What are the books like?

@draxynnic.3719 @Konig Des Todes.2086 @ anyone who has read the books

Its easier to conflate mechanics and lore when one hasn't read the books. Besides a few interviews and excerpts, most information comes from the game and its promotional materials. It is a filtered perspective that can often be logically untangled, but sometimes not. This one-sided view also influences one's interaction with the living story. Unfortunately, the books are gone from libraries, and their reviews are not stellar. Since I would never advocate pirating from a company on their official forum, I'd like the opinion of those who have read the novels before I buy. And if they are worthless, I'd like to get the lore without reading them.

1. Do you have a favourite?
2. Does the worldbuilding present explanations for in-game mechanics?
3. Does the worldbuilding provide rules for the setting?
4. Are there critically unresolved plots that must be addressed or retconned by the living story?
5. Are there unnecessary plots that should be addressed or retconned by the living story because you like or hate them?
6. Who is the best character, who is the worst?
7. How does the writing compare to the living story?
8. Are they worth buying?

Edit: fixed numbers and rephrased question 3.

Edge of Destiny is the weakest in terms of writing, but is packed with action and lore. It is pretty important background reading for the game and sets up a lot of characters, most of which are better portrayed than in game. It also is the main set up for the entire dungeon story arc in the core game. Compl,ete with battles against lieutenants of Elder Dragons and charts the rise of Kralkatorrik and the creation of the brand, to his near demise as explained in PoF - its fun to read despite the basic writing.

Ghosts of Ascalon is the best written and focuses a decent amount of lore around Ascalon, the foefire and the charr/human conflict. The characters are all excellent, including the indiana jones style lead in Dougal Keane. Good, old fashioned adventure stuff.

Sea of Sorrows sits somewhere in between. It has a decent enough story, starting with the rise of Zhaitan and going on to include the founding of LA as it was in GW2. It has some great support cast, some nice throwbacks to gw1 and the single blandest and uniteresting main character in the entire series in Cobiah Marriner. Frankly whilst it is a decent idea for a story, to me it was just dull and plodding in a lot of places. Where it redeemed itself was seeing all the places in the book via the marriner achievement which was great fun to find (this was in old la when things correlated better). A lot of people really liked it though, im just not one of them.

Id say they are all worth reading, but edge of destiny and ghosts of ascalon would be the ones to go to first. They are better than the living story, but that is because they are well contained with themselves and the living story is a different medium, which has suffered from inconsistent styles and loose and rushed plot threads.

That doesnt address all your questions since i read them 5-6 years ago and im not good at retaining detail in books due to how many i have to try and plough through

Randulf nailed the summaries. Edge of Destiny, besides having the most simplistic writing and plot structure in general, is also the only one that wasn't at least co-authored by one of Anet's employees, and it shows. It also doesn't help that King was working with descriptions that underwent a lot of changes before the game was released which also threw details off- the book has Rata Sum on the ground, for instance. It does have the most ties to the game's main story arc, but honestly, unless you're invested in the characters in Destiny's Edge (who were written a lot better than they were in game, the book's strongest point), I'd recommend skipping this one.

Sea of Sorrows depends on what you're looking for out of it. It's easily the richest in detail and in making Tyria feel like an actual world, but that density has a way of burying the plot and the pacing. Combined with the structure- four acts, separated by several years a piece, each mostly self-contained and with a lot of important things happening off-screen that are alluded to but never explained- and it's easy to lose track of the main plot or feel uninvested in it. Cobiah somehow manages to go through no character growth whatsoever after the first two chapters, despite the passage of 439 pages and 37 years, and while the other characters are generally better written, the dialogue between them still feels fairly forced and faked. If you're looking to immerse yourself in the setting, pick it up; if you want a good story, probably give it a pass too.

Ghosts of Ascalon is, hands down, my favorite. Well written, well paced, with solid characters and an amazing introduction to Tyria as a setting. The flavour of the different races is more strongly depicted here than it has been anywhere else in the franchise, despite focusing largely on human affairs. The only downside is that it was written as an introduction. As someone who's been active in the lore community, you're probably going to be reading through a lot of exposition dumps on things you already know about- well-written exposition dumps, that don't take you out of the scene and that accentuate the character interactions, but things you already know nonetheless.

