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Warcraft: Death Knight (World of Warcraft) |  | Go Tell a Friend | |
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| Author: Dan Jolley
Publisher: TokyoPop
Category: Book
List Price: $10.99
Buy New: $6.22
as of 7/29/2010 17:37 CDT details
You Save: $4.77 (43%)
New (19) Used (9) from $6.19
Seller: BooKnackrh
Rating:  6 reviews
Sales Rank: 29818
Media: Paperback
Reading Level: Young Adult
Pages: 192
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.2 x 5 x 0.7
ISBN: 1427814961
Dewey Decimal Number: 741.5973
EAN: 9781427814968
ASIN: 1427814961
Publication Date: December 1, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| • | ISBN13: 9781427814968 | | • | Condition: New | | • | Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed |
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Product Description
"Warcraft: Death Knight".
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 6
 The ONLY worthwhile Warcraft manga! Incredible! June 11, 2010
Seyonne (Arizona, USA)
Firstly, a brief summary of Warcraft: Death Knight-
Death Knight follows the story of Thassarian, beginning from his days as a young man in Lordaeron's army. Through a combination of flash-backs and linear storytelling, it shows the events leading from the fall of Lordaeron, the redemption of the Death Knights, to Thassarian's journey to seek revenge upon the Lich King.
Now, let me validate myself by saying I am both a longtime manga fan, Warcraft player, and bookaholic. I've flipped through every Warcraft comic or manga in print, and so far there are very, very few I felt worth the money. This one, however, was simply incredible.
There are a few things to keep in mind, however.
Firstly, this is a manga...a concrete story trying to do the impossible: capture the essence of a constantly evolving game. Anytime a book/comic attempts to do this, with ANY series, there will be obsessed fans who are disappointed. This book, like any RPG/MMORG novel, must be read with that understanding. In that light, I don't think anyone could have done a better job than Rocio Zucchi and Dan Jolley!
The Art: I was a little skeptical at first, as I am not used to seeing sword-and-sorcery stories in manga form. However, I quickly got over that and came to really appreciate the style and representation of the characters. Rocio Zucchi does a fantastic job of portraying the characters' personalities, and especially in contrasting the details between Thassarian as a human vs. Death Knight. Her style is very emotive, which blends well with Dan Jolley's storytelling. The Blood/High Elves especially were beautifully done (unlike in a few other Warcraft manga that I shall leave unnamed...). The detail, too, is absolutely staggering. The scene in which Arthas descends upon Lordaeron with the Scourge army has so much detail that you have to really study it to see everything that is there. Nothing is skimped. I truly look forward to seeing her work on Warcraft: Shaman!
The story: The story, too, was very well done. It was fantastic to see not only Thassarian's backstory, but Koltira Deathweaver's as well (two of my favorite characters!). It is also refreshing to have Lerrysa given a bit of story, as in the game she just pops up as a damsel in distress. Here, at least, she's given a chance to show she's more than a plot device. Thankfully very little is repeated from the game, but rather the story behind events and characters is fleshed out. My only regrets are that neither Kael'thas or Illidan make an appearance, and Koltira's screen-time is limited, but considering the length limitations of manga format it is understandable.
In short, this is a MUST HAVE for any fan of the lore of Warcraft. Death Knight fans especially will enjoy this book, though any Warcraft player should definitely pick up a copy. It gives much-needed back story and character development to certain elements of the game, and truly makes an altogether much more enjoyable experience.
Thumbs up!
 Terrible, even for Warcraft standards February 7, 2010
Mishu
12 out of 19 found this review helpful
I've never been so dissapointed with a book as I was with this one. Warcraft books aren't usually very good, the story is pretty blank and previsible, the characters are two dimensional and illogical from time to time and overall they are full of cliches. Of course, here and there emerge truly awesome Warcraft books which keep us from losing hope when reading terrible books such as this one, but overall my standads are pretty low when reading a Warcraft book.
This book scores 1 in a scale from 10 to 20.
--The art--
While manga art works sometimes for stories such as the one presented in this book, for Warcraft this style should never be used - ever. Spiky hair, huge grins, bad manga-specific humour, all of those don't fit AT ALL in a Warcraft book. After 15 years of Warcraft, you would've tought that the artist could've done some research and looked through a few of the thousands of pictures on the Internet and get an idea how the folk on Azeroth look like, but noo. Considering the way the characters look like, we could be very well be reading a Naruto book, not a Warcraft book. No difference.
Now, beside the fact that Manga style doesen't fit the theme at all, you might say "So what? I want to read the story, not to look the pictures." As much as I'd like to think that way, sadly the style isn't the only bad part. We didn't only get Manga style drawings, we got BAD Manga style drawings. If not for the facial hair (which interestingly 99% of the males present in the book seem to grow) you would have a really hard time deciding if the characters are men or normal women. I said normal because all actual women in the book suffer of the intriguing disease Huge-is Boobs-isis, so there's no chance you'll take a female as a male, because even in face shots the artist still manages to somehow make the breasts pop in the image somewhere
Art: 0/5
--The Story--
The story isn't very bad, but it isn't something breathtaking neither. It's just a short story which could be told in 10 pages, but which was extended to 150 pages. The technique the writer used in order to place the events in a timeline and make a very long serie of events as short as possible so that he could focus on his own story was reciting from a letter Thassarian was writing to his sister talking about what was going on and showing "cutscenes" of the events which are described in the letter. While this technique is a pretty good one to jump over unskippable lore events you are not paid to write about, it works best in movies and didn't seem natural at all in this book.
