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1. Haggerty says

   Having enjoyed the first WoW comic relatively well, I was looking forward to this new collection coming out in HC format. Having read the comic now, I’m not really sure it was worth the wait.

   The book itself is about 170 pages in length, and it definitely suffers from the lack of pages. Much of the action is muddled (a complaint echoed in the first book as well) and it feels like the plot and script is just an annoyance getting in the way of the artists wanting to draw really high action scenes.

   The main storyline still revolves around Varian Wrynn – whom we met as Lo’Gosh in book one – attempting to reclaim the throne of Stormwind. However, there is an usurper who looks just like him already in Stormwind. There’s some sort of mish-mash with Defias and Dark Iron Dwarves mixed in, but when you boil it down, this is the story that’s supposed to go along with the Onyxia raid. There’s also a half-hearted attempt to keep a side story running with Broll Bearmantle and Valeera Sanguinar (Valeera essentially plays the roll of a drug addict, and Broll her “AA Sponsor” trying to keep her clean) but it’s only mentioned when convenient and used as a plot device rather than an actual storyline.

   The art is still very clean, but it feels like a step down from Book One. The pencils and inks feel a lot looser and less detailed, the lines much thicker, and much of the slack is left to be picked up by the colorist (to be fair, the coloring is gorgeous). Also, as mentioned above, the layout is very poorly done – you’ll often be looking at a scene that is the middle of a giant battle, some critical event happens that the characters are all yelling about, and you’ll do a double/triple-take on the previous panels and still have no idea what supposedly happened.

   Book 2 is worth getting if you’re simply looking to finish up the story left in Book 1, but on its own neither the art nor the story is really worth the $20 cover price.

   November 4, 2009, 2:53 am
2. Dow says

   It’s a good read if your a Warcraft fan, if not you might not like it.

   November 4, 2009, 8:25 am
3. Terrell says

   I love the atlas, its a great tool. When it came it was very well made. If you are thinking about purchasing this do it, its a great product. Everyone else is just upset it took so long to ship.

   With digging you would be able to find the information on the internet but this is made for you, and its on nice paper, and nicely bound. The book even smelled fresh when it came. I mean I opened it and it woof.. freshly processed paper. My teenage brother loves it too, maybe I’ll get him one.

   November 4, 2009, 3:12 pm
4. Pyle says

   For the love of Pete! The release date for this book is nearly a year passed due and I get (yet again) another approval for order delay from Amazon. Boy, Brady sure has lost a ton of money from the sale of this book. From the forums & blogs, it appears that MANY players now feel the book is obsolete, especially since they have already reached level 80 & have fully explored Northrend. There is no reason for such a long delay in this book’s release, it’s not like there is a lot of fine detailing that goes into one of these atlases & there hasn’t been any really major Northrend area updates (except maybe Uladar). Even then it shouldn’t matter that much since they released the BC atlas without Shadowmoon Valley & Quel’Danas. This is really, really sad & not good business practices.

   November 4, 2009, 8:28 pm
5. Landsberg says

   Anything Brady could potentially place into this book is already available, free of charge, from a plethora of wikis and websites which are continually updated to ensure their accuracy as Blizzard updates the content. Going all the way back to Everquest, static atlases for MMOs have been a terrible waste of time and I don’t forsee this being any different.

   November 5, 2009, 2:28 am
6. Grayson says

   I have loved all their atlas’s. The book had all the basic info you look up all the time and its in one spot without searching the web and I love the detailed city maps. People seem to complain that its not something it was never intended to be. Sure you can get a lot of the into all over the web. I prefer to pull out my atlas’s to quickly and concisely find what I need. The travel routes alone were worth it to me! Large hardbound color book fro $13? Its awesome!

   Nancy
   Level 77 Human Mage

   November 5, 2009, 8:28 am
7. Gleason says

   Brady needs to get thier act together. Accepting pre-orders in October for a product that they don’t ship until the end of July is totally unacceptable. Surely someone at Brady realizes 10 months delay is reputation damaging…

   I had sort of hoped that the extensive delays were due to Brady wanting to include maps from the Ulduuar raiding instance but that hope proved misplaced.

