I never played any of the Warcraft PC games, but I’ve played World of Warcraft since November 2004.  I own all of the Warcraft novels, but have only gotten around to reading one of them (Warcraft: Day of the Dragon by Richard A. Knaak).  I was excited to read that Dick Hill had recorded 3 of the Warcraft books as audiobooks, only to be disappointed when their release was delayed indefinitely.  So when I saw that World of Warcraft: Arthas – Rise of the Lich King was coming out, I thought it might be a good opportunity to read one that was highly related to the World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King expansion, without being tied to a three book series.  Downloaded it to my Kindle and gave it a whirl.

LIKED

True to the Lore.  I have read articles by people who played Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne are very faithfully represented in the book, sometimes word for word.  After really getting into World of Warcraft, I regretted that I never played either of those games, though real time strategy games are not my forte.

Many World of Warcraft References.  There were many World of Warcraft related references in the story.  It’s obvious that Golden is very familiar with the MMO.  Jaina igniting the Wicker Man for the Hallow’s Eve festival, as well as other festivals.  Appearances by Tuskarr and Taunka in Northrend.  The ghostly Matthias Lehner (anagram of Arthas Menethil).

NOT SO MUCH

To The Point.  I’m probably conditioned by reading a lot of Stephen King and Robert Jordan lately, but I thought as I was reading the book that it could have gone into much more detail about the characters and what was going on.  Because it spans so many events, it seems like you are lead from one event to the next with no read character or story development in-between.  In the wowwiki post about the book, it references that “The story is set over an extensive period, and has many duplicate scenes from other works, including Tides of Darkness, Beyond the Dark Portal, Day of the Dragon, Reign of Chaos, The Frozen Throne and Wrath of the Lich King. However, while the scenes themselves remain the same, they are experienced from alternate viewpoints.”  I think this worked to the detriment of the book, which probably could have been twice as long to fully do justice to the story.

Motivations.  This ties in with the previous statement, but I don’t think that the characterization of Arthas was strong enough to make his descent into darkness believable.  Perhaps it’s just that so much happens to fast that there just isn’t the depth.

RECOMMEND?

If you are a World of Warcraft fan, this book fleshes out the lore very well.  It will give you a new appreciation of the world of the game.  For non-fans, it is a very accessible fantasy novel, so it might appeal to some who might not otherwise read the genre.  For those who are strictly fantasy story fans and not WoW players, there are plenty of other works that you would probably appreciate much more.