Customer Reviews

The Sundering (Warcraft: War of the Ancients Trilogy, Book 3)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Based on the other reviews, I am in the minority on this but I found this whole trilogy a massive disappointment. I can only assume that others liked these books because they were so entranced by the lore, that they overlooked the many deficiencies. I've read a lot of fantasy novels, some good, some bad, and this was among the very worst. The only reason I slogged through this tedious, poorly written trilogy was to get at the lore, most of which is merely hinted at in the game.

Knaack is either a poor writer, or simply wrote this as a work-for-hire and gave it only the minimum attention required to get his pay check. The quest text and cutscenes in World of Warcraft are better scripted and edited than this novel. His syntax is frequently atrocious. One jarring example came early in the first book, when he describes a dragon aspect as "humongous". This word is pure 1960s slang, on a par with "ginormous", and is a poor choice to describe the majesty and scale of the Titans' hand picked guardians of Azeroth.

His characterization is paper thin. Only Broxigar stood out as having any depth, a warrior suffering survior's guilt and feelings that he is not worthy of the accolades bestowed on him by Warchief Thrall and others. Shandris Feathermoon was intriguing but never really got enough time on the page to develop. Azshara, queen of the night elves, is vapid, self absorbed and easily duped. Malfurion and Tyrande, while likable enough, are mostly characterized by the fact that their intentions are always good, and they always do the right thing. They are heroes, yes, but they're never really conflicted or complex enough to be very interesting. Sargeras, as a rogue Titan, could have been interesting, but his history, motivations and character were barely touched on; the WoWWiki article does a better job of conveying the character, a dutiful champion of the Titans, who after millennia despairs of his task and slips into madness. In the book, he is a one dimensional anarchist intent merely upon destroying all life.

His plotting is mediocre and meandering, consisting of the heroes running between various points in Kalimdor, never quite accomplishing what they set out to do, and returning in time to prevent the succession of battles from turning into complete defeat. In this he gets a partial dispensation in that he is constrained not to step too far from the boundaries of known WoW lore. This fault taken by itself would not damn the whole. But taken with his other deficiencies, however, this was simply the final nail in the coffin.

Some may argue my expectations for a novel based on video characters is too high, but I'd counter that the depth of the narrative and characterization of WoW is a huge part of its success. A novel offers so many options for extending the depth and breadth of what is often only hinted at in the game, that it ought to do a better job than the video game. Knaack had three novels to work with, but failed to improve in any way upon what came before.

Warcraft, War of the Ancients 3: The Sundering, by Richard A. Knaak

"The Sundering" is the final installment in the War of the Ancients trilogy, a series set in the universe of World of Warcraft. The night elves and other races of Azeroth are perched on the edge of losing their lives and their world to the Burning Legion...

Knaak created a truly epic story in this trilogy, taking the story and universe of Blizzard's award winning game series and creating memorable characters, an intriguing plot, and fantastic battles. He had to play in a world where many readers will already know most of the storyline, but didn't let that stop him from delivering a very enjoyable series. "The Sundering" has to wrap up all the loose ends of the previous two books, and it does that in a very nice manner. I read most of this book in 2 sittings, as I was eager to know how everything would finish up. And normally I'm not a real fan of too many battle scenes, but the final battle in "The Sundering" is very enjoyable; Knaak has a knack for writing good battles. I would say it isn't a fight that should be missed.

As I've said about the other books in the trilogy, "The Sundering" is full of lore that will make any Warcraft fan happy. I loved knowing what happened to Illidan...how he went evil. How Malfurion became the first of the druids. Why Mount Hyjal is an important part of the landscape. Little things will likely click into place in your mind as you read the book; I know I have some new questions and theories about why things are the way they are in the Warcraft universe.

The War of the Ancients is a trilogy I'm apt to read when I'm a little sick of playing World of Warcraft, and it almost always generates interest in playing again.

5/5.

