After what I thought was an excellent introduction to the World of Warcraft in the first hard cover graphic novel set, I was disappointed with the conclusion in this followup. After reading the first World of Warcraft graphic novel collection, I read WoW:Ashbringer and wasn’t impressed with it so I was really looking forward to this followup. I don’t want to be completely negative about it in this review because I still think the art is nice and that they did a good enough job providing us with a conclusion. But when I compare it to volume 1, it doesn’t feel like the creators were having as much fun working on the issues collected in this book. If you’re just looking for a distraction and have some extra dollars to spend, go ahead and buy it because it is still entertainment at the end of the day. Otherwise, I would pass on this.
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Thrall: Twilight of the Aspects - Christie Golden US $24.72 End Date: Thursday Feb-09-2012 10:18:32 PST |
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Dungeons and Desktops: The History of Computer Role... US $44.52 End Date: Thursday Feb-09-2012 10:30:59 PST |
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Marketing Communications: A Brand Narrative Approach by Terry Smith (G) US $52.93 End Date: Thursday Feb-09-2012 10:35:38 PST |
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Master Of Defence: The Works of George Silver US $33.43 End Date: Thursday Feb-09-2012 10:38:03 PST |
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Thrall: Twilight of the Aspects - Christie Golden US $24.72 End Date: Thursday Feb-09-2012 10:18:32 PST |
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Dungeons and Desktops: The History of Computer Role... US $44.52 End Date: Thursday Feb-09-2012 10:30:59 PST |
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Marketing Communications: A Brand Narrative Approach by Terry Smith (G) US $52.93 End Date: Thursday Feb-09-2012 10:35:38 PST |
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Master Of Defence: The Works of George Silver US $33.43 End Date: Thursday Feb-09-2012 10:38:03 PST |
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Gale Encyclopedia of World History: War by Gale US $230.99 End Date: Thursday Feb-09-2012 11:09:34 PST |
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DIABLO III: BOOK OF CAIN by Deckard Cain in HARDCOVER US $34.95 End Date: Thursday Feb-09-2012 11:12:21 PST |
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World of Warcraft Strategy Collection 2008, BradyGames, Good Book US $26.99 End Date: Thursday Feb-09-2012 12:18:40 PST |
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Master of Defence: The Works of George Silver US $28.95 End Date: Thursday Feb-09-2012 16:55:34 PST |
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Art of World of Warcraft 2005 Hardcover Rare US $49.99 (0 Bid) End Date: Thursday Feb-09-2012 18:12:18 PST |
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CUDA by Example NEW by Jason Sanders US $46.25 End Date: Friday Feb-10-2012 4:48:21 PST |
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Business Wire - World of Warcraft® Server-Blade Auction to Benefit St. Jude Children's Research Hospital®
October 13, 2011 -- Blizzard Entertainment announces special charity auction of retired server hardware to benefit St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.
How To Repair The PS3 Yellow Light Of Death
I had a little trouble getting into it at first but the book takes shape about halfway in and proves to be an enjoyable read.
As others have mentioned it is not written on an adult level which is fine since it is intended for fanboys of World of Warcraft. It can get a little frustrating if you are expecting deeper characterizations and more engaging plots but if you are looking for background lore in playing World of Warcraft (which is what I was doing) it fills the bill.
A good book with a lot of cool information about the world. Not my favorite in the series of books, but still well worth the read. For anybody with any interest in understanding a lot of the lore behind the World of Warcraft game, the book is fulled with a lot of information that should peak your interest. For other people, still a solid story with a classic ending.
After a big night at the casino, I picked up nearly every full length novel from the Warcraft series (WotA Trilogy, Warcraft Archive, Tides, Dark Portal, Rise of the Horde, etc.) and decided to read them in chronological order. The second war is by a long shot my favorite part of Warcraft lore, and while I started playing in Warcraft: Orcs vs. Humans, Warcraft II was really what got me into the universe.
For that reason, I was absurdly excited when I finally made it up to this book, only go have my world crushed. Overall the writing is clumsy and amateur, and while I was plowing through a Warcraft book every few days, this one stopped me cold for nearly a month. It never felt engaging, and the relationships between characters (that are already well known and have established relationships mind you) felt forced and awkward. Half the book seemed to be filled with repeated description that felt out of place (a fun game to play would be to count the number of times the author mentions Alleria raising her bow in a salute…), and the story never really takes hold.
If anything, I dislike Turalyon because he comes off as a whiney wimp after reading this story, and I personally feel the author demolishes the reputation of Doomhammer within this novel.