   The Atlas itself is well made, easy to read and navigate, just like all of Brady’s previous WoW atlases, BUT the continual delays in production and shipping have considerably cheapened the product and decreased its rating. If Brady had shipped within a reasonable amount of time this rating would be a 4-5 star instead of the 1-2 star rating I elected to give it.

   Come on Brady… get your act together!!!

   November 5, 2009, 2:36 pm
8. Quicksall says

   I would give this zero star if I had the option.

   First to address the pros: The story did follow the lore pretty well and Christine Golden did a pretty good job holding the novel together while Rosenger tore it apart. The pacing of the story was very good and it would be a pretty good and engaging book if not for the blatan short comings.

   Now to the cons: Like the previous book Rosenberg wrote, the story is terribly one sided. The author fails to show the intelligence of the orcs and never chose to write any major casualties of the alliance in a WAR. After playing the game, I know there are major victories in the actual lore. Rosenberg presents the orcs as mere infants with twigs.

   Nearly every page you read orcs getting slaughtered left and right. He never really specified how many orcs there are and so it’s incredibly hard to picture in your head how many they have left because every battle orcs die by what seems like the hundreds. I think by his account the orcs actually ended up with a proud army of -5502,231 instead of 0. It is nothing more than a mere, poorly written summary of what actually happened.

   Unfortunately, Christine Golden’s involvement in the story was not able to raise the low score and terribly predictable plot. The characters are not developed.

   If Aaron Rosenberg is reading this review I humbly suggest you read a real warcraft author named Richard Knack. Or even read the works of your co-author. Rise of the horde and War of the ancients should get you started.

   November 5, 2009, 8:33 pm
9. Crowley says

   Beyond the Dark Portal is probably the novel that most resembles World of Warcraft: in it, the Alliance vastly outnumbers the Horde at every turn, easily dispatches them and slaughters their soldiers and heroes, and still claims moral outrage when an orc actually manages to hurt one of them. As any veteran of a WoW PVP server will tell you, this is remarkably true to the game’s experience.

   This premise does not make for a good work of fiction, however. The heroes of the Alliance consist of characters who any WoW player will already know are, for the most part, destined to survive the book, and if this weren’t enough to kill any dramatic tension in combat scenes, it is coupled with the fact that the Alliance. Always. Wins. Each time the orcs manage to gain some advantage, the Alliance easily counters it tenfold. The orcs take refuge in the ruins of Auchidoun, and find a few powerful allies? The Alliance recruits an army of dead draenei and reenacts the Battle of Pellenor Fields.

   Only in a single battle at the beginning does the Horde manage to win a fight, and even then, they fail to bring down anyone important. The Alliance, meanwhile, continually slaughters at least one important, likable, and sympathetic Horde hero with each clash, often in an anticlimactic manner. (See: Khadgar’s duel with Dentarg, Danath’s fight with Kilrogg, and the casual defeat of Kargath Bladefist, who isn’t even mentioned by name.)

   By the end of the book, I was amazed that there were still any orcs left on Draenor to eventually appear in WoW. Time and time again, they are slaughtered wholesale, and yet any time they manage to defend themselves, the Alliance characters (who are given de facto status as the heroes of this book) are horrified. Particularly egregious is Danath Trollsbane, a character I was begging the writers to kill. Early in the novel, he is not only willing but *eager* to torture an orc prisoner; however, later, when a friend of his has been subjected to such, he is utterly horrified. The hypocrisy is staggering, and I sincerely wish that the writers had included at least one character capable of calling these “heroes” on their bull.

   This is a story that could have been great, and was in the original game. A small band of soldiers and heroes, marching into a hostile, ruined world, alone and outnumbered, trying to put a stop to the orcish threat, exploring an alien landscape, meeting strange new foes and stranger allies, and all the while racing against the ticking clock of Ner’zul’s great ritual. Instead, we got a story about a massive army marching through a portal, crushing the pathetic remnants of the Horde, slaughtering their champions at every turn, and making the orcs look about as threatening as a battered kitten.

