I just bought a Kindle paperwhite and started reading “City of Ember” books. I’m on the 3rd book and only have 1 more book to go before the series is done. I’m looking for something to start after I’m done with that series. Are the Warcraft books any good? There seems to be so many, it’s kinda daunting.
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The Warcraft books aren’t my cup of tea. I don’t dig the writing/writers.
Have you read Mistborn? Or Night Angel? Those are good fantasy series.
If you’re into sci fi and lots of action, I just finished the first Red Rising trilogy, and it was outstanding.
Most of Knaak’s books suck, imo. But there are other authors, too, and the lore is nice if you care about it.
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I have read almost all of them. For me, the War of the Ancients Trilogy by Richard Knaak is very good. They are:
The Well of Eternity
The Demon Soul
The Sundering
It is a flashback story with a few modern characters sent back in time by Nozdormu. They pivotal players in the first invasion of the Burning Legion. The stories lay the groundwork for basically everything we have experienced in Warcraft and WoW. They are also an excellent read if you have no idea what Warcraft is all about.
Stormrage, Day of the Dragon and Night of the Dragon (also by Richard Knaak) are also decent reads. The first two do wrap up a few loose ends from the Trillogy. They are not needed to figure out “what happens” but I would not read either w/o reading the other three books first. Naturally, read the last one I mentioned after all the others as it progresses down the Warcraft storyline further.
This is just my opinion though. You will find “critics choice” on here for everything and every author saying they are great or suck though lol.
EDIT: on the off chance, if you do feel like checking out the trilogy, the first book, The Well of Eternity starts off slow but picks up once you get into it.
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Love this trilogy. Also The Black Prism (Lightbringer series) from the same author is good.
For Warcraft- I’ve read a few. I liked the Arthas/Jaina one. I think chronicles is kinda cool with all the art too. The others I seemed to get stuck on and bored
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I’ve not read every book, but there are some good ones in there. If you didn’t play WC3, I think the Arthas book is a great retelling of events. Lord of the Clans was phenomenal, and really gives you an appreciation for Thrall as a character and his journey, as well as the birth of the (modern) Horde).
I would probably recommend the latter, as I think it’s really Warcraft at its best.
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I’ve been told that there’s a few that are extremely good but I have never read them. My first experience with a Warcraft novel was Before the Storm and…well…let’s just say it turned me off to the idea of Warcraft novels entirely. I know that’s not being fair to the good ones though.
Obviously if you only have time to read the best books then you prob shouldn’t bother with any video game tie-in novels at all, but if you care about getting more invested in the lore then the books are worth reading. I read Rise of the Horde because people said it was one of the better ones, plus it was the first book chronologically, plus it also seemed relevant to what was happening in game at the time (the current expansion was WoD).
I think if I hadn’t read it, the whole Argus storyline in Legion would’ve felt like something that came out of nowhere, because I haven’t played WC1-3 and I basically don’t read quest text and I didn’t know the whole back story of the draenei or the relationship between Velen and Kil’jaeden (and Archimonde), etc. until I read the book
The Dawn of the Aspects was pretty good. I loved Tides of War and Arthas. Malfurion was good. War of the Ancients trilogy was fantastic and shows how Malfurion and Tyrande should have been portrayed in the game. War Crimes was another good one. I haven’t read them all yet but I’m working on it. My brother said Wolfheart was decent.
The answer is some of them 
With full understanding that my taste in media isn’t very picky:
I enjoyed the Warcraft books I read. Even ‘War Crimes’, which has probably the stupidest core concept, was written well enough to be entertaining.
It’s worth nothing that they’re not so much books telling a cohesive and ongoing story as they are standalone stories about a specific event or time period in the lore, so you can basically just pick and choose the ones that are about topics that interest you and not be missing anything. No need to start from the beginning and work through them if there are topics you just don’t care about.
Personally I liked Tides of War and Wolfheart a lot.
Arthas was probably good but I read it so long ago I don’t even remember it.
Dawn of the Aspects was solid but it does some weird Knaack stuff that can be offputting if you’re hoping to take it super seriously.
If you liked Mistborn I hightly recommend The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson. Absolutely top notch fantasy.
There is also the First Law Trilogy by Joe Abercrombie. Then the 3 stand alone books, Best Served Cold, Red Country and The Heroes. Followed by his most recent Trilogy. Absolutely fantastic character writing and stories.
Like everything that is incredibly big, some of them are good, some of them are meh.
Yes.
In particular, Christe Golden’s novels. I highly recommend them.
I don’t like Christie Golden. I don’t know what it is about her books but they just feel ‘off’ from the canon.
I enjoyed them. They tend to be a lot more realistic and visceral than the actual in game lore, and of course provide way more detail about the workings of the world and its denizens. It’s really cool if you want to see Azeroth through a more immersive lens imo.
The old ones, yeah. You couldn’t pay me to read the new ones.
My favourites are the ones from Cataclysm. Wolfheart was particularly good because you learn things about Varian that were never depicted in-game because they were too busy building the Goblins a rocket sled while the Worgen languished under a tree.
I was actually wondering if he had other interesting series. Think I will pick up Stormlight Archive, and I’m going to write down First Law Trilogy to check out. I’ve got some gift cards for the bookstore to burn.
I never really enjoyed them. The characters are not often well written and the plots are all to often boring. I always felt even the dragon lance series had more realistic characters between Raistlin and his brother. I think I would have been ok with them in my youth.
Granted this is only going off the three or four books I’ve read.
Grim Dark series I enjoyed.
- The Blade Itself. One of the best grim dark trilogies of all time.
- The Prince of Thorns (extremely dark, there are no heroes and it goes into explicit details about some very horrific things.) The last book of the trilogy is not even worth reading.
- Gardens of the Moon. Very long series.
Other books
- The Lightbringer. This series surprised me, I was expecting more like DnD but it turned out to have great character development and the magic system is unique. Didn’t care for how it ends but the journey is worth it anyway.
- Necroscope. Another odd one this time about a man who can speak to the dead and ends up fighting a vampire. Maybe the most unique take on vampires ever. The first book is ok but the world development in later books particular fighting the werewolf with leprousy and the source are great.
- Cuthulu Mythos. Tons of books by tons of authors.