The dialogue is very cliche-ish, full with predictable replies and over-used emotional scenes. When a character holds a speech, I can't see that character talking, all I see is the author struggling to find something "kewl" to say for that character as fast as possible, so that he can get his pay check and move on to the next project.
The flow of the story is very chaotic and hard to follow, sometimes in 20 pages being described a few minutes and sometimes in 3 pages being described several months. As in many Warcraft books, the lore is treated in a very superficial way, sometimes the author treating you like you have no clue of the lore and sometimes assuming that you already know what happens and therefore barely mentioning events.
Overall, the story is plain boring, predictable and annoying at times.
Story: 1/5
--Character Development--
So, we have a few characters. They interact. End of story, thanks for coming, drive with care.
There are a few interesting plots which, if explored, would have dramatically improved the quality of this book, but they are barely mentioned, leaving it up to our overemphasized imagination to figure out what actually happens. For example, Thassarian and Koltira - Thassarian killed Koltira, than raised him as a Death Knight. Next time you hear about them, they're best friends.
Whoa. What happened? At what point exactly did Koltira's character evolve so much? This, as well as many others, is left up to us to figure.
Strangely, the only charater I liked was Thassarian's sister, partly because she had some kind of observable personality, partly because she wasn't drawn as horrible as most other characters were.
In conclusion, there's barely any kind of character depth of development at all, and where there is, it's most likely accidental.
Character Development: 2/5
--Relationship with the rest of the Lore--
Can I give a negative score at this part? That's how bad it is.
Let me tell you a sad thruth: you probably know more about the Warcraft universe than the authors do. As far as I can figure, they just red the wowwiki pages for Arthas, Lich King and Thassarian and then started to write the book. While most lore problems are usual for a Warcraft book and somehow unnoticable (like for example the fact that all of a sudden it was Thassarian who started the colaboration between the Alliance and the Knights of the Ebon Blade, not the players) the way Arthas was treated, the way the author/artist (or both) clearly proved that they want to tell me a story about a Universe they have no clue about simply outraged me.
So, Arthas talked directly to Thassarian before sailing to Northrend.
The Arthas I know from the games/book was at that moment terrified, confused, furious, felt overwhelmed and was overall very uncertain of what was going to happen. The Arthas described in this book was very certain, confident and outgoing at that moment, stopping to chat to soldiers and overall acting like a spoiled brat.
During the attack of the Capital City, Arthas (according to lore) ran directly to Invincible after killing his father, being very confused of what was going on and overall not controlling hiself at all. In this book Arthas was yet again shown chatting around, grinning like an idiot, murdering random citizens and taking pleasure doing so. Not only that Arthas never did that, but that isn't Arthas. Arthas was never actually evil, deep inside. Selfish, overconfident, foolish, maybe, but not evil.
Did I mention that, if you weren't told whom he is, you wouldn't be able to recognise Arthas at all? Yeah, I felt that the horrible artist needed a poke in the face again.
Relationship with the Rest of the Lore: -5/5
In conclusion, do yourself a favour and don't ever read this book and pity those who had, because they lost many innocent neurons in the process.
 Good DK Story January 22, 2010
Benjamin Waterman (Simcoe, Ontario Canada)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I bought this because I play a Blood Elf Death Knight in WoW (yeah, yeah, one of the most overplayed Race/Class combos). It was a fun read, nice to see a story involving your own class. The story is nothing spectacular, but it involves and gives some more back story to the two Death Knights that the Tier 9 armor is named after, Thassarian and Koltira. The art is nice, is quite true to the game. It also recaps the DK starting zone story, as well as an alliance chain quest from Borean Tundra. This may or may not put someone who has already done them off.
Either way, for a DK player who is interested in the Lore, it's a fun read. I'm not sure I'd pick up the upcoming mangas for classes I don't play, though.
 So So December 30, 2009
Michael McCleary (Clovis, NM)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Not a bad book, seems to cut out and progress in the timeline far to frequently. Story is fairly bland and seems as though it is hardly even there, its easily for very hard core death knight lovers but that is all. Ending also leaves little to nothing story based to continue from.
Excellent story and art. A great start for a new series. December 28, 2009
Nicholas Hayes (Alabama, USA)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I just finished reading "World of Warcraft: Death Knight" and I was very impressed by it. I haven't played WoW in a couple of years now, due to money and time restraints, but I still love the Warcraft universe so I try to keep up with the lore and what's going on in it. Even though, I have not played the newest expansion of the game, and really know nothing of the Death Knights, I picked up on the story right away. The writing was top notch and kept me interested all the way through. Dan Jolley did a great job with the narrative and I look forward to reading more from him. I'm also happy to report that not only did it have a great story and good writing, but the artwork by Rocio Zucchi was top notch as well. In manga and comics the art is very important to me, and she did an excellent job of bringing Jolley's story to life. I can't wait to see what these two do for Volume 2 and beyond. If you are a WoW fanboy/girl or just like fantasy stories in general I'd recommend this one to you. It's a good read.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 6
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