Chronicles of Light is a series of vignettes that are categorized by being set around the time of one of four major events. The book is “written” by an individual who has the power to dive into someone else’s memories and experiences, and the “author” explains they have realized all their visions are related to people connected with the Warrior of Light, aka the player’s character in Final Fantasy XIV.
But I dearly hope you are a Final Fantasy XIV player before you pick this up, because otherwise, you’re going to be as miserable as I was while reading this.
Now, part of that is probably my own fault. I went into this book blind, and I assumed this was going to be like most Square Enix game novels I read where there was a full story. A novelization of the game a la the Kingdom Hearts novels, perhaps, or most likely, a collection of events/perspectives like, say, On the Way to a Smile. But, as the official blurb explains, these chapters — minus the four new, exclusive ones — are copied from the Final Fantasy XIV website. Each episode is about five or six pages long, and each describing a presumably key event from the world’s timeline and/or character’s backstory.
With such limited time, the chapters don’t provide much of an introduction to their star. I could generally piece together who the person is and what’s going on, but that also requires parsing though a lot of names of people and places — names which I don’t know were inspired by real-life historical records, invented by putting together fantasy-sounding syllables, or generated by randomly smashing keys on the keyboard. Being a bit of a Final Fantasy buff myself, I assume the names have some linguistical basis, but with so many coming at you, it’s rather overwhelming: Merlwyb Bloefhiswyn, Eynzahr Slafyrsyn, Limsa, Ul’dah. The last two are places, and how far apart are they? I have no clue. A map sure would have been nice, as would a timeline.
Anyway, these stories come in two main varieties. The first is a brief overview of a character’s backstory, like a character discovering they have powers and eventually meeting their long distance mentor a few years down the line. Others cover a day or so, as in the case of a warrior who arrives to find his family dead and sets off to defeat the monster that killed them. I imagine that some of these events are referenced or hinted at in-game, but others will likely help explain characters’ dedication. There’s nothing to dislike here, as we see various individuals mourn deaths, pray for peace, and fight for vengeance, and Chronicles of Light emphasizes how times of crisis can unite and divide. A few characters do return later in the novel, but it’s mostly a new lead each time.
There are many different races in Final Fantasy XIV, and if you don’t recognize the names of the heroes here, you won’t know what they are until you get to the end-of-chapter illustrations. These I believe are exclusive to this collected volume. But with these black-and-white inked pictures come a severe trade-off: the website’s episodes include two full-color screencaps while reading.
Even disregarding the color vs. monochrome or screenshot vs. illustrated art debates, the fact these images are in the midst of text — some just a few short paragraphs after the start — is a major point in the web version’s favor. The text looked mostly the same from what I saw, but the novel says things have been touched up for print. The localization includes plenty of fiction medieval fantasy speak, and the first chapters include some difficult vocab. Also, The Warrior is usually referred to as “they”, but there are a few occasions where a masculine pronoun is used.
So despite Chronicles of Light having a “pick up and quick read” appeal, I wouldn’t call this a light read.
However, the actual book is beautiful, with the dust jacket’s front image printed onto the hardcover. The “author” has a brief intro before each of the four sections, and the artwork perfectly captures the Final Fantasy XIV spirit.
But this is a book that is made for those players who have that passion already. Yes, fans like myself with little-to-no knowledge of this game will learn about the world of Eorzea, but the number of names is overwhelming. But if you’re a big fan of the game, you’ve probably read most of these already, and I don’t think a bunch of monochrome pictures make this a must-have. So if you don’t fall into the center of the Venn diagram of “Final Fantasy XIV player” and “book collector”, I don’t think this novel is for you.