Knaak's Diablo novels

Richard A. Knaak wrote more Diablo fiction than anyone else, and beyond the Sin War trilogy he wrote three standalone novels for the Pocket Books era. Legacy of Blood, 2001, follows the mercenary Norrec Vizharan, who puts on the cursed armour of Bartuc the Warlord of Blood and is slowly claimed by it. Its first edition is 9780671041557 and its Blizzard Legends reissue of 2017 is 9781945683015.

The Kingdom of Shadow, 2002, sends a party of treasure hunters into the lost city of Ureh, a jewel of Sanctuary that exists between the living world and somewhere worse. First edition 9780743426923, Blizzard Legends reissue 9781945683169. It is the most purely adventurous of the three and the one most often recommended as a first Knaak novel after the Sin War books.

Moon of the Spider, 2006, is a darker, more gothic story built around the necromancer Zayl and the spider cult of Astaroth. It also carries this bibliography's best documented ISBN trap: the ISBN-13 form 9780743471325, which circulates widely in secondary listings, fails the ISBN-13 checksum and was rejected by the census. The verified identifier is the 2023 Blizzard reissue, 9781956916171. A listing quoting the failed number is quoting a number that cannot be correct.

All three novels were later collected, alongside Demonsbane and The Black Road, in the Diablo Archive omnibus of 2008, 9781416576990. That makes the Archive the cheapest way to read them and the individual first printings the collectible way to own them, a split that runs through the whole Diablo shelf.

None of the three has a Japanese edition. Like the rest of the Diablo book line, these are English only publications, verified as such in the census.