Seconded. I enjoyed "Arthas", but I loved "Lord of the Clans"; I'm currently reading "Rise of the Horde" as part of a mega-tome of WoW books I got for cheap when my local Borders was going out of business. @_@ But "Rise" is awesome, great orcish and draenei lore, and Ms. Golden works the in-game things into the world very well.

@Mused:

She should, considering that several lore elements in the book were created by Golden, and then Blizzard loved them so much they decided to give her the okay, make them canon, and work them into TBC.

@Mused:

I agree her earlier work was good, but Arthas was...lacking. Especially after he grew up, I honestly would've been better off reading a plot summary of Warcraft 3 (and TFT) rather than the novel.

Really, the best bit of Arthas was the new stuff about him being young. Everything else was just the game's story with a bit more waffle.

I'll be really sad if Thrall is like that, but we'll see. I'll probably buy it just to pledge my support for her rather than Knaak.

@Dril: I'm with you, I really don't understand people's love affair with the Arthas novel. Maybe Night of the Dragon left such a bad taste in people's mouths that anything looked amazing in comparison? In addition to being little more than a quick rehash of WC3, I also took issue with the pointless retconning and some of Golden's characterization choices (her portrayal of the Kael/Arthas/Jaina triangle and Kael in general was Knaakian levels of awful, but I did like his banter with Arthas despite the pointlessness of that duel). I was hugely disappointed by that book for the most part.

The Shattering was Golden back to form, imo, but for the from-left-field/largely off-screen development of Thrall and Aggra's relationship. Thing is, I'm going to blame her editors for that. The biggest problem with this one (and the Arthas novel, the DK manga, and most of the halfway decent WC extended universe works) is they always feel really rushed. You can almost feel the invisible hand shoving the author along so the story comes in under a certain page count acceptable to the bean counters. Every novel doesn't have to be the size of Half-Blood Prince or anything, but sometimes you just need time to tell a story properly.