Least enjoyable warcraft book?

[GRYMLAWK]

So I just finished reading the book Vol'jin shadows of the horde... Pretty disappointing book for me. I don't know if the book was actually that bad or if my judgement is just clouded because I was really looking forward to a book about Vol'jin and it didn't come close to living up to my expectations

Trolls have always been my favorite race so I was excited that a troll character was going to get some attention in a novel. I feel like Micheal Stockpole(the author) really didn't have much knowledge about world of warcraft at all. I mean the book is supposed to highlight the united troll empire and the Drakkari weren't mentioned once... ugh and there were so many awkward lines like "Vol'jin fought fiercely and Chen used his breath of fire" then chen's breath of fire is never mentioned again. I just couldn't get into the book. Now I get some of the Vol'jin as warchief hate which makes me sad because he could have been a much more interesting character.

Prior to this the warcraft book I least enjoyed was Wolfheart, mostly because I'm a horde fan and I found it a bit cheesy. But ya enough of my rant, what about you guys? What did you think of the Vol'jin novel? and what Warcraft novel did you least enjoy?

[GutsTheWarrior]

You have some legitimate gripes about Shadows of the Horde but I was surprised with how much I ended up enjoying it. The entire book was basically character development for Vol'jin as well as a lot of inner struggle.

On topic I've enjoyed most of the Warcraft books I've read but I haven't read them all and have generally avoided ones I didn't think I would enjoy. That being said the one I least enjoyed was Dawn of the Aspects: Part I. Between the release model and the actions of the book being so long in the past that they didn't really affect anything.

[Vintersol]

Hadn't read the vol'jin novel, but the day of the dragon was pretty lame too. The best ones for me are: Lord of the Clans and the last guardian.

[Aeula]

Stormrage (or whatever that book with the dream shit was) and most of the war of the ancients series.
Only books of knacks I liked are the 'of the dragon' books and the recent proto drake one.
May be bias with the 'of the dragon' books though, due to them being my first.
Loved rise of the horde and the second (post scourge) part of blood of the highborne, bloody brilliant short story stuck full of lore, especially for role players.

[Aurabolt]

Arthas: Rise of the Lich King.

No further explaination necessary.

I loved War of the Ancients while most didn't like it because of the large role Rhonin played opposite Broxicar, who are flung back in time for some unexplained reason.

[xskarma]

I think that the books have gotten generally better as time went on. I read some of the early books and those are no more then simplistic action stories, with flat characters, limited creativity and sometimes ludicrous plot twists. All the newer books I've read, including Stormrage and Wolfheart are MUCH better. We've not had anything like the Rhonin Raptor army in the latest few books, as an example.

[GRYMLAWK]

I probably just expected too much from it since I am really into the troll lore I found the whole thing pretty lacking, I just feel like they could have done so much more with developing Vol'jin, Chen and Taran zhu... I guess if they keep developing Vol'jin in future books it wont be too bad.

I haven't read the Dawn of the ancients one yet... for me the dragon books are the ones I generally skip

- - - Updated - - -

Your probably right about that, I haven't reread the old books since I first started reading the series. I really enjoyed the tides of war novel and I am looking forward to start reading war crimes for sure.

[Zaelsino]

Night of the Dragon is probably my least favourite. It didn't keep my attention; the heroes were uninteresting, the villains were too over-the-top evil, the solution was a lot to buy, etc. I didn't enjoy it at all. Kind of sad, since Day of the Dragon was actually okay, and Wolfheart was fine too.

I think Blood of the Highborne is my favourite, if novellas count. Otherwise, Rise of the Lich King. Yeah, it's essentially a recap, but I liked getting into Arthas, Jaina, and Sylvanas' heads.

[Orby]

The War of the Ancients Trilogy... I usually struggle through most things Knaak related but that book certainly took the biscuit. While I would have loved to have had a book about the actual War of the Ancients, what I didn't need was time traveling mages involved.

Plus Knaak is really bad at trying to invest me in Night Elf culture, I just don't think he cant write Night Elves very well, they come off as too human, I am not getting any cultural impact through his writing. I want to belive I am in this Night Elf setting.

