Minecraft Dungeons: The Rise of the Arch-Illager

Official Minecraft Novels #One-off 1

by Matt Forbeck

Learn the tragic origins of the wicked Arch-Illager in this official Minecraft novel, a prequel to Minecraft Dungeons!

Brave heroes have banded together to take a perilous journey through the war-torn Overworld to defeat the Arch-Illager and his formidable army. But how did that army come to be? And just where did the Arch-Illager come from?

The terrible truth behind the Arch-Illager is that he never asked for ultimate power. Known as Archie, this little Illager is bullied by his fellow Illagers and mistrusted by fearful Villagers. Archie only ever wanted a place to call home, but he finds himself shunned by all. As he wanders through deep forests and up craggy mountains, he stumbles upon a dark cavern--with a sinister secret waiting inside.

Archie discovers an object that whispers to him promises of power: the Orb of Dominance. With it, Archie realizes he can wield incredible magic and reshape a world that turned its back on him. All he needs to do is exactly what it tells him . . .

After all, it's called the Orb of Dominance for a reason, right? But is it named for the way Archie uses it--or is it using him?

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Audiobook, Childrens, Video Games, Adventure, Middle Grade

288 pages, Hardcover

Published July 7, 2020

About the author

I'm an award-winning, New York Times-bestselling author and game designer and happily married father of five, including a set of quadruplets. For more on my work, see Forbeck.com.

Reviews

[Harold Ogle · Rating 2 out of 5]

Recommendation: An interesting conceit for people who play a lot of Minecraft, but which can't decide whether it's for children or youth.

Critique: I liked this book, but it could have been a lot better. The author starts with a great conceit - let's tell a Minecraft story from the point of view of an Illager (hostile reavers that raid villages in the Minecraft videogame)! It'll be a sympathetic story showing how he became a master villain! This isn't a new idea, of course, especially in films such as "Cruella" and "Glass," or video games like "Dungeon Keeper" and a thousand others. When I was in the 6th grade, my 11-year-old friend Deane wrote a short story about a villain coming to power and taking on a party of adventurers, which is substantially similar to The Rise of the Arch-Illager. What makes it compelling, for me, is the connection with the Minecraft game: attaching story to a procedurally-generated, totally random landscape that contains common features like villages, spawners, majestic mountains, rivers of lava, witches' huts, and pillager towers. At this point, after twelve years of play, I've spent hundreds of hours in various Minecraft worlds. Getting a coherent narrative built on what is essentially a survival and exploration experience is really exciting!

But the execution is very uneven, for me. The thought processes of the main character, Archie, are very child-like, and the book spends a lot of time in Archie's headspace. As a result, the tone of the book is very juvenile, which is very often at odds with the subject matter: love, abuse, hatred, family, undead apocalypse, mortal enemies, murder, torture, mind control, domination. Here's a glaring example: the book portrays the heroes (that is, the characters controlled by a Minecraft player) as antagonists who revel in mayhem and destruction. They come stomping into a region with swords drawn and hack down everything in their path. But the book is coy about this slaughter, referring to it not as "being killed" (much less "murder") but as "being defeated." This wouldn't be too bad if it was mentioned once or twice, but it comes up again and again, because - and I can't stress this enough - this is a story about an abused outcast raider who pillages villages for a living and then goes on to become an evil arch-mage. Mortal peril is a constant. Every few pages one character or another is "defeating" another. This is a story about violence and how people exposed to violence react to and continue such violence. But that violence is abstracted and sanitized to the point that, for me, it felt like there was no weight to any of the conflict. As a result, Archie (not to mention all the other murderers like the Illagers and the heroes) comes off as petulant and arbitrary.

But the bones of the story - the basic plot of a loser who has been the victim of abuse his whole life being manipulated by an insidious power that promises to give him his just deserts - is pretty solid, and it kept me going even though I found the characters unlikable and the tension absent.

Review: A nameless hero - but let's call him Karl - comes into town, massacring monsters left and right. Then a group of Illagers appear, and Karl laughs with delight and slaughters nearly all of them. He spares one runty illager who was trying to talk his comrades out of fighting, choosing to slap him down to the ground instead. Then we follow that illager, Archie, as he gets abused by the other survivor, an evoker named Thord. Thord and Archie return to their leader, Walda, and Thord blames the raid's failure on Archie. Walda doesn't believe Thord, but judges that he's more useful to the tribe than Archie is, so she banishes Archie. Archie wanders and eventually is taken in by a compassionate villager named Yumi, the person who manages the golems that protect the village. The other villagers distrust Archie, but with Yumi's advocacy, they come to grudgingly accept Archie...all except for Salah, another sadistic bully and villager counterpart to Thord. Motivated by bigotry and hatred, Salah invites a group of heroes into the village so they'll "accidentally" stumble across Archie. Yumi prevents Karl from killing Archie, and the other heroes drag him away before he can start murdering the entire village. Salah insists that Archie must leave before the heroes return. Yumi resists, but Archie agrees to leave.

