Christie-Golden
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Christie Golden signing Saturday in Long Island
Warcraft book author Christie Golden (who, you'll probably remember, wrote Arthas, the book our guys loved so much) will be signing copies of that book at a bookstore called the Book Revue in Huntington, NY this Saturday at 7pm. In a quick interview with Newsday there, she also talks about both her background in fantasy and sci-fi (she remembers the days when sci-fi and fantasy were seen as silly diversions rather than premises for multi-million dollar movies and videogames, as do most of us older nerds, probably) and her experience with WoW. She says that having the chance to jump in and virtually visit the actual setting of her books is a real plus when doing research -- if she has a question about the layout of Stormwind, she can go over to that city and check it out herself.If you're in or near Long Island and are a Christie Golden fan or are looking for something Warcraft-y and fun to do on Saturday, there you go. She's got more information on her blog about the signing (looks like she'll be reading as well). If you do go, let us know how it went.
Warcraft Legends are a fun ride for all
Although Free Comic Book Day is supposed to be on the first Saturday of May each year, our local book store chain Fully Booked held it last May 23 with a 20% discount off graphic novels and select manga. I thought it was a good opportunity to pick up Tokyopop's Warcraft Legends series, a manga-style take on the Warcraft universe. I'd had my eye on these books for a while, so last weekend was a good opportunity to get them.Each book contains three self-contained stories and one ongoing tale featuring the Tauren Trag Highmountain from the Sunwell Trilogy manga written by Richard Knaak and drawn by Kim Jae-Hwan. Trag's story in Warcraft Legends picks up where the Sunwell Trilogy left off, and although the story is rather interesting, the best thing about the manga are the short stories which breathe a little more life into the Warcraft world. These stories are what make the books truly shine. My take on the first three books in the series after the jump.
Christie Golden appears at Loveland, CO Barnes and Noble today
Here's a heads up to all our readers in the general area of Loveland, Colorado. Christie Golden will appear at 2 PM Today at your local Barnes and Noble to sign copies of her New York Times best selling book, Arthas. If you're in the area and don't need to be glued to your computer waiting for BlizzCon tickets -- or are lucky enough to get one of the first tickets -- this is a pretty decent use of a Saturday afternoon, I'd say.And whether you're in Colorado or California or anywhere else, if you haven't checked Arthas out yet, it's definitely worth a shot. If you have anything more than a passing interest in WoW Lore, you owe it to yourself to buy or borrow this book. Not only is it the best piece of non-game Warcraft fiction according to multiple members of the WoW Insider team, but it contains tidbits of lore and happenings that are almost sure to figure prominently in future patches and expansions. You can read our review of the book for more of my gushing on the book.But anyway, if you're in the Loveland area and happen to drop by Barnes and Noble, let us know if anything cool goes down, and happy reading.
Fourth volume of Warcraft: Legends manga revealed
Medievaldragon over at WorldofWar.net has a nice exclusive for fans of the on-going Warcraft: Legends manga. Volume four is out on June 9th and he's posted the cover art and ten pages for you to drool over. Even better this volume promises contributions from Dan Jolley (who I recently interviewed), Arthas-authoress Christie Golden and, of course, Richard Knaak himself.I'm a huge fan of the manga and read it avidly so I'm especially keen to find out what happens to poor old Trag. Indeed, that's possibly the best part of this preview as it shows ten pages from the Trag-centric, Knaak authored story 'Fate'. I think this just made my day. However for those needing a Bloodsail Buccanneers fix, Medievaldragon also posted some concept sketches for you to enjoy!Oh and if you've not caught it already, don't forget to check out our interview with series editor Troy Lewter.
Golden's Arthas on NY Times bestseller list
Need any more evidence that World of Warcraft has gone mainstream? Arthas, the latest expanded universe novel about none other than our own Lich King (that got rave reviews from our own writers), has reached number 16 on the New York Times bestseller list for hardcover fiction. We're sure that makes Christie Golden happy -- I don't believe that any Warcraft-related novels have ever made the list before. Rise of the Horde is the most popular one I can think of, and I don't think that appeared there on first release. It's not the only videogame-related book of fiction to make the NYT, though -- the latest Halo novel did that a few years ago.At any rate, just shows you how popular the Warcraft universe really is, even outside of the videogame audience. You can pick up the Arthas book at a bookstore near you, or order it up from Amazon as well. [via WorldofWar]
BlizzCast episode 9 released
BlizzCast #9 was released very recently, and it's quite short this time around, only about 11 minutes long. It's short because it only covers one thing. It contains Chris Metzen reading the prologue to Arthas: Rise of the Lich King.The prologue is centered primarily on the native races in Northrend and how they react to the unnatural storms brought on by the Lich King's inner turmoil; the Tuskarr through community and the Taunka through defiance. We also see the exact nature of that turmoil, catching a glimpse of just how much of Arthas is left in there (or Ner'zhul for that matter), and we see it all to the tune of Metzen's sultry voice.
