God of War II: 2 Paperback – 12 Feb. 2013

Of COURSE I loved this book!!! Im a GOW freak!!! An unapologetic fangirl!!! Its a decent enough book although I dont know why they left out the twosome in the spa. How is it that in todays world violence in fiction is acceptable but sex is completely taboo??? These are adult products!! Anyway...its the story of GOWII. If you havent played the game then I dont know why youd be reading it.

I read this directly after finishing the first God of War novelisation, which is decent, and found this to be an improvement comparable to that between the first and second games. While the first book was pretty good for what it was, this is actually just a pretty good book written well.It follows the story of the game, handling the levels, enemies, puzzles, etc with skill, weaving them into a much more readable narrative without losing anything.Much like the previous book, the real wonder of this story are the scenes that take place 'offscreen' in the game, but while the former only gave more context to Athena and Zeus' motives and inner-workings, this book contains a number of subplots involving various Olympians and the Sisters of Fate that truly colour the narrative and breath some more life into the story, which is most likely well known from those who have played through it.I have been surprised and thoroughly impressed by these books, so I am absolutely gutted there is no God of War III novelisation, but I do look forward to the novelisation of the most recent game to read, while I play through it again.

Bought this and number 1 for my partner for Christmas, he was too eager to wait so got them early. Now he reads them back to front. Hope there’s a third book out soon.

Great product, great price, fast delivery - would recommend!

I read the first book as soon as it was out, and although I went in with low expectations (I didn't think such a hack-and-slasher game franchise would translate well into book form) I was happily surprised to find that Robert E. Vardeman had found a way to make the story his own. Removing some of the fighting and adding/rearranging the puzzle elements to make the story flow well. Chapters about the supporting characters helped to add subtext and extra levels to the games own fantastic plot. Overall I loved it. Second time around and as I started reading I began to feel a little less impressed. The first chapters feel disjointed and almost irrelevant. Trying to sum up an entire previous game without telling the reader anything about it made his first few pages in particular feel incredibly year 8 English project. However, as the first few chapters showed the worst of Vardeman, it would appear the rest was designed to show the best. Very quickly the story begins to pick up, and although he's stuck closer (At times almost religiously) to the structure of the game, the book manages to find that same rare ground that the first one trod upon. It gives us a more thinking-man variant of the stoic hero, and allows us to appreciate just how clever a character Kratos really is to complete these puzzles he's faced with. Although the extra chapters sometimes fall a little flat, and the supporting characters and villains seem to be rather self-destructive, the book manages to stand out as a worthwhile sequel, and one that makes me look forward to the eventual adaptations of 3, Ascension Chains of Olympus and Ghost of Sparta.

10/10

Great novel. Contains greater back story than the game itself.