Archie wanders the wilderness, terrified and feeling sorry for himself. Undead hordes appear and chase him across the countryside, into mountains, across a river of lava, and up a cliff to a forbidding door that opens at his touch. Inside is the Orb of Dominance, a fell magic artifact that speaks to Archie in his mind. It promises him power and respect, speaking of his destiny to rule the world. So Archie takes it and becomes mighty. Redstone golems animate at the touch of the Orb and follow him. He levitates rock and shapes metal to form a magnificent fortress for himself in the mountains. The undead attack and he incinerates them. All of them. Then Archie sat on his throne and peered into the Orb, which showed him a vision of his old tribe's raiding party, led by Thord, being attacked and overwhelmed by a wave of undead washing out of a desert temple. Archie rushed off and his golems and the Orb destroyed the undead and their necromancer leader. Archie commanded Thord to bring Walda and the tribe to him at "Highblock Keep."

Archie returns to his base and builds a Fiery Forge for creating more redstone golems. Then the illagers arrive and Walda becomes Archie's lieutenant. He puts the illagers to work constructing more redstone golems. Eager to cement his new position as illager leader, Archie agrees to attack and sack the village. As the restone golems and illagers attacked, Archie slipped off to Yumi's house to get her to safety, but she refused to leave, furious with him. Then Karl appeared and proceeded to slice up the redstone golems. Before the hero could finish off all the golems, though, a huge swarm of undead appeared led by another necromancer. Skeletons began peppering everyone with arrows, including Archie.

Archie woke up on a stretcher being carried into the desert temple. There he met a necromancer who carried another Orb like his. The two of them came to an agreement with the aid of the Orbs, and Archie took over control of a large host of undead creatures. When he returned to Highblock Keep, he found Thord stealing from him. So he killed Thord and then was crowned Arch-illager. The Arch-illager led his three forces (golems, illagers, and undead) to attack the village again. This time they razed it. At the end, the party of heroes prepared to hunt down the Arch-illager.

[Jennifer Ganley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not sure exactly how to rate this book. 😁 Since I always pick out books for my kids to read, my 9 year old son picked this book out for me. 😄
Considering this isn't a book I would pick out for myself, I did find it to be a nice book. Good storyline. Complex characters. Enough action to wonder what will happen at the end. I honestly think this was written better than some grownup books I have read.

[Chris McGrath · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was about as good as I would expect from a Minecraft novel could be. My son liked it and I didn't mind reading it at all.

[Carolyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this book up at Walmart as a joke, but when I started reading it, I realized how genuinely good it is. I am more than pleasantly surprised, I am elatedly shocked.

It has one of my favorite concepts: good guy goes bad. The character development was so believable, and throughout the story I kept rooting for two outcomes with equal passion: I wanted Archie to return to the light, but I also wanted to see complete and total carnage viewable from even the max rendering distance.

I will definitely be checking out other books by Matt Forbeck. His word choice and the way he creates these beautiful and exciting images and scenes is a gift. I feel spoiled as a reader getting to appreciate his work!

[Jacob Webster · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun, decent prequel story to Minecraft: Dungeons.

[Hector · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is definitely my favorite video game story.

[Barbara · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was such a struggle to read. I read it to my 8-year-old son. He liked it, but was extremely disappointed in the ending. The storyline could’ve been condensed to 50 pages if all of the flowery language wasn’t there. Some of the words and phrases were ones I haven’t even heard, and I consider myself to be well read!

[amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brings dimension to the video game characters, is fun to read aloud with different voices, and is filled with excellent vocabulary words, especially for younger readers new to advanced chapter books (like my son).

[Murray · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the first in a new Minecraft series aimed at Tweens focusing on Archie an Illager who is thrown under the bus by the only other Illager survivor of a clash first with Zombies and then the hero Karl. He is kicked out of the Illager compound and he is taken in by Villagers who then throw him out when Karl appears and interferes with Archie's peaceful existence. He then comes upon the Orb of Dominance which gives Archie increable power and the Orb is able to enter Archie's thoughts and encourages him to go back to the Illager's and convince them to become his army. He does so and then they are to attack the village that he left and are faced with the undead and skeletons lead by a Necromancer who captures and makes a pact with Archie to help them gain more power. Archie is a likable character and he wrestles with the tough choices he's encouraged to make but he becomes a villian which may turn off some readers. I would only recommend for die-hard fans of Minecraft though non-Minecrafters might enjoy it, but there are definately better fantasy series for Tweens out there.

[Nick Armstrong · Rating 5 out of 5]

Matt Forbeck did a really nice job humanizing Archie as a tragic villain. Totally understandable and further novelizations of this story would be absolutely stunning. Loads of fun characters and circumstances just begging to be expanded on.

My kiddo (8y/o) was a little less enthused once Archie started becoming meaner, and some of the complexities of the Orb’s influence over Archie were lost in translation, but still a fun nighttime read-together book.

