I'll buy this one eventually...because I eventually buy them all, since they're the major out of game sources of controlling Lore and I'm the Loremaster/officer in charge of roleplaying for my guild. That being said...

In my real life, I have in the past written professionally published table top roleplaying game fiction novels. I can say, with absolute certainty, that the comments upthread about everything in these novels being either requested or approved by Blizzard is, broadly speaking, true. I can also say that some writers are likely to get more leeway than others when it comes to approval for such things, depending on the level of confidence the game developers have in the skills and ideas of the writer in question, and how much "give" there is with regard to the structure of the metaplot elements that need to be clearly communicated in a fictional work.

"The Shattering" read, to me, like the sort of work that didn't have a lot of creative room to maneuver -- and that probably would have been the same for *any* writer selected to handle it. There was too much *plot* that needed to happen in that book in order to help define the post-Shattering world (of Warcraft) and so the pacing and, oh gods yes, the *characterization* suffered pretty obviously. Pretty horribly, too. I do not ship Thrall/Jaina but, even so, I felt that the "burgeoning romance" between Thrall and Aggra didn't so much "burgeon" as have a giant pink flashing sign over it that reads "and then Thrall and Aggra fell in love because the plot says so." For the record: I felt the same about Rhonin and Vereesa Windrunner, and I would like to officially nominate whoever wrote the Asric and Jadaar dialogue in-game to henceforth be assigned to ghostwrite any scene where the characters are supposed to be engaging in belligerent sexual tension. Because *neither* Golden nor Knaak can write a convincing romance so save their damned lives, much less succeed in making me believe two characters who have physically palpable contempt/antagonism for each other are actually, secretly, in their innermost heart of hearts really in love. The closest I came to believing a romantic plot in any of their books was Arthas and Jaina. WTB someone who can actually present Blizzard's Big Important Romantic Relationships in a convincing and emotionally compelling way.

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