy and historical sci-fi.

Great story, Great Narration.

Would you consider the audio edition of Renaissance to be better than the print version?

I don't own printed books.

What other book might you compare Renaissance to and why?

Sadly, I can't think of anything. Which is good. I think of this as unique in a way.

Which character ??? as performed by Gildart Jackson ??? was your favorite?

All of them are excellent.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

Anxious. Ode to no more credits!

Any additional comments?

This is a great adventure. The book is longer than I'm used too but the action is constant and driven. The action is always leading to something greater. The author thankfully drops all illusion of grandeur and moves from place to place with pertinent descriptions only. This is actually fantastic to me, I grow tired of authors who describe surroundings and laundry lists that bare no meaning to the characters overall actions or results. Overall thoughts are described in actions not long winded monologues. Fantastic!

The narrator is brilliant! I enjoyed all of his representations of characters and his ability to pronounce proper Italian names and places (granted I am not Italian and have never been to Italy) but his talent helped with the immersion process. I thoroughly enjoyed his work and will buy the other books in this series partly due to him.

The only negative I found and this could be nitpicking, is the mass of Italian places and random Italian words used in place of English. I only had one year of Italian in college and it didn't always help here. Also, there are so many places involved they should hand you a map of old Italy when you buy this book.

This was originally a video game. Excellent. Since I am blind I do not have the ability to enjoy it as such. However, this is a fantastic adventure story on it's own and I highly recommend it! I only wish they would make more books out of video game story lines, it beats listening to my friends playing them. Maybe they'lll do Bioshock next!

Made me replay the game

Listening to this after watching The Medici, I got so captivated by the story again, that I just had to get the Ezio collection for the PS4. Even though it's been years since I finished ACII, I was reliving the memories with this book. The reader does an amazing job.

Port?

Any additional comments?

I was hoping for a story that was meant to shine more light on the Assassins Creed universe, whether it was to focus more on the Brotherhood as it exists today compared to the Renaissance or to cover parts of Ezio's story that we didn't get in the games. Instead, we get a literary port of the game, with subtle tweaking. The narrator does a pretty good job, the accent is acceptable and the voices range enough to tell the difference between most characters. The story is still good, as great as it was in the game but it just wasn't what I really wanted. I have to give it a 4 star overall though, because I did buy and enjoy its sequels, complaints aside.

Awesome!

Well read! Loved the fact that Gildart knew the language! Such an awesome story and I can't wait to get started on the others.

Reading

Great story. Just starting to read the AC books. I will continue to do so

Ac renaissance

It’s a good book,and almost exactly mirrors the game and adds in info the game leaves out.

Better than expected for a licensed novel!

Working in a licensed universe can be difficult. However, Oliver Bowden has done a good job fleshing out and expanding on licensed characters. If you enjoyed the Assassin's Creed universe, then Bowden's work will make you love it more.

Slightly disappointed

I’ll start by saying that I am a huge fan of the Assassins Creed franchise. I have always loved the games, and in fact played Renaissance a couple of times. So needless to say I was stoked about this book. I am also an avid book lover. Sadly I do not have as much time as I would like to read, so Audible has become a great companion.

The performance was ok, a bit dry, but some inflection throughout the book helped. But my real issue with the book was how the storyline proceeded. Some parts of the book were pretty in depth, while others, were just skimmed over. There is also no real delineation of time throughout the story. Sometimes it says “a few days” then all of the sudden it’s years. It almost felt like there was an editorial change somewhere in the book as certain parts became more clear that were glossed over in the beginning.

I was really looking forward to this book and was very excited about it. There could have been some great parts that allowed us to understand the characters better and to really get into their minds. But all of that was lost and the author relied more on the dialogue from the game itself. Which I understand, but using the same dialogue from a video game in a book really takes away from the book. When key parts of the story were unraveling the things they were saying sounded so scripted it felt made up. People in those situations wouldn’t say what they said, and the interactions would be different.

All in all the book was ok. I think the author and the editors missed a huge opportunity to take this book from a video game and make it into a great novel. The Assassin Creed games always have a great storyline and if it could be properly transposed into a novel it would be amazing! But basically this book is just a walkthrough of the video game.