tor-books posts

Last month we reported that Bioshock: Rapture, the upcoming novel that tells the back story of the first two Bioshock first person shooters, was finally scheduled for release in March. Now it looks like we will have to wait a few more months for the novel from Tor Books to be released.

Amazon.com now shows that the novel has been pushed back until July 19. As we reported before, the novel is written by John Shirley but will have an introductory chapter by Irrational Games' head man Ken Levine. It is supposed to tell the story of how Andrew Ryan first created the underwater city of Rapture, the setting for the first two games in the series.

Some of you may remember that back in 2009 plans were revealed for a prose novel to be written based on the Bioshock game series from developer Irrational Games. However the novel from publisher Tor Books pretty much from sight. Now Amazon.com and Tor's parent company Macmillan both have a new listing for the novel, titled Bioshock: Rapture, stating it will be released on March 1.

The novel is written by John Shirley but will have an introductory chapter by Irrational Games' head man Ken Levine. It will feature the back story of how the underwater city of Rapture was established by Andrew Ryan. The novel will be released both in hardcover and trade paperback format, each with different cover art work. The novel was supposed to be released around the time of BioShock 2's release in early 2010 but according to a post credited to Shirley on the 2K Games' BioShock message boards the decision was made to incorporate characters and plot points from Bioshock 2 into the novel. That caused an additional 30,000 words to be put into the book.

Last March, Tor Books released Dragon Age: The Stolen Throne, a novel that served as a prequel to the events in BioWare's upcoming fantasy RPG Dragon Age: Origins. This week Tor Books releases a second novel, Dragon Age: The Calling, to book stores.

The second novel is once again written by the game's lead writer David Gaider and has the lead character of the first book, Maric, now set up as king of the game's land Ferelden. The novel has King Maric leading the forces of the Gray Wardens to find one of their own who has turned bad (we hate when that happens). The trade paperback sells for $14.99. Dragon Age: Origins is due in stores a few weeks later on November 3.