Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I'll get the mildly amusing okay thing out of the way: Zekhan is referred to as zappy boy by Bwonsamdi. Bringing an internet meme into the book isn't great for immersion, but it was kind of funny. I'm a sucker. Between my long investment in the game and my raiding guild, I keep playing WoW and I keep buying and reading the novels so I can find out what happens next. There are occasional gems like Vol'jin and Illidan, but mostly, they're mediocre (most of Christie Golden's stuff) to bad (a lot of Richard Knaack's stuff). The mediocre ones get the job done of moving the story along and giving us some insight into upcoming events, but that's about all they do. The bad ones assassinate characters and have events that just make no sense, not in our world and not in Azeroth. This is one of those. Spoiler warning, as it's hard to talk about much of the badness without at least some. Jaina is a mewling version of her pre-Cata self. When she'd just come off working with Thrall and he was in charge, her peace loving ways made sense. They haven't made sense since Theramore's bombing, however, and setting her back to square one is ridiculous. Turalyon holds people down with chains of light while Alleria mind rapes them with the void. That's totally within their characters, right? Right? Talanji has a vendetta against everyone, including the rest of the Horde, because of Jaina's involvement in the siege of Dazar'Alor. Her being mad at Jaina makes sense...but putting the blame solely on Jaina does not. And expecting a reeling Horde to invade Kul Tiras with almost no ships and decimated armies does not make sense. Her empire almost gets overthrown by the actions of less than forty trolls (forty being the number that they reach after a great deal of success and recruitment through the novel) and twenty dark rangers. She can only field an army of forty against those troll rebels. The Horde as a whole can only send her forty orcs, tauren, trolls, and nightborne to support her. But she expect an invasion of the Alliance (nevermind that the numbers involved here make no sense whatsoever at all). Tyrande is a woman and she is angry, so she is treated as an unreasonable, crazy bitcah. Women cannot be angry in the Warcraft universe without being treated as unreasonable, crazy bitcahs, and we see that trend continue now. Jaina is nice and peace loving, so she's no longer treated as crazy. Maiev, someone whose actions in the past have been genuinely crazy, and someone who is a murderer of her own people, is nice and reasonable now and trying to stop the Unreasonable Crazy Tyrande from being unreasonable and crazy. Shandris Feathermoon, who was blood-thirsty and seeking revenge through the whole of the war campaign in BfA, is magically no longer angry and so she too is not unreasonable and crazy and has to try to stop Unreasonable Crazy Tyrande. Because you know, when most of your people have been massacred, it is clearly crazy to be angry. Argh, this book made me so mad. It was so actively bad. Unless you're a sucker like me and buy this stuff when it comes out, regardless of the badness, you should avoid it. Since they're so concerned with not having things happen in the novels that aren't explained in game, nothing interesting happens (nevermind that this sort of thing could be an introduction to stuff that we then see happen in the expansion when it comes out in four months) and a lot of what happens doesn't make sense. It's honestly baffling how bad it is. I haven't read her Traveler stuff, but the short story the author wrote about Lor'themar and Thalyssra a couple of months ago was awesome. This novel, though, was trash.