Christie Golden chat transcript posted
As planned, Medievaldragon hosted a live chat with author Christie Golden last night, and even if you didn't tune in, you can see the transcript right over on WorldofWar right now. It's a very interesting read, especially if you're into the lore of the book and these characters -- Golden talks about how she built up Arthas' life and relationships, and turned him from the Human prince he started out as into the (her word) "monster" he is today. And she mentions a few fun tidbits about her influence on the game -- she created the Taretha character in the Old Hillsbrad instance, and there's an NPC in the Plaguelands that bears a striking resemblance. There's also something in the Balnir Farm that she suggested they put in. You'll have to go and see for yourself what that might be.And even if you're not interested in the book and the lore, we get another little pull on the line in reference to Gilneas -- when Golden is asked what's going on at the Greymane wall, she says that she "really can't comment as to that." One more little breadcrumb in the trail leading us to either the next big content patch or the next expansion.Definitely give the chat a look if you've got any interest at all in the Arthas book (which comes out in just over a week on April 21st) or the history of the game's current big bad.
Blizzard's Arthas: Rise of the Lich King quiz contest
Blizzard announced a brand new contest yesterday, and it's quite possibly their most simple contest yet. Read an excerpt from Arthas: Rise of the Lich King, answer three questions about what you read to enter the contest, and then you're given a chance to win a collector's edition of the Arthas novel. Pretty sweet and, as I said, really easy to enter.Blizzard's official contest isn't the only one running, either. Fan sites around the blogosphere (good gosh I hate that term) are giving them away like crazy, and we even have a nice stack of our own that we'll be giving away soon. Keep an eye out, and seriously- enter these contests, whether it's ours or Blizzard's or someone else's contest. This book is worth the effort, and the collector's edition is pretty classy. Remember, this is coming from someone who thinks many of the Warcraft novels are pretty terrible.
BlizzPlanet hosts a chat with Arthas author Christie Golden [Updated]
Our friend Medievaldragon over at BlizzPlanet is going fan-crazy about the new Arthas, Rise of the Lich King book, due out in bookstores any day now. And with good reason, too -- apparently both Alex and Dan are also nuts about the book, and it's basically a must-read if you're at all interested in the lore behind Arthas, Jaina, and the creature we all know as the Lich King. And Medievaldragon has set up an awesome opportunity for anyone interested in the novel: they're having a live public chat with author Christie Golden on Thursday evening, April 9th, at 9pm Eastern. She'll be sitting down in the CoverItLive widget there to talk with you about the lore behind the book, how she worked with Blizzard to figure out where Arthas is and where he's going, and whatever else you'd like to ask.Sounds like fun, but if you are in the EU you'll have to stay up late if you want to see it all happen live. It begins at about 3am in Paris, so it'll be a late night if you have questions you want to ask. The good news is that the CoverItLive widget logs the chat, so even if you can't make it to see everything go down live, you can scroll back through it later and read up on what happened.The book itself is due out April 21 -- you can preorder a collectible version of the novel if you want to right now for $32, which isn't cheap, or you can pre-order the non-collectible version from Amazon.com for $16.50. You can also support your local fantasy bookstore and wait until later in the month to pick it up there.[UPDATE: Corrected the live chat date to April 9.]
Golden's Arthas delivers the lore goodness
A note from Alex Ziebart: When Simon and Schuster sent Daniel and I a pair of free, early review copies of Arthas: Rise of the Lich King, we immediately went about planning how we were going to handle a 2-man review. We've been good friends for years, and one of our favorite past times is debating things like this back and forth. We rarely agree on books, and we can argue our sides until we're blue in the face. We were going to write an Alex vs Daniel knock down, drag out argument about Arthas and it was going to rule. Unfortunately, things didn't go our way.When we finished reading the book, we got together to talk about it. It was... unsettling. We completely agreed with each other on almost every point that was raised. The high points and the low points, we were completely on the same spectrum. That's just not right. We decided that, rather than write two reviews parroting each other, we would just go with the one. Daniel's review says everything I want to say better than I could have said it, so once you read what he says, just pretend you can hear me say "Ditto" at the end. Take it away, Danny! As WoW Insider's self-proclaimed junior lieutenant Lore Nerd, when Simon & Schuster so generously offered to send us a couple of free advanced copies of Arthas, the new World of Warcraft book by Christie Golden, I was all over that. As soon as the book showed up on my doorstep, I turned on the answering machine, grabbed a soda, popped some popcorn, curled up in my favorite chair, and pretty much read the whole thing straight through. The only breaks I took were to discuss various scenes and their ramifications for lore with Alex. And by discuss, I mean "fanboy out." But I am being completely serious when I say, of all the Warcraft manga, comic books, and novels I have read, Arthas has the most solid, balanced writing and best realized characters. It's not a perfect book, but it's a very worthwhile read for anyone who has even the slightest interest in the why and how of that big armored dude up on the Frozen Throne.