   Perhaps the sort of sadistic Alliance player who enjoys griefing in Hillsbrad will enjoy this book, but for the rest of us: there are better ways to kill time between flight paths.

   November 6, 2009, 2:17 am
10. Vermillion says

    This book by Christie Golden continues the process of “novelizing” the classic Warcraft II computer and its expansion, Beyond the Dark Portal. The story centers around the characters Khadgar, Turalyon, Alleria, and so forth, and tells the story of the human expedition to defeat the Orcs in Draenor once they threaten the world of Azeroth a second time.

    Golden, as in her earlier books, does a fairly good job of characterization. She tends a bit towards the “soft, misunderstood” side (she’s not that great at making complex “evil” characters), but generally tries to create a decent characterization for the purpose of the story.

    The weakness is in Golden’s execution of both the story and setting. Although Golden didn’t really have control over the sequence of events in either, it is really in her descriptions that the story shows its weakness. Golden is not great at describing either battles or greater strategic warfare within this novel, but more to the point, she fails to capture the SIZE and grandeur of the conflict. Remember, this is a war that devastated the greater part of a CONTINENT, in epic battles of warfare and magic – yet with Golden, you never really get a good feel for its size and scope.

    I would strongly suggest you get this from a library first, before deciding on whether or not to buy it. Golden is a decent author, but she is clearly not the best within the Warcraft novel genre – that belongs to Jeff Grubb.

    November 6, 2009, 9:02 am
11. Pruitt says

    A very good read, offering a wealth of background information to the World of Warcraft enthusiast.

    November 6, 2009, 2:38 pm
12. Lister says

    This book is awesome, and Christie Golden is probably the best WoW lore writer around.

    November 6, 2009, 8:22 pm
13. Naus says

    A fantastic Warcraft-lore read. It gives insight into not only the history of the orcs and the origins of the Horde, but the Draenei as well (and their flight from Argus).

    Seeing Draenor/Outland prior to the events in the “World of Warcraft” was a treat as well. Oshu’gun, the Temple of Karabor (aka the Black Temple) are just a few places covered.

    With periodic narrations by Thrall and featuring characters like Velen, Durotan, Orgrim Doomhammer and Kil’Jaeden, it’s chock full of Warcrafty goodness.

    The characterizations were largely solid, though one may find themselves questioning the validity of some decisions (“Why yes, I think we shall imbibe of this demon blood. Capital idea if I may say so!”) made by the key players. Of course, with a continuity mostly in place prior to being written, the author had to work with and around what was already established as canon.

    Regardless of that hiccup, this book is a mandatory read for anyone interested in Warcraft lore, especially time periods preceeding the “World of Warcraft” game’s setting.

    November 7, 2009, 2:25 am
14. Franken says

    I got this book a few weeks ago, mostly just for something to read while on Amtrak going home for break. Basically I just wanted to read something quick and easy, and most of these “Based off of…” books are quick reads, so i thought I pick this one up and to my pleasant surprise this was a DAMN good book. The author Christie Golden, whom wrote another Warcraft book I enjoyed, Lord of the Clans, writes this great and tragic story of how a Noble race fell from grace and became a force of destruction because of their own inability to think for themselves and to be led blindly. The book is filled with touching, and emotional scenes, mostly concerning the main character, whom most of the book talks about, Durotan, as he finds himself stuck between duty to his people and what he knows is right in his heart. SPOILER: One of the most particularly well written scenes in this book is when the horde overruns the Dranei city of Telmor, and Durotan see’s the brutality of the new orcs and the wrongs they are doing but he knows in his heart he must obey orders or die because of Gul’dan’s orders. He watches as Orcs kill Dranei men, women, and children, and Golden’s writing really shows here the pain this character feels is heart as he watches this happen and when he has to do it himself. By far the best Warcraft book I have read, and probably one of my all time faves ever as well.

    November 7, 2009, 8:56 am

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