Day of the Dragon

Let's get this straight. I love WarCraft. I love its lore, derivative as it is. I even love Chris Metzen, even after everything he's done to us fans. But I do not love this book. At all.

Let's start off with Mr. Knaak. I have nothing in particular against him, of course, but his writing? Appalling. His language somehow manages to be both simplistic and awkward, with little to no emotional investment. He grabs a hold of particular phrases and doesn't like to let go - "the latter" seems to feature most heavily in his collection of works, though in this particular creation he's taken a specific liking to "to his/her credit". Needless to say, this gets extremely annoying. His action sequences are perhaps his only redeeming feature, and even show more they left me yawning, as I never had any doubt that our intrepid adventurers would emerge from them alive, though perhaps injured enough to create drama (but safe enough to prevent them being inhibited on their adventure).

Now, I know it can't be easy to write a decent book in someone else's brainchild world, but I do know it's possible. Unfortunately, that doesn't appear to be the case for Mr. Knaak. The lead character, Rhonin, immediately puts me in mind of the hero from the cult classic "The Eye of Argon" - a swarthy, red-headed man with anger management problems and a complete social ineptitude that seems to be consistently and regretfully overseen by his fellow cast members. I can't help but feel he's exactly what Mr. Knaak wishes he could be. Falstad, the gruff dwarf who's surely destined to be head of his clan, is a bit of a non-entity; apart from falling vainly in love with Rhonin's love interest and flying a superawesome gryphon, I can't recall him doing overmuch. Krasus was two-dimensional. And Vereesa... oh, Vereesa.

In WarCraft lore, the Windrunners are a fairly kick-ass family. There's the eldest sister, Alleria, who was part of an expedition of several who sacrificed themselves to save the world. She always struck me as fairly sensible. Then there's the middle child, Sylvanas, who was one of the stars of WarCraft 3; among other things, she captained the last stand to save her homeland, was brought back from the dead to become queen of the banshees, rebelled against an all-powerful overmind, and founded a nation of free-thinking undead who, for good or evil, are gaining the trust of the Good Guys. She's one of my favourite game characters of all time, and she kicks some serious ass. And then there's Vereesa, the youngest. From what I can tell, she's entirely Richard A. Knaak's creation; an elven woman with the Windrunner surname for no reason other than the cool factor. Throughout the book there are no references to her family or her people. All she does is charm the pants off the male ensemble and get in danger so that Rhonin can save her. Oh, there's a few moments where she looks like she could be useful, but she never does anything significant. They're token, throwaway remarks so that the book can have a Strong Capable Female. Her entire character makes me both immensely sad and immeasurably angry; why did Metzen allow this travesty?

The plot was nothing to write home about, either. In fact, I don't remember much of it. The romance was contrived and just plain stupid. I think we were meant to be surprised at Krasus' secret identity, and there was something about Khaz Modan being rescued. I don't know. I couldn't see through the haze of my ire. This is not a book indicative of the standards WarCraft can reach. Don't buy it. show less

Wow, shocker, a Warcraft book by Richard A. Knaak that got more than a one star rating from me. Seriously, I'm floored. Like, really. After suffering through his last couple WoW novels Wolfheart and Stormrage, I was starting to think I might just be a glutton for punishment when I picked up Day of the Dragon, but to my surprise, it wasn't that bad at all.

Granted, that might not mean much since I'm using my special video game tie-in novel scale to rate and review this book, so take my praise with a grain of salt. Still, speaking as someone who'd pretty much given up on Knaak, I couldn't believe how much I actually enjoyed this! And that's despite his extremely annoying obsession with always referring to his characters by their hair show more color/profession/relationship to another character/anything else other than using that character's damn name like a normal person. Honestly, if I had to read something along the lines of "flame-tressed wizard" one more time, I was going to /facedesk myself into a coma.

Krasus and Rhonin are far from being my favorite characters, but it was nice to finally read the book that introduced them. I was also hoping to see more of how the romance first blossomed between Rhonin and his beloved wife Vereesa Windrunner, but apart from touching upon the attraction they felt for each other, they didn't really "get close" until the very end and it was practically a footnote. I think that was my biggest disappointment, whereas everything else in the story was pretty much par for the course because I was already familiar with that part of Warcraft history.

Anyway, I think I read somewhere that this was the first ever Warcraft novel, though somehow the writing in it seemed far better than some of Knaak's newer stuff. Its publication date as well as its place in the lore of the game world is what mostly drove me to pick this one up, and even now I'm still slightly amazed that I don't regret it. show less

As much as I viewed this book as a simple dirty pleasure, it was actually entertaining I'd recommend it to people as a primer for WoW

As a World of Warcraft player from the days of its first launch, I made my mind p to read all the Warcraft books in order this. Not as easy as it sounds though as the original 4 are not cheap to get hold of; just an FYI if you're thinking of reading from book 1. I won't, however, be reading these back-to-back as I don't want to get burnt out on them, plus the hunting them to down, is part of the fun of reading them.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book after all... dragons. It was interesting to come across some of the two-legged characters that feature in the game too, and discover their origins (which I am sure will be covered more in-depth in later books).

5/5. Not just because I'm a Warcraft nut, but because the way this story just ascends! This is the first book I've decided to start reading under the Warcraft lore. I've played the game for about 7-8 years now and it's so awesome reading these characters to life that I've already come to know. Even if you're not a player of any of the Warcraft games or don't even know what it is, I'd still recommend it if you're in to fantasy/adventure. If you're wanting to get in to the Warcraft lore, there's so many forums out there that argue which book you should actually start out with. I've racked my brain and the one I chose to follow along with (because it made the most sense to me) was this one -->

http://wow.gamepedia.com/Novel_guide

Now you by show more no means have to follow this, but this is what I'm going by so I thought I'd share! Already grabbed the "second" book.. I tread lightly with these words.... and I can't wait to see where this one takes me next (while comparing Richard Knaak's writing with Christie Golden's)! show less

A decent by the numbers fantasy adventure. Noteworthy only in that it takes place in the universe of the popular computer game WarCraft.

Pretty good!! Looking forward to reading the next one :)