BtDP up for Scribe award, Warcraft audiobooks delayed
Here's a few bits of WoW book news from our friend Medievaldragon over at Blizzplanet. First up, the good news: Aaron Rosenberg and Christie Golden have been nominated for a "Best Adapted" award from the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers (just proving that for everything in the world, there's an association for it) for the World of Warcraft: Beyond the Dark Portal book that they wrote together. Pretty groovy, and supposedly well-deserved -- if you ever sit down to read any of the Warcraft literature, we've heard that's a great place to start. Winners of the prizes will be announced at GenCon this year, so good luck to the writers there.And secondly, a bummer for those who've been waiting on the audiobook versions of the Warcraft books -- Medievaldragon says that he heard from Tantor Media, the company behind the productions, that they've been postponed. He's convinced that they've only been held off temporarily, but we're not so sure -- given the current economy, Tantor may have figured it wasn't worth the licensing and the trouble. But you never know -- apparently they've all been recorded, so perhaps we'll see them at some point in the future, even if it's only in digital form. We certainly hope so.
Blizzard Insider Issue 30 released today
Issue 30 of Blizzard's newsletter, the Blizzard Insider, is hitting inboxes this afternoon. These newsletters don't come often, but when they do, there's always some good stuff the comes along with it. On the World of Warcraft front, beyond the screenshots and fan art, we have a few new pages to check out: A primer for the upcoming World of Warcraft content patch, Secrets of Ulduar A chapter out of the upcoming Warcraft novel Arthas: Rise of the Lich King that you can preview online A reminder and a few notes about the ongoing Arena Tournament For our general Blizzard fans among our readership (which is a pretty large number of you/us), we have a couple of Diablo III and Starcraft II items from the community:
BlizzPlanet reviews upcoming Arthas novel
One of the Warcraft novels I've actively been looking forward to is Arthas, Rise of the Lich King. It's set to be released to the world on April 21, 2009 but BlizzPlanet.com has gotten its hands on a few bound galleys of the book early. Some of them are being given away, but he's also reading one on his own and has gifted us with a quick review.The review makes the book sound incredible, though perhaps a bit too cluttered. The novel is roughly 300 pages in length (I believe) and the first 100 pages covers his childhood from the arrival of the Stormwind refugees in Lordaeron to the beginning of Warcraft III. That covers about fourteen years, and that's potentially a lot of territory to cover!
Rise of the Lich King excerpt shows the other side of the Lich
BlizzPlanet has an excerpt up from Christie Golden's upcoming Rise of the Lich King novel, featuring the back story of perhaps the lesser known (though no more less powerful) half of the Lich King, Ner'zhul the Shaman. Arthas has gotten banner credit for being the big bad in this expansion (because it's his form that the Lich King is possessing), but Ner'zhul is in there as well, being all evil and angry. And this little snippet from the book portrays very well just what exactly is going on inside that big spiky helmet. As much as little Arthas is lost inside the Lich King's power, there might still be a tiny bit of him that's still fighting back. Is he worth saving or not?I haven't been really interested in the Warcraft books, but given how timely this is (we're about to go knock that helmet off), and how interesting the story of Arthas has been, this is one that I plan to check out. It's due out later this year.
Christie Golden talks about Arthas, Rise of the Lich King
Our friend Medievaldragon (of Blizzplanet, who's now posting occasionally over on World of War) got a chance to talk to author Christie Golden at BlizzCon last weekend. She's working on a book about Arthas (which has a title now: "Rise of the Lich King"), and she chatted with MD about what kind of lore fun is going to be in those pages.The book starts with Arthas as a ten-year-old prince, and then obviously follows his path through what we saw in Warcraft III, including all of that bad business at Quel'Thalas, and Arthas' past with Jaina and Kael'thas (you don't think Blizzard would bring KT back again in WotLK, do you?). Golden promises some good looks as the High Elves, too -- "two very pivotal characters are elven," she says. Including Sylvanas? We can only hope.The book's due out in April, sounds like it'll be a good read, for Arthas fans especially.
