Warcraft: Dragon Hunt, Volume 1: Kaplan SAT/ACT Vocabulary-Building Manga (Warcraft: Sunwell Trilogy) (v. 1) [Paperback]

Richard A. Knaak (Author), Jae-Hwan Kim (Illustrator)

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Richard A. Knaak is the New York Times bestselling author of some three dozen novels, including the The Sin War trilogy for Diablo and the Legend of Huma for Dragonlance. He has penned the War of the Ancients trilogy, Day of the Dragon and its upcoming followup, Night of the Dragon. His other works include his own Dragonrealm series, the Minotaur Wars for Dragonlance, the Aquilonia trilogy of the Age of Conan, and the Sunwell Trilogy -- the first Warcraft manga. In addition, his novels and short stories have been published worldwide in such diverse places as China, Iceland, the Czech Republic, and Brazil. 

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Kaplan Publishing (July 3, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1427754950
• ISBN-13: 978-1427754950
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #898,215 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Richard A. Knaak is the New York Times bestselling author of some three dozen novels, including the The Sin War trilogy for Diablo and the Legend of Huma for Dragonlance. He has penned the War of the Ancients trilogy, Day of the Dragon and its upcoming followup, Night of the Dragon. His other works include his own Dragonrealm series, the Minotaur Wars for Dragonlance, the Aquilonia trilogy of the Age of Conan, and the Sunwell Trilogy -- the first Warcraft manga. In addition, his novels and short stories have been published worldwide in such diverse places as China, Iceland, the Czech Republic, and Brazil.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Less successful hybrid, December 20, 2007

By 

S. Hanson (Fort Worth, TX) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Warcraft: Dragon Hunt, Volume 1: Kaplan SAT/ACT Vocabulary-Building Manga (Warcraft: Sunwell Trilogy) (v. 1) (Paperback)

When I purchased this text for some research on using sequential art (i.e., comics) for teaching, I really wanted to like it. I figured that if a respectable company like Kaplan was using sequential art, then that would be a good step forward.

Unfortunately, this amalgamation of computer game setting, manga illustrations, ACT vocabulary, and narrative art didn't gel. On the high end of accomplishment, the manga drawings are great. Going downhill: the WarCraft setting seems like it would be a smart choice, but it doesn't give any of the satisfaction that the game might give; the vocab definitions are placed visually in a way that seems like it really 'should' work, but the definitions are sketchy at best; and worst of all, the narrative is just rotten---from the dialogue which jolts over speedbumps like "nefarious" coming out of the mouths of characters which, IMHO, would NOT say such things, to the unrelentingly irritating cliff-hanger stopping-point (it does NOT conclude), the story-telling is miserable.

My only hope is that this kind of experimentation won't convince people that sequential art CANNOT be used for sophisticated purposes. Hopefully, people will see it as a sketch of what is possible to accomplish and then go farther. Please....?