Overall, its a long series of “meh” that leads to an anti-climax. Yes, it is a retelling of the second war, I guess you can’t knock it for that, but I’d only recommend this book as a rental, and only if you like this part of Warcraft lore enough to struggle through this book… I did, I do, but I still say use caution. I’d probably like it better if I was younger, or if I was going back to catch up on history and had only started in the Warcraft universe at WoW, but because I’m not a kid and I’ve been there since the beginning this book let me down.
When I bought this book, I had already read all the other works by Richard Knack and Christie Golden. Since I was a big fan of of the lore, I was terribly disappointed to know that this story was entirely butchered to threads.
The author did not protray a war at all. All of his encounters are predictable and one sided. The way he has described the war is as if the humans were going up against infants with twigs instead of organized orc army. He spents a full chapter on the creation of ogre magis and death knights, only to have them get slaughtered senselessly without putting up a fight.
Sure the orcs lost warcraft II but wars do still have casualties on both sides. Rosenberg’s version would be like saying: Japan lost World War II, and don’t worry, no body died in Pearl Harbor either.
This book is nothing but a poorly written summarization of the epic tale that it actually is. Even alliance sympathizers may be utterly disgusted by the poor quality of the plot.
For those whom are into Warcraft lore. This is one of the books for you.
It has an enriching storyline and once you’ve started it, you won’t want to put it down. The words are simply enough to be understood and the flow of the story is just right.
I love the atlas, its a great tool. When it came it was very well made. If you are thinking about purchasing this do it, its a great product. Everyone else is just upset it took so long to ship.
With digging you would be able to find the information on the internet but this is made for you, and its on nice paper, and nicely bound. The book even smelled fresh when it came. I mean I opened it and it woof.. freshly processed paper. My teenage brother loves it too, maybe I’ll get him one.
For the love of Pete! The release date for this book is nearly a year passed due and I get (yet again) another approval for order delay from Amazon. Boy, Brady sure has lost a ton of money from the sale of this book. From the forums & blogs, it appears that MANY players now feel the book is obsolete, especially since they have already reached level 80 & have fully explored Northrend. There is no reason for such a long delay in this book’s release, it’s not like there is a lot of fine detailing that goes into one of these atlases & there hasn’t been any really major Northrend area updates (except maybe Uladar). Even then it shouldn’t matter that much since they released the BC atlas without Shadowmoon Valley & Quel’Danas. This is really, really sad & not good business practices.
Anything Brady could potentially place into this book is already available, free of charge, from a plethora of wikis and websites which are continually updated to ensure their accuracy as Blizzard updates the content. Going all the way back to Everquest, static atlases for MMOs have been a terrible waste of time and I don’t forsee this being any different.
Brady needs to get thier act together. Accepting pre-orders in October for a product that they don’t ship until the end of July is totally unacceptable. Surely someone at Brady realizes 10 months delay is reputation damaging…
I had sort of hoped that the extensive delays were due to Brady wanting to include maps from the Ulduuar raiding instance but that hope proved misplaced.
The Atlas itself is well made, easy to read and navigate, just like all of Brady’s previous WoW atlases, BUT the continual delays in production and shipping have considerably cheapened the product and decreased its rating. If Brady had shipped within a reasonable amount of time this rating would be a 4-5 star instead of the 1-2 star rating I elected to give it.
Come on Brady… get your act together!!!
I have loved all their atlas’s. The book had all the basic info you look up all the time and its in one spot without searching the web and I love the detailed city maps. People seem to complain that its not something it was never intended to be. Sure you can get a lot of the into all over the web. I prefer to pull out my atlas’s to quickly and concisely find what I need. The travel routes alone were worth it to me! Large hardbound color book fro $13? Its awesome!
Nancy
Level 77 Human Mage
This book is awesome, and Christie Golden is probably the best WoW lore writer around.
Beyond the Dark Portal is probably the novel that most resembles World of Warcraft: in it, the Alliance vastly outnumbers the Horde at every turn, easily dispatches them and slaughters their soldiers and heroes, and still claims moral outrage when an orc actually manages to hurt one of them. As any veteran of a WoW PVP server will tell you, this is remarkably true to the game’s experience.
