I have read a number of books based on roleplaying games in the past, starting with the (in)famous Dragonlance Chronicles. As a credulous gradeschool child, I thought they were great books, but when I got older I quickly realized my standards had not been well-formed at the time. I ultimately came to the conclusion, through the experience of reading many more books based on roleplaying games (and movies), that all these books were essentially just "professional fanfic" -- unexciting contrivances focused on the superficial qualities of their contexts, betraying the quality of the source materials when there was any to betray, leaving the reader thinking they're actually good if they rise to the pathetic level of "not as awful as most professional fanfic". This book was the first I have read that challenged that notion.

David Niall Wilson managed to make an unrepentant and ruthless egotist, afflicted by a deep-seated obsession with an overriding goal, into a compelling antihero that somehow managed to make me into a believer in his self-assigned mission, urging him on to victory after reprehensible victory against incredible odds. Wilson conveyed the compulsion of the main character so vibrantly that the reader, for a time, might share it with the heartless bloodsucker who drove the plot. This, at the heart of it, might be the real genius of Wilson's "The Grail's Covenant" trilogy: the exceedingly rare, brilliantly executed example of how a forceful personality on the printed page can drive the plot so monomaniacally that there is no room for things to just happen to him the way they do in more passive-aggressive writing such as is found in pop-fiction like the Harry Potter series. The author's talent for often succinct, never laboriously long, always evocative description adds great weight to the positive experience of reading this book, as well.

As the opening salvo in a new series, To Sift Through Bitter Ashes was truly remarkable, and even more so when one considers this was accomplished within the constraints of a "professional fanfic" genre. ( )