War Dragons companion novel features the mobile game’s players

Pocket Gems has created a companion novel that adapts the story of its hit mobile game War Dragons for book readers. And one of the cool things about it is that the book features teams of players who play the mobile game.

The novel, War Dragons: All Things Burn, is launching today for 99 cents on Amazon and Apple iBooks as a prequel for the game. San Francisco-based Pocket Gems launched the game in honor of Appreciate A Dragon Day. Award-winning author Brian Oliu wrote the novel, which was edited by Michael Rudin. War Dragons debuted in April 2015 as a player-versus-player game on iOS.

Here’s how Pocket Gems describes the setting: “The War Dragons universe is defined by chaos and flame. Everyday, ominous shadows overhead precede the destruction of carefully architected bases and kingdoms. But it was not always this way. In days past, the benevolent guild leaders from the island of Atlaua ruled the land through the ability to speak with dragons. All that changed when an orphan child washed up on Atlaua’s shores. He would grow into a mighty soldier, ruthless general and eventually an immortal warlord. A man who would show the world that just as all things grow, all things burn. They call him Gustav, leader of the Blackwood.”

The book documents Gustav’s rise to power through his own eyes, as well as through the viewpoint of Ash, a commander in Gustav’s army who, after years of doing Gustav’s bidding, is orchestrating a revolution to take back her homeland.

Here’s where there’s an interesting twist. The book features six teams from War Dragons who won the game’s Great Contest last December. The winning teams were written into the fiction of the book as the powerful guilds which played a pivotal role in Gustav’s bloody journey to becoming a despot.

The title is coming to Android soon. War Dragons stayed on the iOS charts for a long time, and the game received its largest update last fall.