Christie Golden drops more info about Arthas
BlizzPlanet has a nice tidbit from Christie Golden about her upcoming novel about Arthas Menethil (better known as half of the Lich King, that bad guy we're going to be spending a lot of time with in the expansion). The book is due out next year (so odds are that we'll be approaching the end of the story by the time it hits store shelves), but it'll offer a look at the bad guy way before he started being bad -- the book starts with Arthas as a 10-year-old Prince, and covers everything between there to his little meltdown we witnessed in Warcraft III. The romance with Jaina is supposed to get some good coverage as well, so the book should be a good read.And there are some bonuses for close readers as well -- we'll have seen some scenes before (including one between Arthas and Muradin in Beyond the Dark Portal), but of course, in this book, they'll be from Arthas' perspective. Arthas is undoubtedly the villian of the next ten levels in WoW (they even named the thing after him), but it's really exciting to have a villian with such an interesting and twisted past behind him.
Arthas novel to be released April 2009
Author Christie Golden has posted a little more information about the Arthas novel coming next year -- she lists the release date as April of 2009 (Arthas will probably still be alive then -- if "alive" is what he is now), and says that it'll be a nice hardback edition, which should be cool to see. She also says that while they were considering throwing a sample chapter in the BlizzCon goodie bag, all they were able to get in is a little postcard art of the book's cover. Too bad -- it would have been fun reading a little preview of the book while waiting in line to play, say, Diablo III.And for the Starcraft fans, she's also got a Dark Templar book coming out a month after that, in May 2009. It was supposed to be out sooner, but apparently Arthas' book got pushed forward, and she had to switch up schedules a bit. So two good pieces of extended universe fiction for Blizzard's games to look forward to next year.[via Blizzplanet]
Christie Golden working on an Arthas book, Legends story, and a secret project
Author Christie Golden, who's written a few Warcraft books for Blizzard in the past, has started up a blog, and her first post is full of fun info for fans of the expanded universe. First, she's going to be doing a novel about none other than the Lich King himself, Arthas Menethil. She's been chatting with Metzen about the book, and she says she's excited to tell the story of how "good people slide down that terrible, slippery slope to becoming monsters." Sounds about right to us.She's also working on a short story to be featured in Toykopop's Warcraft Legends series, based around Winter's Veil and called "I Got What Yule Need." Cute. We'll assume Goblins will be involved somehow. And finally, she's working on a third secret project -- it's not clear that it has to do with Blizzard (Golden writes her own fiction, as well as fiction for a few other properties), but why else would it be so secret, right? If we had to guess, we'd probably say a retelling or connection story for the Diablo stories -- if we do see the announcement of a new Diablo game at WWI, time would be ripe for Blizzard to catch players up on the lore of that setting as well.[via Blizzplanet]
Christie Golden talks with The Shadow Council Strider
Christie Golden, author of the Warcraft novels Rise of the Horde and Lord of the Clans, sat down to answer questions with The Shadow Council Strider. For several weeks readers submitted questions via email, and Christie was kind enough to respond to them in an article published today. We learn that Christie will be writing more novels in the Warcraft universe, having just signed a contract for a trilogy.The discussion I found most fascinating in this first part of the article series had to do with Christie's access to The Burning Crusade. Basically the reader wanted to know if she had influence over the game design of Outland, or if her stories were wrapped around the content that was already put into the game. As it turns out, while most of the world was already in place when Christie was hired on, she did get to flush out some concepts in Outland, particularly having to do with Oshu-gun and that Ata'amal crystals. Because she had already finished her first draft, several of the creatures she created in the novel were put into the game, for instance the majestic Talbuk.The last two questions had to do with Christie's life as a writer. Christie talked about her "Trunk novel," that first book she wasn't able to sell, and the subsequent novels she did publish that were set in the same universe. Because of her non-fiction writing and editing experience with USA Today she wasn't new to dealing with selling the written word. It's interesting to note that Christie never wrote fan fiction for WoW, which is certain surprising considering how well she writes about the world of Azeroth. When asked about suggestions for those new to writing, her advice to new writers was to write as often as you can, and also spend some time outlining to better plan out your work. The next section of the Q & A is due out soon, and I'm definitely eager to find what else she has to say. If you had a question for Christie Golden, what would it be?
Countdown to Burning Crusade: Burning Crusade winner
We'd like to thank everyone for helping us level up our contest skill with one final contest in our Countdown to Burning Crusade. We're happy to announce two lucky winners -- Baxmaniac is going to be the recipient of a copy of Burning Crusade for lucky comment number 260, and Kieron is going to receive a copy of Christie Golden's Rise of the Horde novel for lucky need roll number 119. Grats to Baxmaniac and Kieron, and thanks to everyone for taking part in the Countdown this month!