2. Hardly ever? It mostly ignores mechanics- Logan is a guardian who wears leather armor for the first half of EoD, and waypoints and the downed state are never mentioned at all- but for the most part, the various spells and things are recognizable as skills from in-game. (Although there is a pretty sweet point in GoA where a necromancer summons a swarm of living rats.)

3. Not sure what you mean by this. Mechanics are, by definition, part of a game- how could you have some in the books that aren't in the game? Unless you mean rules for how the setting works, in which case yes, but they vary from book to book. For instance, SoS establishes that spellcasting requires a weapon-focus, and spells in GoA have an incantation attached, but in EoD Zojja can cast freely without a focus or any incanting.

4. Besides the entire charr-human truce, no. It is irking to know that Ebonhawke had its walls torn down and was overrun by Branded five years before the start of the game and that somehow left almost no mark, or that Lion's Arch signed a treaty with Kryta promising to aid them against the centaurs but has a peace agreement with the centaurs now, but that's just EoD feeling out of touch with the world. It's not really the same thing.

5. Of course. Almorra's history, Livia and the Scepter, the ogre migration into Ascalon, the Claw of the Khan-Ur, the Golem's Eye, what Blimm did to earn himself a Krytan tomb, Gullik's great deeds.... (and yes, most of those are from GoA. Bite me.)

6. Best... probably Snaff, in EoD. Worst, Cobiah, SoS.

7. Much better, even for EoD. Of course it is- these are novels.

I've only read Ghosts of Ascalon. It as filler for time on an overseas flight. It wasn't that good a read.

Ghosts of Ascalon was a bit topheavy with the lore and "history lessons" at times, but I agree it is the best one. I enjoyed it very much. I really liked Killeen the Sylvari, showing they are a fairly alien species to Tyria. I also think this was the first appearance of a Sylvari outside of the early teaser trailers. Really disliked Gullik Oddson (the Norn) as he enforces the big-equals-dumb trope which I hate.One plotthread that has yet to be resolved in the game is the negotiations between the charr legions and Ebonhawke/Queen Jenna, as seen in Field of Ruins.

Edge of Destiny is easy to digest with decent action and good characters. Some of the highlights for me that are somewhat important to the game are the forming of Destiny's Edge in LA, the meeting of Glint, the calamitous awakening of Kralkatorrik, and the disbanding of Destiny's Edge.If they were to make an anime adaption of GW2, Edge of Destiny would be my pick for the plot.

Haven't read Sea of Sorrows, so can't comment on it.

IMHO, The novels are good, but don't expect it to be an epic read like Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones and such. Basically take it for what it is and don't set expectations too high.

It's been a while since I read them, so I'm not sure how well I can answer those questions, but they are worth buying

If your're only going to read one, read Edge of Destiny. While it's not a great book from a literary view, it sheds important light on the current state of Destiny's Edge (at least in the personal story). I didn't read it until I was well into the game, but after reading it I played through the personal story again and it made the story more substantial.

@"Aaron Ansari.1604" said:

3. Not sure what you mean by this. Mechanics are, by definition, part of a game- how could you have some in the books that aren't in the game? Unless you mean rules for how the setting works, in which case yes, but they vary from book to book. For instance, SoS establishes that spellcasting requires a weapon-focus, and spells in GoA have an incantation attached, but in EoD Zojja can cast freely without a focus or any incanting.

That's is what I meant. I blanked on the word "setting" for whatever reason. Question 3 has been rewritten..

What is the chronological ordering of the books you mentioned? All of those established rules are incorporated by the game as the weapon or utility paradigm for spellcasting.

@Daniel Handler.4816 said:

@"Aaron Ansari.1604" said:

3. Not sure what you mean by this. Mechanics are, by definition, part of a game- how could you have some in the books that aren't in the game? Unless you mean rules for how the
   setting
   works, in which case yes, but they vary from book to book. For instance, SoS establishes that spellcasting requires a weapon-focus, and spells in GoA have an incantation attached, but in EoD Zojja can cast freely without a focus or any incanting.

