Been tearing through the Dragon Age books in preparation for Dragon Age: Inquisition, coming later this year (and got pushed back, fuuu).
The Stolen Throne, by David Gaider.
It's about King Maric, father of Cailan and [spoiler]Alistair[/spoiler]. It's not really required reading for a DA-fan since it doesn't have a lot of the world the games do. It's pretty straight-up low fantasy and pretty gritty. It also shines a light on Loghain, and kind of lets you know why he did the things he did in Dragon Age: Origins. It's got the same problem as prequels tend to have, in that you already know what's going to happen, so there's no unpredictability.
The Calling, by David Gaider.
It's a cool insight into the more mysterious aspects of being a Grey Warden, like the Calling itself, and serves as a prequel to Dragon Age: Awakening. It also has Duncan, which is great.
Asunder, by David Gaider.
About Rhys, the son of [spoiler]Wynne[/spoiler], who is drafted into an expedition into the deep west of Orlais, to investigate the claims by his mother that a Tranquil mage has been possessed by a demon. I'm not finished with this, but it's pretty good thus far.
My pet peeve with Gaider's writing is his insistence on having sassy/snarky characters in everything, so it just feels like he's only capable of writing certain types of characters. And the fact that super stubborn characters sometimes are just instantly convinced of things that go against their character for plot convenience. That said, he writes a shit ton of flavour text and the world is interesting enough that you breeze through the books. Next in the series is The Masked Empire, by Patrick Weekes, which is also set in Orlais and also sets the scene for DA:I, along with Asunder.
After that, I intend to hop into the Mistborn-trilogy by Brandon Sanderson (aka, the dude who finished The Wheel of Time), which I've heard great things about and got for dirt cheap in my local book store.
