World of Warcraft: Stormrage [Kindle Edition]

Richard A. Knaak

Richard A. Knaak (Author)

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Book Description

When the world of Azeroth was young, the god-like titans brought order to it by reshaping its lands and seas. Throughout their great work, they followed a magnificent design for what they envisioned Azeroth would become. Although the titans departed Azeroth long ago, that design endures to this day. It is known as the Emerald Dream, a lush and savagely primal version of the...

WORLD OF WARCRAFT

Many are the mysteries surrounding the Emerald Dream and its reclusive guardians, the green dragonflight. In times past, druids have entered the Dream to monitor the ebb and flow of life on Azeroth in their never-ending quest to maintain the delicate balance of nature.

However, not all dreams are pleasant ones. Recently the Emerald Nightmare, an area of corruption within the Emerald Dream, began growing in size, transforming the Dream into a realm of unimaginable horror. Green dragons have been unexpectedly caught up in the Nightmare, emerging from it with shattered minds and twisted bodies. Druids who have entered the darkening Dream lately have found it difficult -- sometimes even impossible -- to escape.

Nor are these the Nightmare's only victims: more and more people are being affected. Even Malfurion Stormrage, first and foremost of the druids on Azeroth, may have fallen victim to this growing threat. As uncontrollable nightmares spread across the world, a desperate quest begins to find and free the archdruid.

Soon nature's enemies will learn the true meaning of the name
STORMRAGE

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

• File Size: 2269 KB
• Print Length: 440 pages
• Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1416550879
• Publisher: Pocket Books (February 23, 2010)
• Sold by: Simon and Schuster Digital Sales Inc
• Language: English
• ASIN: B0037714S0
• Text-to-Speech: Not enabled
• X-Ray:
  Not Enabled
• Word Wise: Enabled
• Lending: Not Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #131,430 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars A Mixed Dream September 7, 2010

By Jason Talley

Format:Hardcover

This book does a few things really well and a lot of things wrong which is why I'm giving it two stars.

On the up side the author clearly did their homework on the WoW world. Lots of names and locations pop up in the story and I really liked that I could go "Oh, my character has been there!" or "The person gave my character a quest." So it's pretty easy to get into the world and get excited about the backdrops.

Now without going into major spoilers there were also lots of nice moments mixed in like people from all the races having to band together to fight a common threat (WoW loves that theme), getting to see a runestone in a story and the short but very cool appearance by Sylvanas Windrunner.

So while the feel of the WoW world is really well done the characters and the story aren't. Some of the most powerful people in WoW are taking on a single threat that they end up being able to do almost nothing about. Until the very end pretty much everyone is at best holding line or running away. Seriously, the heroes of this novel run away in the course of one story than Shaggy and Scooby do in the whole history of Scooby Doo.

It got to the point where the last 100 pages where just a slog and I was happy to just be done with the book so I could go read something else. "Lord of the Clans" this ain't.

Overall, save your time and money for something else.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Stormrage Review December 8, 2010

By Robert H

Format:Hardcover

World of Warcraft: Stormrage is a really great book! It is about Malfurion Stormrage, the night elf archdruid, and the Emerald Dream. The Emerald dream is a spirit world copy of Azeroth, the regular world. The Emerald Dream is a world that developed under the Aspect of Nature, Ysera. This world had only nature and it did not contain any of the races of Azeroth. Because of this, it is a wild Azeroth. It never had deforestation for villages or towns and all the other destructive things we do to our world. The Night Elf Druids can sleep and appear in the Emerald Dream. Recently, something mysterious and evil has appeared in the Emerald Dream called the Emerald Nightmare. It kills all plant and animal life. But, it doesn't just do that. It also corrupts them into twisted versions of themselves. The soil turns into grey sludge and the animals turn into evil demonic versions of themselves. One night in the dream, Malfurion comes upon the Nightmare and is captured and tortured. Malfurion's lover, Tyrande Whisperwind, fights against time to save her Malfurion, the Emerald Dream, and perhaps Azeroth itself. She doesn't stand alone, however. Broll Bearmantle, a younger night elf druid whose daughter died in his arms, also fights the Nightmare but he also fights himself. He also felt he failed his daughter and is never good enough. Malfurion sees the potential and strength in Broll and helps him conquer his fears. A female orc also joins them, despite her being enemies to the elves. A rather unlikely hero is also a member of the group. A human cartographer who has a special ability joins them. He is battling the dream as well as his fear, as he is often afraid. Other companions join in and help as the battle goes on, while the Nightmare spreads to Azeroth making many fall asleep in their nightmares. They are impossible to wake, and after awhle begin the sleep walking. They still believe they are in their nightmares and try and attack anything near. If the adventurers can free Malfurion, they might have a chance to save their world against their worst nightmares. Read more ›

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Moves lore along...not much else February 6, 2011

By Anthony Landrum

Format:Hardcover

Those of us that were waiting for the lore to be moved along in relation to the Emerald Dream storyline will probably read it just to fulfill that story arc but it doesn't mean everyone enjoyed it.