Sea of Sorrows (starts a bit over a century prior to GW2 , but covers a couple of generations if memory serves)Edge of Destiny (6 years prior to GW2)Ghosts of Ascalon (1 year prior to GW2)

@Randulf.7614 said:

@Daniel Handler.4816 said:

@"Aaron Ansari.1604" said:

3. Not sure what you mean by this. Mechanics are, by definition, part of a game- how could you have some in the books that aren't in the game? Unless you mean rules for how the
   setting
   works, in which case yes, but they vary from book to book. For instance, SoS establishes that spellcasting requires a weapon-focus, and spells in GoA have an incantation attached, but in EoD Zojja can cast freely without a focus or any incanting.

Yep. 1219-1256 A.E., 106-69 years before the start of the game.

Sea of Sorrows is more slow and hard to read, but, IMO, is the best by far. It deserves a spot next to The Lord of the Rings in my bookshelf.Second is Ghost of Ascalon, which introduce in good way the novelty races and current situation in Tyria just before the game begin. The characters relationships are good enough to justify the read.Edge of Destiny is wacky as hell, but fun and spectacular and extremely fast paced, like a Michael Bay fantasy book. It connects well with the tone of the game itself, and the lore is very relevant in the short term.

@Aaron Ansari.1604 said:

@Randulf.7614 said:

@Daniel Handler.4816 said:

@Aaron Ansari.1604 said:

3. Not sure what you mean by this. Mechanics are, by definition, part of a game- how could you have some in the books that aren't in the game? Unless you mean rules for how the
   setting
   works, in which case yes, but they vary from book to book. For instance, SoS establishes that spellcasting requires a weapon-focus, and spells in GoA have an incantation attached, but in EoD Zojja can cast freely without a focus or any incanting.

Wait so Zojja doesn't need a focus or incanting and then 5 years later needs incanting? Are these official novels by anet employees or fan fic?

@Daniel Handler.4816 said:

@Aaron Ansari.1604 said:

@Randulf.7614 said:

@Daniel Handler.4816 said:

@Aaron Ansari.1604 said:

3. Not sure what you mean by this. Mechanics are, by definition, part of a game- how could you have some in the books that aren't in the game? Unless you mean rules for how the
   setting
   works, in which case yes, but they vary from book to book. For instance, SoS establishes that spellcasting requires a weapon-focus, and spells in GoA have an incantation attached, but in EoD Zojja can cast freely without a focus or any incanting.

The official ANet stance is that there're different ways to cast magic, and that it mostly comes down to how an individual was trained. Some people might find it easier to chant, others might just wave a hand, but both ways produce results. The individual novelists each picked a style and applied it to all the characters in their book, but the company as a whole doesn't say there's any one 'right' way to make spells.

That said, no, Edge of Destiny was not written by an ANet employee. I suspect that's one of the reasons it feels out of step with other work done in the setting.

I haven’t read sea of sorrows, but i don’t think I could name a favorite, Edge of Destiny, I thought the story was very good content wise and really made me enjoy the game more, especially the dungeon ark. It also had quite a bit of action, and was a very fast paced book.

Ghosts of Ascalon was also very good, and to be honest I think I liked the theme of it more, it wasn’t so much a band of iconic heroes, but instead was a rag tag group of adventurers who got stuck together to complete a task. It was much slower paced than EoD, and was more focused on the adventure than the combat points imo, but I gotta say some of the feats done in the boon are my favorite, and I wish some of them were doable in game. I’m looking at you Kilean!

Note: I apparently have the gift/curse of being completely oblivious to the literary quality of things, so keep that in mind...

@Daniel Handler.4816 said:@draxynnic.3719 @Konig Des Todes.2086 @ anyone who has read the books

Its easier to conflate mechanics and lore when one hasn't read the books. Besides a few interviews and excerpts, most information comes from the game and its promotional materials. It is a filtered perspective that can often be logically untangled, but sometimes not. This one-sided view also influences one's interaction with the living story. Unfortunately, the books are gone from libraries, and their reviews are not stellar. Since I would never advocate pirating from a company on their official forum, I'd like the opinion of those who have read the novels before I buy. And if they are worthless, I'd like to get the lore without reading them.

1. Do you have a favourite?
2. Does the worldbuilding present explanations for in-game mechanics?
3. Does the worldbuilding provide rules for the setting?
4. Are there critically unresolved plots that must be addressed or retconned by the living story?
5. Are there unnecessary plots that should be addressed or retconned by the living story because you like or hate them?
6. Who is the best character, who is the worst?
7. How does the writing compare to the living story?
8. Are they worth buying?