Take "Wolfheart", Night elves are portrayed very human, and i find it so unbelieveable that Night Elves, 'masters at stealth and the being attuned to the forest' were over run and easily outmatched by Garrosh's forces in Ashenvale. The Night elves came off as amateurs and the forest didn't feel like it was apart of the Night Elves but rather something alien to them as if it was just some random forest that they felt no connection too... if that makes any sense?

On a plus one thing I like about Knaak is his expansion of Dragon lore in WoW, its brilliant and if he wrote books on humans and dragoons It'd be amazing which is why I enjoyed Day/Night of the Dragon more than any of his other books.

But War of the Ancients, Wolfheart and Stormrage probably my worst books.

[wych]

Night of the Dragon - Raptor army, Rhonin Mary Sue. Nothing else needs to be said

War Crimes - the first 90% of the book (Windrunner sisters aside) is mostly recapping previous events and is incredibly formulaic and repetitive. The last 10% reads like poor fanfiction

The rest are very good though.

[McNeil]

Arthas: Rise of the Lich King.

No further explaination necessary.

I think you do need to explain that, I find it one of the better Warcraft books.

My least favorite has to be either the Thrall book or Stormrage.

[Elynis]

I actually couldn't stand Wolfheart or Stormrage. I don't know if it was because the formatting on my ereader was just NOPE or if it was just the epitome of bad Knaak writing coupled with a ridiculous amount of location swaps in rapid succession.

I loved Shadows of the Horde, and I actually liked War Crimes too, mostly due to the surprise character snipe near the end.

[xChurch]

Warcrimes.

[Bathory]

I expected more from War Crimes, especially since it was the setting for the highly anticipated Windrunner reunion. It fell so flat for me after waiting for so long.
"Hey sister"
"ohey"
"lets jump right into that thing without catching up at all"
"k"

I had a feeling the book would go on and on and be resolved in the last few pages, and sadly I was correct. I liked what it did for the lore, but who knew the leaders of Azeroth were so well versed in law. To me, it seemed like Golden was trying to recreate a courtroom from OUR world in picturesque fashion, but because of that fact, the trial seemed out of place in the WoW setting.


That said, I didn't really like the earlier books. These later books have been ok.

[Ciddy]

Stormrage. I never could even finish it. I don't know why, but it just couldn't keep me interested. I got through about 4 chapters, put it back on my bookshelf, and haven't touched it since.

Last Guardian and Rise of the Lich King were my favorites. Last Guardian was my first, and it was what got me started on the Warcraft books. I think I loved Rise of the Lich King so much because I was a WC3 player back in the day and got pretty attached to the major characters (Arthas, Jaina, Sylvanas, etc) from the Arthas/Scourge story.

I'm going to pick up War Crimes soon, I think. Can't recall ever having disliked any of the Christie Golden books, so it has that going for it.

[Stormdash]

The Vol'jin novel was really lacking to me. "Stormrage" just went way off the rails -- even as a Warcraft novel it blew the doors off suspension of disbelief. I wanted more from "War Crimes", but average Golden is still top shelf for Warcraft novels.

[Adrianoz]

Rise of the Horde; so boring, short and superficial, too bad since the outlined plot is quite interesting.

To be honest, the short stories are much more well-made than the majority of the oldschool novels, the newer novels however are better.

[Elynis]

Rise of the Horde; so boring, short and superficial, too bad since the outlined plot is quite interesting.

To be honest, the short stories are much more well-made than the majority of the oldschool novels, the newer novels however are better.

The short stories are far better at getting inside the characters head, and since they're short, you don't have to worry about nonsense foofoo space wasting between events. The longer novels are meant for depicting larger/longer incidents that involve more characters, hence the greater likelihood of nonsense foofoo to string the events together.

That should be the banner Rhonin carries in Night of the Dragon with his raptor army. Giant flag with 'NONSENSE FOOFOO" in big bold letters.

[Attackrabbit]

They're all pretty terrible to be honest

[heartless8604]

The book devoted to gnomes, because it doesn't exist. Truthfully, most of the night elf lore books have been boring to me. They just have really boring lore. Most alliance have boring lore, they refuse to give alliance any depth of character. They're almost entirely un-relate able.