Richard's work in writing Warcraft novels is quite varied in quality. His writing style can become repetitive and his over glorification of newer characters can start to degrade the story telling. That is what happened to Stormrage. The back cover that claims this novel is about Malfurion's return from the nightmare is misleading. That storyline is only loosely followed and is never fully developed. Instead, the book spends chapters at a time building up the druids introduced in the Comic series and his own character Lucan which is his "Mary Sue" of the book.

Unfortunately this not only means the namesake Malfurion Stormrage's character and story is never developed, but it also means the action and plot forwarding in the book can be quite sluggish and especially toward the end I found myself wanting to skip over pages at a time just to get the actual story to move forward.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Eh...so so December 5, 2011

By L Hoover

Format:Mass Market Paperback

This book was alright; for me it was not as good as any of the Christie Golden books or the War of the Ancients trilogy, but it was about on par with Day of the Dragon/Night of the Dragon. Knaak's books seem very hit or miss to me.

In the end, this book really was just too long (and I am not usually one to whine about length; 500-600 pages or more does not bother me). The nightmares got repetitious and I found myself wanting to flip pages until we were finished with them. The same characters had the same nightmares over and over, and everyone's nightmares were very similar, and we had descriptions of them over and over. As a whole the book was too descriptive, which is a classic Knaak trap it seems. I was bored for the first 200 pages, then it picked up for a little while, and lost me again at the end. It really says something if the climax of the story isn't very exciting. The story could have been wrapped up much more quickly and a lot of extraneous material could have been eliminated. Knaak either needs to watch that tendency in himself or get himself a better editor.

I also didn't really connect with any of the new characters; Eranikus was way too whiney and irritating, and for some reason I couldn't sympathize with him. Others, like Gnarl, weren't around enough for you to get to know them (oh, and he really named the tree-like ancient Gnarl??, come on). Broll and Thura were better, but I still didn't feel all that connected to them. He tried to make Broll sympathetic with his lost daughter etc, but it didn't really do much for me - probably because he really beat it to death by mentioning it every chapter.

SMALL SPOILERS: There were several small details in the wrap up that drove me nuts because they were just way too convenient; Malfurion's and Tyrande's escape from the tree near the end where he just has some lightening strike it is just ridiculous - we have this nearly unbeatable foe, but that is all it takes to get him to drop them? I also found it way too tidy that the the branch was just sitting next to the ax waiting to be used; the Nightmare Lord was really that stupid?

On a more widespread note, he went way over the top with his heroes this time. He has a tendency to make his characters a bit too larger than life (Krasus usually), but Malfurion in this one just went over the top. He's suddenly more powerful than the Dragon Aspects and can do anything at all he sets his mind too, controlling forces all over the world while mentally communicating with friends and rescuing people...yes it is a fantasy book, but this was too much even for fantasy. SPOILER: Likewise, why didn't we get some explanation for Xavius' actions; yes, he's evil, but that is all we get. Why was he hooking up with a "new" patron, and setting out on this new path toward evil. Does he think it will bring him power? Is he out for revenge on Malfurion? Is he being manipulated? All three? We don't know. Knaak spends pages and pages describing essentially the same nightmares over and over, but doesn't devote a single paragraph to explaining why Xavius is doing what he is doing. He somewhat explains how, but not why. I would personally have been happier to see more of that and less of the overly descriptive nightmares.

I did, for whatever reason, like the segment where we see Sylvanas' nightmares; they were much more unique and tailored to the character than the other nightmares and it was interesting to see what still frightens her, which was nice since she tends to be a strong and enigmatic character. If all the nightmares had been utilized in this way to show us the inner thoughts and fears of characters it would have been a lot more interesting, I think. I liked the plot and the story as a whole, I just didn't like the details of it or the writing style utilized, and I felt the characters fell flat, even classic ones like Malfurion and Tyrande. I did like getting to "know" Ysera better, but I wish he would have fleshed out the green dragon flight with a better character than Eranikus. His story for Erankius had a lot of potential, the execution just fell flat.

Essentially this book was a lot longer than it had to be, and took a long time to ramp up and was very anti-climactic and a little too easy to predict. He used too many "easy" outs for the characters and I spent more time thinking "oh really, that really happened that way" than "wow, that was epic" and certainly more than "what will happen next". I may read this again someday to see if I am being unfair, but that will be a while from now. This definitely was not my favorite. Read more ›