Edit: fixed numbers and rephrased question 3.

1.Sea of Sorrows is easily my favorite. its the story of the creation of the lions arch we know after zaitan's rise.

2. not really cause we went for air ships in game, and not regular ships. plus magic backfires if done poorly in the book.

3. oh BIG TIME. specially when you consider what lions arch (pre scarlet) could do. the lore behind how and why it was made the way it was. as well as politics between it, Divinity's reach, and Rata Sum.

4. generally....no. this happened a LONG TIME before GW2. and so is fairly immune to changes in GW2. as so much time has passed.

5. see 4

6. .........fk.... i can't choose a favorite.

   see i ADORE Macha. she's spunky and epic...and will take you for a ride of feels.

   but Coby is also a pretty epic character. not afraid to wrestle a charr, or fire a cannon onto his own ship. keep in mind he's the guy who BUILT lions arch as we know it.then theres also the Char engineer, Sykox who invented the ship enginethe norn twins (a ship full of undead? just for me? YOU REMEMBERED MY BIRTHDAY. YAY)or the other captains of the council.

worst.........ok look, its not a badly written character....its just one i dislike (and the book wants you to). Yomm....he's got his heart in the right place...but his actions always seem selfish. plus theres the Asura College rivalry (Statics vs Dynamics)

7. amazing writing in this. i'd place the story above the other 2. just a bit above ghost of ascalon. and LEAGUES ABOVE destiny's edge.

8. Sea of Sorrows and Ghost. yesDestiny's edge.......meh na

I felt like Edge of Destiny started well, but it devolved into an action book, as if the author didn't really have the confidence that gamers wanted more than action. The character development became a lot less as the plot went on and instead we had some fairly repetitive action scenes. I'd have preferred more character interaction, but that's personal preference. That said, Edge of Destiny is most closely tied with the game.

I liked all three books but none of them were what I'd called amazing books. They were good reads to me because they helped build the world I play in in my mind. Worth reading if you're interested in lore and story.

The three books are a read for young people. It's entertainment. They are loaded with action and combat description, but they almost completely lack any deeper aspect of characters or ones motivation to do something. They don't tell much about life and the souls of the characters.

Ghosts of Ascalon is the lengthy description of a raid of a party into Ascalon to retrieve an item. That's all. Nothing more.

Edge of Destiny does a bit more, it tells about a bit of background of the 5 EoD characters, including Snaff and Eir. This is nice knowledge for GW2, but not enough to fill a book. Gets too stupid near the end - wasn't able to complete the read due to that stupidity.

Sea of Sorrows tells more about the world and of the souls of the characters than the other books together. Unfortunately, there is too much action detail and too much combat as well. If the book was half as long with all that combat shortened, it would be a really good read.It was said Cobiah Marriner was the Horatio Hornblower of Tyria. Do you know, how long was the description of Hornblowers most significant battle (in "A Ship of the Line", where he attacks 4 enemy ships of the line with his ship alone and is gloriously defeated)? Only 9 pages out of 191. Much more interesting than action is why Hornblower enters the battle in the first place and what he is thinking about his defeat afterwards.Or in "Lieutenant Hornblower", where his mentally ill paranoid captain is about to accuse Hornblower of mutiny and is found the next day dead on the bottom of the companionway of his ship. The unspoken question "Murder or accident" and "Did Hornblower do it?" is never answered, but anyone who knows Hornblower's mindset knows the answer. You have to think about it to work out the answer, and this is the kind of brainteaser a book is really worth reading. The first 2 GW2 books completely lack such brainteasers, Sea of Sorrows tries to but it mainly keeps trying.

Game books don't have to be flat. If you ever played Elder Scrolls games, you might have come across the ingame books "Biography of Barenziah" and its counterpart "The Real Barenziah". The latter, if printed on paper it's a novel with more than 100 pages, has meaning and depth, and not too less action.

Had a... full... couple of weeks, so haven't been able to answer up to now.

