Amazing stories that expand on the lore of the actual games. A must have for any fan of the franchise. ( )

Disappointing. I really, really wish I could say otherwise, as I'm a huge Warcraft fan and I given a good amount of my time and money to the franchise, but what I loved about the games, particularly WoW, was almost entirely missing in this anthology. The narration was nothing special. It detailed the lore of the Warcraft universe for people who are interested but didn't ignite in me the excitement of the setting or interest in the characters. And some of these characters I have been interested in for almost five years now. That's a failure in my opinion.

The writing is also on par with most of the fan fiction I can read online. In fact I have read better online. I've spent hours of my day glued to my chair reading some anonymous author spinning a tale of such magic that immediately after I rush to the game, trying to grasp some of that wonder for myself. The stories in this book did none of that for me. I actually became less interested in some of the biggest names in the game, like Thrall, who was humble, honorable, and strong without fail for a hundred something pages.

Since each of the four stories were written by different authors, they all had their own unique faults.

Day of the Dragon might as well have been an Adventure Fantasy mad lib. Characters that did not previously exist in canon popped up, which is itself no great sin, but they added nothing to the lore and were about as dull as can be.

Lord of the Clans was decent enough, but felt constricted by the fact that the main character, Thrall, is one of the biggest characters in the game. It's like reading a book knowing that they guy is going to get the girl in the end and realizing that in this case it -isn't- the voyage that matters. There was constant re-establishment of character, but no real crisis. This makes sense, since the big stuff belongs in the game, but it still means as a stand alone work it is lacking.

The Last Guardian was the most interesting plot wise. There was some mystery, a little bit of pity drawn out for poor Medivh, and the characters had some personality to them. The writing however was the worst out of the four stories in the anthology. A thesaurus was badly abused in its writing. I could not get into it because the words did not flow at all. The choice of point of view was also unfortunate. The most interesting aspect of The Last Guardian is Medivh's struggle with the demon that inhabits his body, and the reader is exposed to none of it. Instead we follow an apprentice as he wonders wtf is up with this crazy guy for 90% of the plot.

Of Blood and Honor is Metzen's offering to the collection, and is the most readable of all of them. It is the only book in where there is internal conflict on the part of the main character. It is the only story where there is any sense of loss, or any difficult decision to be made. It is also the only story that left me more interested in a lore character after I finished it. Metzen's writing skills are not epic, but they are passable, and unlike some of his peers he does not sprain a brain trying to do literary acrobatics that are far beyond him, and so saves himself the embarrassment of falling flat on his face for all to see.

Still, I think I will stick to online fan fic for my Warcraft fix from now on. ( )

Review at http://silverpenpub.net/books/review-of-warcraft-archive ( )

Day of the Dragon - Richard A. Knaak

I approached this with some trepidation. It's the first Warcraft book I've read, and I was expecting it to be woeful. It wasn't woeful at all, I'm happy to say -- in terms of quality, a pretty average novelization-type book. I dearly wish that it had been about characters I care more about (I knew nothing about Falstad, Rhonin, and Vereesa Windrunner going in, and had only a marginal familiarity with the dragons), but on the other hand, it certainly makes seeing those characters in WoW more meaningful! Of course, there was a harried, rushed, love-at-first-sight relationship (why why WHY does every relationship in every book have to look like that? Why?), but I think ultimately the rest of the book made up for it. The dragons were wonderful, dynamic characters, and it was super-cool to see Malygos in his batshit crazy insane days. Perhaps I didn't read closely enough, but I do wonder about those eggs Deathwing was trying to steal. Are those who I think they are?