@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.