1. Haven't really thought about it. I'd probably go with GoA or SoS, for similar reasons as previous posters have stated.
2. Not directly or consistently (see previous discussion about focii, incantations, and such), but there are some hints. Most of the scenes when something happens (such as the use of a particular spell, for instance) show the result as a non-magic-user would see it, without explaining what's actually going on. We see a fair amount of necromancy from Killeen in GoA, although GoA was written well before release and some of what we see there might be stuff that was removed from necromancer skills. Possibly the most significant is the identification in SoS of Orb of Wrath being a lightning orb (it's not explicitly given the skill name, but the guardian in question is obviously using scepter skills, even though the weapon is described as a 'mace'). Generally speaking, the policy was that you shouldn't "hear the dice rolling" in the books, although there are moments in EoD and SoS where you definitely do.
3. Not rules per se, but there are... indications of what might be rules. SoS, for instance, has a discussion between an asura mesmer and a human elementalist which sheds some light on their different approaches to magic, although on its own its not explicitly clear whether this is a difference between elementalists and mesmers, a difference between human and asura approaches to magic, or a combination of both. The books also show that (unlike in game mechanics) multiple spellcasters can cooperate to maintain a stronger effect than any of them can maintain indefinitely, and that it is possible to maintain a spell to the point of exhaustion or even death (for a guardian in particular, it appears to be strenuous when something impacts one of their barriers, something that we don't see in-game).
4. There are a few loose ends that I wouldn't mind seeing revisited or tied off, but I wouldn't say they're critical (apart from the neverending truce negotiations. It's been ten years). One thing I'd really like to see addressed, however, is why it took so long for Jennah to produce a certain deus ex machina at the end of Edge of Destiny. I've seen a lot of people thinking that she could have done that immediately without needing to call Logan back, and thus that she was never in any real danger - I get a strong impression, though, that it isn't actually that simple and that she did pull it out as soon as she could (which would not have been fast enough if she hadn't called Logan back). It'd be good to see some filling in of what exactly was going on from her side of things just to put that one to rest. Some other things that would be good to know is just what happened to Port Royal, and just where the ruins of Port Stalwart are located.
5. I don't recall anything that I felt was so bad that it should be retconned.
6. Not something I've really considered.
7. Hard to say, since the Living Story has been somewhat... variable. I'd probably say that it's roughly on par with the better parts of the in-game story.
8. Ehhhh... depends on what you're looking for, really. If you're looking for good fantasy literature... there is better out there. They are, however, certainly readable, and in terms of what you normally expect from game tie-in novels, I'd say they're above average. I would say that I got them more for knowing about the background and the lore tidbits that can be extracted from them - the stories were an added bonus. Essentially, I regard them as reference books that happen to have an enjoyable story, but if one didn't have an interest in Tyrian history and worldbuilding, there are definitely better fantasy novels out there.

I'm about halfway through Edge of Destiny, so I can't say I have the most thoroughly developed opinion on this, but my thoughts on it are based on very recent experiences. The writing in Edge of Destiny has some very clear weaknesses - it's not really cringey or horrible in a technical sense, but it's very weak in terms of character writing. There are some great quips back and forth but it never really lets you into the characters' heads. It takes show-don't-tell to an unfortunate extreme, giving you vague descriptions of a character's posture or (usually stern) expression and never gives you any real sense of what the characters are feeling on a deeper level. That being said, it does do a pretty good job of answering those lore vs. mechanics questions you mentioned, seeing as it follows two troupes of adventurers making their way across Tyria. It doesn't work too hard to explain away the things that don't make sense on account of that, though, like why there might still be travelers on foot or in caravans when Asura gates link all of the major cities. If you're interested in writing lore-accurate fanfics then it will give you a better sense of how all of that works, though.

To answer those of your questions that I can specifically, from my own experience:

Does the worldbuilding present explanations for in-game mechanics?Yes, it does a good job of giving a general sense, but there are still holes. I don't know if it ever actually addresses waypoints. Those have obviously been made lorically canonical via the living story but with no effort (iirc) to explain why people don't just always use them.

Who is the best character, who is the worst?Snaff is the best, I don't feel like anyone in particular is the worst but I got really tired of Logan reigniting the race war between him and Rytlock by complaining about him having Sohothin literally every time they were just starting to get along.

How does the writing compare to the living story?I'd say about the same, honestly. I'm deeply invested in the world and characters of GW2 but I've always felt they were a bit lacking in depth of emotion and interpersonal relations. I went to the books hoping to find more of those things, but found that it was pretty much the same, just with more backstory.

