Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Timeline, January 4, 2009
This review is for people who are about to start reading somw Warcraft books. I have created a chronological list of the Warcraft novels for people to get an overview of all of the books and for people to know where to start:
Warcraft books timeline
1. Warcraft War of the Ancients Archive
-Trilogy Book One: The Well of Eternity
-Trilogy Book Two: The Demon Soul
-Trilogy Book Three: The Sundering
-Rise of the Horde (about the horde in Outland)
2. Warcraft Archive (Warcraft 1)
-Book One: Day of the Dragon
-Book Two: Lord of the Clans
-Book Three: The Last Guardian
-Book Four: Of Blood and Honor
-World of Warcraft: Tides of Darkness (Warcraft 2)
-World of Warcraft: Beyond the Dark Portal (Warcraft 2 exp)
3. Warcraft The Sunwell Trilogy Archive (Warcraft 3)
-Trilogy Book One: Dragon Hunt
-Trilogy Book Two: Shadows of Ice
-Trilogy Book Three: Ghostlands
-World of Warcraft: Cycle of Hatred (Right before World of Warcraft)
Warcraft Legends
-Volume One
-Volume Two
-Volume Three
-Volume Four
Others
-World of Warcraft: Night of the Dragon
Hope that you can use this. Cheers Martin!
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
They should've let Christie Golden write this., November 2, 2008
Richard Knaak is the most average of all fantasy writers. He tells the story in a simple style that is neither bad nor extraordinary. His books always contain the following; a good storyline, some excellent characters, some shallow characters, irredeemable more-ruthless-then-Satan villains, tons of action scenes, and no food for thought whatsoever. Knaak's WarCraft novels follow this pattern to a fault. They won't impress you, but they won't bore you, either.
=SPOILERS AHEAD=
As of this writing, War of the Ancients trilogy is Knaak's largest work set in the world of Azeroth. It puts the reader into the midst of the first demonic invasion, ten thousand years prior to the events in WarCraft III:Reign of Chaos. In addition, the books feature Neltharion's fall from grace, a time-travel subplot, and a twist that introduces an even greater evil into the story.
Speaking of the time-travel thing, one has to wonder; was it necessary? If Knaak had to have a character of his own in the trilogy, he could've just used the young Korialstraz. More "screen time" dedicated to Xavius, Azhara (two characters in desperate need of some depth), Jarod, Maiev, Malfurion, Illidan, Tyrande and Cenarius would've been preferable.
My greatest gripe with the War of the Ancients comes from the terrible presentation of the Burning Legion. In WarCraft storyline and games, demons and their creations are by far the most destructive force in existence. Single demons often posses tremendous powers - for example, Doomguard can rain fire on their opponents, felbeasts are nigh-immune to magic, Eredar sorcerers can corrupt a man's soul with a mere glance, Archimonde single-handedly destroys Dalaran, Nathrezim can dupe entire armies into serving them, the Daemons were the most powerful units of WarCraft I, etc. In the climax of WarCraft III:Reign of Chaos, alliance, horde and night elves are forced to unite and suffer crippling casualties, just so they could slow down the Legion's advance for forty five minutes.
In Knaak's trilogy, however, the Burning Legion is the least menacing faction of them all. The only times they ever truly dominate is when they are killing unarmed civilians. Otherwise, they regularly get routed by mortal armies. Fel Guard are nothing but a nuisance, Doomguard get slaughtered en-masse, and felbeasts enjoy being petted by beautiful night elf women. Even Eredar and Nathrezim are laughably incompetent. Archimonde almost lives up to his name... but then he is forced to flee from a novice druid.
This is further accentuated by the apparent disinterest of "greater" races (dragons & demigods) to defend the world from the demons. Believe it or not, the demigods spend the first two books deciding whether they should trouble themselves with the conflict at all. And don't get me started on the Demon Soul.
