This was my second read-through of Tevinter Nights, the short story collection released for Dragon Age; the first came in 2020 not long after it was published. I wasn't super impressed with it at the time, but I was eager for any updates on the Dragon Age franchise, so I ate it up anyway. Having played through the latest game release, Veilguard (review here), it seemed like a good time to revisit Tevinter Nights, conceived undoubtedly as a way to keep fans interested and engaged with the coming story when, six years after the release of the last game, Inquisition, there was still not a crumb of news about the next game. I stand by my original assessment.

First, let me say this: if you are not already a fan of Dragon Age, this book is unlikely to have anything remotely interesting for you. It is steeped in its own lore, which it assumes the reader's familiarity with, and the quality of the works are simply not worthwhile if you are not already invested in this world.

Tevinter Nights is emblematic of so much of Dragon Age's writing. That is to say, it's deeply uneven in quality, with parts that are genuinely exciting and emotional, that give you exactly what you're looking for on your hunt for fantasy adventure; and parts that leave you scratching your head about how this cleared quality control (and whether the people writing it are familiar with the worldbuilding of their own franchise).