Welcome to the boards, Trialos! May your enemies in the Gael Serran always run slower than your blade.
Willow's given you the answer. For a mini-spoiler, by the time you find all the tomes, the game is almost over, so you don't necessarily miss a whole lot by not having it.
You'd miss something for your second game, but it won't have a lot of impact on the first.
Keep us posted on how you're going, too! We're always interested to see what everyone else is doing.
