4.0
Sylvanas (World of Warcraft)
By Christie GoldenPublisher Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The epic, definitive story of Sylvanas Windrunner, one of World of Warcraft’s most enduring and iconic characters, as chronicled by bestselling author Christie Golden.
Ranger-General. Banshee Queen. Warchief. Sylvanas Windrunner has borne many titles. To some, she is a hero—to others, a villain. But whether in pursuit of justice, vengeance, or something more, Sylvanas has always sought to control her own destiny.
The power to achieve her goals has never been closer, as Sylvanas works alongside the Jailer to liberate all Azeroth from the prison of fate. Her final task? Secure the fealty of their prisoner—King Anduin Wrynn.
To succeed, Sylvanas will be forced to reflect on the harrowing path that brought her to the Jailer’s side and to reveal her truest self to her greatest rival. Here, Sylvanas’s complete story is laid bare: the breaking of the Windrunner family and her rise to Ranger- General; her own death at the hands of Arthas and her renewed purpose in founding the Forsaken; the moment she first beheld the Maw and understood the true consequences of what lay beyond the veil of death.
But as her moment of victory draws near, Sylvanas Windrunner will make a choice that may ultimately come to define her. A choice that’s hers to make.
Ranger-General. Banshee Queen. Warchief. Sylvanas Windrunner has borne many titles. To some, she is a hero—to others, a villain. But whether in pursuit of justice, vengeance, or something more, Sylvanas has always sought to control her own destiny.
The power to achieve her goals has never been closer, as Sylvanas works alongside the Jailer to liberate all Azeroth from the prison of fate. Her final task? Secure the fealty of their prisoner—King Anduin Wrynn.
To succeed, Sylvanas will be forced to reflect on the harrowing path that brought her to the Jailer’s side and to reveal her truest self to her greatest rival. Here, Sylvanas’s complete story is laid bare: the breaking of the Windrunner family and her rise to Ranger- General; her own death at the hands of Arthas and her renewed purpose in founding the Forsaken; the moment she first beheld the Maw and understood the true consequences of what lay beyond the veil of death.
But as her moment of victory draws near, Sylvanas Windrunner will make a choice that may ultimately come to define her. A choice that’s hers to make.
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4.0
MeganFunk
Created 3 months agoShare
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Tyler (Liridor)
Created 5 months agoShare
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“Initially when I set out to read and collect the Warcraft books I'd intended to grade them on a curve. The only one I'd read to date was Before the Storm, a book with clear promise that was terribly stifled by its purpose: bridging a gap. Jumping from character to character, its course determined likely before she had even begun drafting the novel. The arc of Sylvanas' story also, in re-reading the novel after having finished both Battle for Azeroth and Shadowlands, at least partially obscured from its author.
This book was everything I'd hoped for and more. This isn't just a good adaptation, it's an incredible story by its own right. The first half (if you discount the story's framing) is so meticulous in its introduction to Sylvanas' early years, her connections, in her discovering more and more of the world through her own eyes is a book I would recommend to any of my friends with even a distant taste for fantasy without hesitation. Once we get into Warcraft III's events and beyond, however, it does really glide along in a way anybody unfamiliar with the game's storyline would find too disjointed to follow.
Because of this, I'd almost thought of kicking the rating down a bit. The story to that point had, with immense care and consideration, added pathos to a character the game had seemingly set out to sap of much of her nuance and agency. World of Warcraft's writing team has a habit of taking full characters, placing them in the position of primary antagonist and whittling away as much of their ambiguity as possible as not to confuse most of their player base as to who the good guys and the bad guys are.
With this book Christie Golden clearly not only attempted to provide pathos to Sylvanas' decisions to the current point in the story -- deftly, she almost entirely succeeds. There are moments where I could feel the strain of her trying to justify bizarre beats the game had made at varying points in the Banshee Queen's story but ultimately felt like she came out immensely successful to the point it finally put to rest most of my frustrations with the handling of the character. While there's no way to change the way her narrative arc was handled in the games I can apply this retroactively through sheer force of will.
The game tried to push hard toward the end of Shadowlands (likely in response to their own really poorly received storytelling) that she wasn't totally responsible for her own callous and cruel actions after her domination by the Lich King, something about her soul being splintered and different aspects of her spirit compartmentalized (or something like that?). The book doesn't let her off so easily, often really tactfully showcasing at key emotional beats that she wasn't as divested of human emotion as she'd like to have believed. Rather, once she'd become embittered and no longer had anyone to temper her rage she "made life [her] enemy."
Genuinely tremendous, I shouldn't have written this review so exhausted and in a single draft the moment I put the book down but I just had to say that I'm so wildly impressed. While I wish we could have seen the same attention paid in the first half of the book to the sections between her enslavement under Arthas and her meeting the Jailer I can understand why she might not have felt it necessary to linger (especially with her literally having written that particular story already, the deeper examination of the foundational lore of the MMO).
If it weren't for the awkward pacing through the center and the framing that'd be utterly baffling for anyone not already familiar with the game's story I would be an absolute zealot for this one.”
Kory Morgan
Created 5 months agoShare
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Kasia Kakol
Created 6 months agoShare
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Robert Rudd
Created 6 months agoShare
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About Christie Golden
Christie Golden is the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of fifty-six books and more than a dozen short stories in the fields of fantasy, science fiction, and horror. Her media tie-in works include her first novel, Vampire of the Mists, which launched TSR’s game line; more than a dozen Star Trek novels; the Fate of the Jedi novels Omen, Allies, and Ascension as well as the standalone novels Dark Disciple and Battlefront II: Inferno Squad. For Blizzard Entertainment, she’s contributed five StarCraft novels, including the Dark Templar trilogy, and the Warcraft/World of Warcraft books Lord of the Clans, Rise of the Horde, Arthas: Rise of the Lich King, War Crimes, Before the Storm, and Exploring Azeroth: Eastern Kingdoms. In 2017, she was awarded the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers Faust Award and named a Grandmaster in recognition of thirty years of writing. She currently works full-time for Blizzard Entertainment, where she frequents Azeroth on a regular basis.
Other books by Christie Golden
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