Actually, most of the problem I had with Arthas was the complete lack of any mention of the Emperor Penguin, which Arthas clearly dispatched with great vigor in the game.

To be fair though, she couldn't really write about Arthas' rise to power /without/ talking about the relevant W3 missions, after all that, there is only so much time (in game) or space (in the book) to create your own content. As someone who hadn't (and still hasn't- bad me) played W3 at all, it was all new, and fairly well written. Since Twilight of the Aspects doesn't really have anything beyond a questline or two connecting it to the game- and those don't take much time (ignoring the mat farming) she has the vast majority of the book with which to fill with her own ideas and new happenings.

I think you're missing the point of the book. Sure the events are mostly from WC3, but from playing the game, I didn't get a sense of why he did what he did. He just seemed to turn evil overnight. The book did an outstanding job explaining his character development little by little, and how he could, for a moment, justify burning Stratholme, etc. Things are not as black and white as we see in the games (WC and WoW), but much more complicated than that, and the book explained it well.

I always thought Stratholme was a fascinating story, and one where Arthas made a terrible choice that was still the right thing to do, because he was right. Uther, Jaina, they were WRONG, and if they'd stood by Arthas, he might have survived his own harrowing with his soul largely intact.

My biggest problem with Stratholme is that he slaughtered innocents. They were going to become scourge but he was killing innocent people that didn't know why their prince was doing so. He did what he did the wrong thing for the right reasons. Being a hero and doing what's right it's nearly as black and white as we'd like it to be. Who knew that a zombie story had a moral?

I have to agree with the other replies: As published, Arthas was a great framework for a novel, but it needed to be fleshed out. The Shattering was better, although it, too, suffered from a bit too much "k, so this happened, then we ran here and this happened and then…."

There nothing wrong with a story being written on rails, but it needs to be crafted well enough that it doesn't *feel* like it's on rails. It's the difference between Tom Clancy's "The Hunt for Red October" (fantastic book with rereadability) and "Debt of Honor" (linear, plodding, and predictable).

@Arrohan: That's the whole point. it was a terrible, horrible thing. But it needed to be done. What alternative was there? Let the whole city be scourged? The entire nation would have been overrun in days or weeks.

The horror of a situation like that is the moment when someone has to be sacrificed for everyone else: The needs of the many and so on.

My problem with the Shattering was the whole resolution between Varian and Moira.

"Dad, you have no say in dwarven politics!"

"Here's what you dwarves are going to do."

"Okay. "

Yes, Arthas slaughtered innocents, but Uther and Jaina ran away from a difficult decision and left those innocents to die. Just as they abandoned Arthas to his decision, they abandoned the inhabitants of Stratholme to both Arthas and Mal'Ganis.

Ilmyrn, the point is that you simply can't operate on that kind of logic. That kind of logic makes dictatorships and police states and pogroms. Uther and Jaina weren't wrong--committing an atrocity to prevent an atrocity doesn't make it right...

The people of Stratholm were sick and didn't know it. What do you do when people are sick, cannot be cured, and are a danger to those not sick? Quarantine. They had a small army with them already. They could've quarantined them into manageable groups and call for reinforcements to help. Once they turned into scourge they would be killed. They would be guarded until they turned and they would be in smaller groups so they couldn't zerg them. They likely wouldn't turn all at the same time either so they could take them out one or five at a time. When others saw what they would become they might want to die before they do. Those that wanted to die could be given a quick poison so they could die without pain and not become monsters. I know that if this would've hurt gameplay in not only Warcraft 3 but WoW as well.