This premise does not make for a good work of fiction, however. The heroes of the Alliance consist of characters who any WoW player will already know are, for the most part, destined to survive the book, and if this weren’t enough to kill any dramatic tension in combat scenes, it is coupled with the fact that the Alliance. Always. Wins. Each time the orcs manage to gain some advantage, the Alliance easily counters it tenfold. The orcs take refuge in the ruins of Auchidoun, and find a few powerful allies? The Alliance recruits an army of dead draenei and reenacts the Battle of Pellenor Fields.
Only in a single battle at the beginning does the Horde manage to win a fight, and even then, they fail to bring down anyone important. The Alliance, meanwhile, continually slaughters at least one important, likable, and sympathetic Horde hero with each clash, often in an anticlimactic manner. (See: Khadgar’s duel with Dentarg, Danath’s fight with Kilrogg, and the casual defeat of Kargath Bladefist, who isn’t even mentioned by name.)
By the end of the book, I was amazed that there were still any orcs left on Draenor to eventually appear in WoW. Time and time again, they are slaughtered wholesale, and yet any time they manage to defend themselves, the Alliance characters (who are given de facto status as the heroes of this book) are horrified. Particularly egregious is Danath Trollsbane, a character I was begging the writers to kill. Early in the novel, he is not only willing but *eager* to torture an orc prisoner; however, later, when a friend of his has been subjected to such, he is utterly horrified. The hypocrisy is staggering, and I sincerely wish that the writers had included at least one character capable of calling these “heroes” on their bull.
This is a story that could have been great, and was in the original game. A small band of soldiers and heroes, marching into a hostile, ruined world, alone and outnumbered, trying to put a stop to the orcish threat, exploring an alien landscape, meeting strange new foes and stranger allies, and all the while racing against the ticking clock of Ner’zul’s great ritual. Instead, we got a story about a massive army marching through a portal, crushing the pathetic remnants of the Horde, slaughtering their champions at every turn, and making the orcs look about as threatening as a battered kitten.
Perhaps the sort of sadistic Alliance player who enjoys griefing in Hillsbrad will enjoy this book, but for the rest of us: there are better ways to kill time between flight paths.
A very good read, offering a wealth of background information to the World of Warcraft enthusiast.
I would give this zero star if I had the option.
First to address the pros: The story did follow the lore pretty well and Christine Golden did a pretty good job holding the novel together while Rosenger tore it apart. The pacing of the story was very good and it would be a pretty good and engaging book if not for the blatan short comings.
Now to the cons: Like the previous book Rosenberg wrote, the story is terribly one sided. The author fails to show the intelligence of the orcs and never chose to write any major casualties of the alliance in a WAR. After playing the game, I know there are major victories in the actual lore. Rosenberg presents the orcs as mere infants with twigs.
Nearly every page you read orcs getting slaughtered left and right. He never really specified how many orcs there are and so it’s incredibly hard to picture in your head how many they have left because every battle orcs die by what seems like the hundreds. I think by his account the orcs actually ended up with a proud army of -5502,231 instead of 0. It is nothing more than a mere, poorly written summary of what actually happened.
Unfortunately, Christine Golden’s involvement in the story was not able to raise the low score and terribly predictable plot. The characters are not developed.
If Aaron Rosenberg is reading this review I humbly suggest you read a real warcraft author named Richard Knack. Or even read the works of your co-author. Rise of the horde and War of the ancients should get you started.
This book by Christie Golden continues the process of “novelizing” the classic Warcraft II computer and its expansion, Beyond the Dark Portal. The story centers around the characters Khadgar, Turalyon, Alleria, and so forth, and tells the story of the human expedition to defeat the Orcs in Draenor once they threaten the world of Azeroth a second time.
Golden, as in her earlier books, does a fairly good job of characterization. She tends a bit towards the “soft, misunderstood” side (she’s not that great at making complex “evil” characters), but generally tries to create a decent characterization for the purpose of the story.
The weakness is in Golden’s execution of both the story and setting. Although Golden didn’t really have control over the sequence of events in either, it is really in her descriptions that the story shows its weakness. Golden is not great at describing either battles or greater strategic warfare within this novel, but more to the point, she fails to capture the SIZE and grandeur of the conflict. Remember, this is a war that devastated the greater part of a CONTINENT, in epic battles of warfare and magic – yet with Golden, you never really get a good feel for its size and scope.
I would strongly suggest you get this from a library first, before deciding on whether or not to buy it. Golden is a decent author, but she is clearly not the best within the Warcraft novel genre – that belongs to Jeff Grubb.
Fits well within and expands the World of Warcraft for the reader, offering a wealth of pertinent details for the new kids on the block to WoW