[Ashley McLaurin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brings the game alive!

My son and I took turns reading this together. Compared to other books in this series, this one was very well written and helped bring the Dungeons game alive. I have never played but now I understand what my son is saying when he goes on and on about the game. ;)

[Aria Ericksen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was AMAZING. I got two chapters in and it was so hard to put the book down! The plot is great, the characters are great, everything about the book is great.
P.S. wish I could punch Thord in the face

[ethansbooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a great prequel to the Minecraft Dungeons game. This book was also probably one of the best written books I've read this year.

[Matthew Holloway · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written to both make the villain of the game relatable, but not at all excused.

[Ibaad · Rating 5 out of 5]

EPICEST NOVEL EVER!!!

This book is the best book I have read in my life and is the perfect balance of intense, fiction and Minecraft!

[Henry Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love that it explains how Archie becomes The Arch Illager in detail

[budibeliever · Rating 4 out of 5]

Banger

[Sarah Fernandes (Badders) · Rating 4 out of 5]

We bought this one because the boys started playing Minecraft Dungeons -he enjoyed reading it with his dad at the same time as they played through the game!

[Buch Versum · Rating 5 out of 5]

PERFEKTE UNTERHALTUNG OB FÜR VORLESER ODER ERSTLESER…
Als Mom eines 15 jährigen weiss man was hipp ist oder nicht, bekommt man in Auge für so genannte pädagogische Spiele und manche sie weniger Sympathie bei den Erwachsenen erzeugen!

Minecraft gehört seit Beginn des Einzug in unser zu Hause zu den Favoriten, so komplex und kreativ.
Insbesondere jetzt auch die Möglichkeit zur Lektüre rund um diese Welt zu greifen .

Ich konnte sofort voller Begeisterung zu dem Buch greifen, wurde in eine packende als auch fantasiereiche Gwschichte gezogen.

Dieses Werk bereitet nicht nur Kindern sondern auch älteren Generationen Lesevergnügen.

Eine definitive Herzensempfehlung für Jung und Alt.

#MinecraftDungeons
#DerAufstiegdesErzIllagers
#MattForbeck
#Rezension

[Fintan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really liked this book and I think it ties perfectly into the video game. I recommend this book to anyone who likes Minecraft dungeons or wants to know the origins. I think Matt Forbeck did a really good job explaining why in the world a tiny little Illager has an all-powerful orb and army of Illagers and undead mobs. I loved this book and it's one of the few I can read again and again and have the same experience I had the first time!

[Bree · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was my least favorite of all the Minecraft novels so far, but I’m guessing that’s mostly due to a lack of context. I put off reading this one until last because I’ve never played Dungeons, and I feel like it doesn’t hold up as well as a stand alone novel. It seemed like a setup for something else rather than its own story, but if you’ve played Dungeons it might be a nice backstory for something you already enjoy.

[Ms. Yingling · Rating 3 out of 5]

Library copy

The only thing better than a Minecraft novel with illagers, villagers, and pillagers is one with the BACKSTORY of a character.

Sigh. My students love these. I might understand more of them if I have ever played Minecraft, but that is clearly never going to happen. Think I am up to date on reading all of these. I ordered this one last year, but forgot about it over the summer and it's never been on the shelf this year.

[Caesar · Rating 2 out of 5]

I won't say this was a bad book, but I was expecting more. The story didn't start very interesting, but I figured it'd get better. It never really did for me. I very much enjoyed the first Minecraft book even if I've never played the game. My son has autism and we've spent a lot of time bonding by playing Minecraft Dungeons, however. I guess I just expected more because of this. I'd recommend this for fans only.

[Jonathon Howe · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this to my 7-year-old who loved it. The prose and some of the subject matter were a bit too old for him but he loves the game so he was able to follow what was happening. I thought it was OK as far as Minecraft video game novelisations go. It did have one interesting aspect in that the protagonist is the Arch-Illager, who’s the antagonist of the game.

[Calvin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved the book. It was great I really couldn’t stop reading it was so tempting to flip the page, and then the next, and the next.
Awsome but sadly they never get to the part were the five heroes actually fight back to beat the pillager. I you like Minecraft
And know about it then this is your type of book. Start reading!

[Erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read with my 10 and 8 year old. This is the prequel to the game: Minecraft Dungeons. They enjoyed it. It was quite ‘wordy’ with the dialogue (for reading out loud) and I’d say it’s better for middle school age.

[Tony · Rating 1 out of 5]

I didn't enjoy the messaging or themes of this book, especially in terms of how my kids understood them. Don't recommend for kids or young teens for that matter. Older teens may be able to understand it for what it is.

[Adin Wehage]

Good

[Neil · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty well done. My son appreciated this well fleshed out backstory for one of his favorite games.

[Nate · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best Minecraft book yet, although it would have been even better with Jack Black’s narration. It sets the reader up perfectly for the Minecraft Dungeons video game.