With the Burning Legion trivialized, the entire trilogy loses its epic feel. Instead of depicting a desperate struggle for survival, War of the Ancients presents us with a stalemate that could be easily resolved, if only the greater races could be bothered to join the fight from the start. Deathwing is cool, but he is not the focus of the story and thus cannot make up for the Legion's feebleness. The Elder Gods are bland and forgettable, their only purpose to further belittle Sargeras and his underlings.
War of the Ancients is as middle-of-the road as it gets. On the good side, it is fast paced, filled with interesting characters, and overall highly entertaining. On the bad side, it is a letdown because it lacks the epic feeling it deserved, and because it often stretches the willing suspension of disbelief (the way Tyrande is spared from being tortured to death by the demons is the most heavy-handed (and most literal) Deus Ex Machina I've seen in years).
Even if you don't buy this collection, you should consider reading the first book in the series (The Well of Eternity) just for the laughs. Everyone in that novel falls unconscious all the time. After a while the reader starts expecting the characters to get knocked out, and when it happens it creates a lot of unintentional hilarity.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Good read, a few details which feel wrong, June 14, 2009
This book was, without a doubt, a good read, especially if you are a fan of Warcraft lore and/or if you played Warcraft 3 (classic and expansion).
The sad part is that the Burning Legion is treated like the Scourge. The Scourge is a big, I mean really big, bunch of walking corpses, whose power is given by their numbers and not by their individual strength.
The Burning Legion is an almost as big bunch of extremely powerful individuals, individuals who, together, brought the end to thousands of worlds. It might take an army to stop 3-4 demons from their plans. In these books even 12 years old Night Elf girls with a bow in their hands are able to headshot demons. I must say I was very dissapointed by the presentation of the Burning Legion, being almost opposed to how I imagined it and how it is showed in fan arts.
It's really unrealistic how Rhonin, who is around 30 years old, pew pews demons thousands of times older than him, demons which are by every aspect superior to Rhonin. Seemingly, Rhonin was able to amplify his powers immensely because of the Well of Eternity, but for some reason, that didn't happen to the Eredar, their magic being hardly a challenge for Rhonin's. I would have expected a single Eredar to be able to kill a dozen of Rhonins with 1 spell, and not viceversa. The same thing goes on when Malfurion, a beginner druid, even if very talented, defeats one of the most powerful beings in the Universe, Archimonde.
It seems that Knaak didn't take all factors in consideration when he wrote the book, and that's a big minus.
The "time travelling" idea seems really forced and unrealisthic, even if well-motivated by existing lore characters. I would have been absolutely perfectly happy with a description of the War of the Ancients and how it was won in thruth. That was the thing I wanted to discover when I bought the book and, sadly, I haven't, because Knaak's character were practically everywhere and changing history everywhere at everytime, but, OMG, in the end all is like if the characters never actually intervened, except maybe for the death of Hakkar the Houndmaster, a minor demon if you ask me, as he wasn't heard of in any other writing.
Another big minus is that in Knaak's story it just seems that there are too many "Alice and the Wonderland"-like events are going on - going to the big good Mother Tree, flying with the dragons, etc... which seems very non-Warcraft in my opinion.
I told you the bad parts, but there are good parts too. Even if Azshara could get more attention, the attention she got was enough to give us insight about this character which is met not in many but still in enough quests in WoW to make lore fans think: "Who the heck is Azshara?". The scene where Hakkar was defeated was really well written, in my opinion. I don't know why I think that, because I can't remember the scene very well, I just recall it made my hearth beat faster, thing which doesen't happen to me very often. While the main focus wasn't on Malfurion, Tyrande and Illidan, as I would have liked it too, they still got enough attention to make me think that I actually found out something new about my favourite characters after reading this book.
In the end, I would recommend this book if you are a fan of any of the main characters presented there - Tyrarnde, Malfurion, Illidan, Krasus, Rhonin or even Cenarius or Maiev (even if she doesen't have an important role), or if you want to get some insight over one of the coolest Warcraft events, even if they could have been presented better. But, remember, there may be hundreds writers better than Knaak, but there are thousands who are worse.
Short version of what I said - buy the book.
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