Are they worth buying?Funnily enough despite the fact that I'm still trying to push through the first one I picked up I'm going to say yes. They're only $7-10 a pop and if you're writing on the forums about them then you're probably invested enough in the world lore and figuring out more of how it works in a literary context to get something out of them. I don't regret buying the one that I did, even if I'd hoped for more out of it. Just...probably don't buy them all at once. Grab one of the more highly-recommended ones and see how you feel about it.

@Prinimi.6470 said:It takes show-don't-tell to an unfortunate extreme, giving you vague descriptions of a character's posture or (usually stern) expression and never gives you any real sense of what the characters are feeling on a deeper level.

This is a very good observation - it's something I've thought in the past, particularly about EoD, but didn't think to mention in my earlier post. It's possible that it's deliberate rather than by omission, though - ArenaNet does like keeping their proverbial cards close to their chest.

@draxynnic.3719 said:ArenaNet does like keeping their proverbial cards close to their chest.

They do, unfortunately to the detriment of better character development at times. :anguished:

I've recently revisited the novels for a guild wars related project and while I've not re-read any of them in full it's refreshed my knowledge enough that I feel I can answer.

1. I'm going to have to go with SoS. It can be a bit hard to follow with the time jumps and off-screen occurrences between acts, but it really delivers on making Tyria feel like a real living world more so than the other two imo. GoA is great, but re-reading it now the characters (while generally good) are almost caricatures of their respective races., and it can be heavy handed with the exposition and lore dumps.
2. Yes, all three books have moments that explain and expand upon how some game mechanics function in lore.
3. Yes, GoA and SoS are the good for this with SoS getting top honors in this category.
4. Not that I can recall other than the previously mentioned never ending truce talks with the humans and charr
5. I honestly can't think of anything that really qualifies as an unnecessary plots that result from the books. At most maybe some more exposition on what is actually going on between Jennah and Logan.
6. Best character...Snaff, EoD really makes you understand why he was such an important member of Destiny's Edge. Runners up would be Kileen from GoA and Sykox from SoS. Worst character...Gullik from GoA, he has his moments and offers some great insights throughout the book, but on the whole he's something of a vanguard of the flanderization the norn got coming to GW2.
7. On a whole none of the books are the heights of fantasy writing. But they're not bad to be sure, at least as good as the better parts of the living story I would say.
8. If you're big into the lore of GW I would say yes. If nothing else it's delightful to see the setting be given a literary treatment with all the shallow feeling of it being an MMO stripped away.

Disclaimer: personal opinions.

I loved Seas of Sorrows. Great writing, character development, and despite a gritty story, still plenty of humor. It captured the real heart of Guild Wars writing..Its like the marvel of fantasy. If I say that right.. serious and gritty, but still finds time for wellplaced jokes.

Then there’s destiny’s edge.It wasn’t a very enticing story, but still fun because I could picture all the quiping between Logan and uncle Trombone. But it wasn’t a very exciting story, so if I didn’t know the climax I was reading it for, I might’ve not started it.

And then I got Ghosts of Ascalon to finish the trilogy but to be honest.. I dropped that book.It was not enticing, I didn’t have a reason to care about the characters, and everything that happened seemed too disjunctioned from what GW is trying to reach. It felt like a meager fanfic (no offence meant to the author).

So my conclusion is,Seas of Sorrows is a must-read book; even my old man who knows not guild wars read it, and liked it. (He liked LotR and the HP books, so I thought he would like it)As for DE, read it if you care about Snaff’s history. If not, it might not add much to your life.GoA can be read or not, you’ll be none the wiser.

EoD has the most funny dialogue.GoA is the most fluent to read and has 2 of my fav. characters (Killeen, Gullik, who is not big and dumb, but big and surprisingly insightful)SoS was hard to read. Entire pages just to describe Cobiah's face and hair flowing in the wind...

I like GoA the most, SoS the least. GoA and EoD are pretty good to give you some background on the things going on (it also makes finding Almorra's hero point or Killeen's grave bittersweet moments). EoD has my most disliked character in all of GW2 - and makes her look even worse (Zojja is unbearable ingame. She is worse in the book).SoS is.. yeah.. so.. what? He is acting like an idiot again? Oh, this was so predictable. Oh.. yeah, well...

there is a point when a writer puts too much effort into unnecessary details and tries to do too much with one character and in one story. And SoS sailed past that point with guns blazing, resulting in a very… choppy reading experience.