The Sundering is a great conclusion to the War of the Ancients series. Richard Knaak does a great job of pulling everything together and you can clearly see by the end of the book where the Warcraft 3 storyline will come in. Even having played WC3 before reading this series there were still plenty of twists and turns in the storyline as all of the characters, good and bad, reveal their motives and goals.
As I said before, a great conclusion to the series and if you enjoyed the first two books, you'll love this one.

Fantastic story, opens your eyes to more lore then World of Warcraft provides and shows how everything came to be. The whole series is incredible and Knaak was the perfect writer for it. This book is more of a wrap up story then the other 2, culminating with the sundering of the land of Azeroth, but as the Warcraft lore has been created before these books were written there is only so much that can be said or done. It is similar to Star Wars in that vain: you know what is going to happen next so you cant fiddle too much with the past. If you are a fan of Warcraft or just enjoy well written Fantasy novels this is light years better then anything D&D authors have channeled out recently. A must buy.

I loved the trilogy as a whole; it will definitely be going on my list of WOW books I will actually reread. However, it was not quite as good as the first two in the trilogy, primarily because I felt the action lagged a bit in places. In contrast to how I felt about the first book, I didn't feel the action/story ratio was proper here; I felt like entirely too much of the book was devoted to battles, which sometimes seemed to drag on and on; I definitely got a bit tired of them at times. That said, it was still a great culmination to the trilogy, and I still loved his characters. I did not feel they had as little depth as some other reviewers have said; Rhonin could possibly have been developed a bit more (he does feel a little as if he is only there to be a side kick to Krasus), but I felt Krasus' longing to return to his true form and to be with his love were well developed. I also felt Malfurion was more developed than some give him credit for; he always does the right thing, but it is not fair to say that he never struggles - he struggles to come to terms with what has happened to Illidan and to overcome the seduction of the Demon Soul. I do agree with some other reviews that I would have liked a bit more of Sargeras' background in the series; you get hints and bits and pieces, such as the knowledge that he used to be a Titan, but you don't really get any idea of what happened. I hope this is told in one of the books I have not read yet; if it hasn't, it should be. All in all though, I was extremely happy to get the "full story" behind a lot of the lore figures I had heard about but not read about. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and the trilogy as a whole (and will read it again), and I recommend it to any WOW fan.

And then the War of Ancients ends here, in this book by Richard Knaak once more. Still keeping the pace and connecting lots of dots from the World of Warcraft lore, Knaak was successul in the third book. However, despite my previous reviews regarding The Well of Eternity (WarCraft: War of the Ancients, Book 1) and The Demon Soul (Warcraft: War of the Ancients, Book 2), The Sundering (Warcraft: War of the Ancients Trilogy, Book 3) has some problems...

We cannot deny that Mr. Knaak brings such a well written book/trilogy for the WoW fans, but in this one I must say I was not convinced by some important aspects of this ending, especially when the author introduces and develops the Sunstrider character. Somehow I had some expectations regarding him, albeit some flaws in the structure of the narrative.

Besides that, I must say I liked this book a lot, by the way, the entire trilogy as well. I had huge expectations regarding this period of time of the WoW timeline and it was a pleasure to find such a well written and exciting books. Well done, Mr. Knaak.

Received product as described. Thanks for a fast, easy and smooth transaction. Great experience and A+++ quality product would repeat anytime.

This review is for the Kindle version only.

The formatting of the Kindle version is atrocious. None of the paragraphs are indented and the only breaks are between chapters. When the scene shifts during a chapter, and with at least three plot threads this happens a lot, there are no breaks - not even a simple blank line.

I returned this book and Amazon said they were going to pass on the feedback to the publisher. Hopefully this will be fixed soon, but just be aware when considering buying this for your Kindle.

Decent ending to the series. A quick and enjoyable read just like the others.
There were a number of times where things just kind of happened because they needed to without any real explanation of how or why.

I've finally read the three books of war of the ancients archive and by far the is the best part of all.
Epic Ending with shocking events, this book should be made a movie out of it! (including the previous two book)
Well done Richard i salute you!