Richard Knaak - Warcraft series vs. Dragonlance

[Runningwater]

I've have been a huge fan of the Dragonlance series for quite some time. One of my favorite author's of the series (besides Weis-Hickman) is Richard Knaak. The Legend of Huma and Kaz the Minotaur , as well as his newer ones are some of the easiest to get into and really draw you into the characters. This being said...it's hard for me to believe that so many people are complaining about his Warcraft books.

I haven't read any of the Warcraft novels, but I was just wondering if anyone has read them and has also read his Dragonlance novels and could give me a comparison.

What makes him such a "bad" choice for the Warcraft series?

[Lasereth]

I haven't read them but I bet he takes some liberties with the plot and story so that the writing is better and people hate him for it. Like some people say Spiderman 2 is a bad movie because it doesn't follow the comic even though it's clearly the best of the series from a quality standpoint. This is just a guess though

[Orchrist]

I've read the Warcraft books but not Dragonlance so all I can give you is an opposite perspective here. I'm not a hater at all on his novels I enjoy all of them equally mainly because I'm a fan of the Warcraft lore in general. The writing just doesn't seem to be in the same general quality as some of the other novels I've read but I can't fault him for that because he's limited by what he can and can't do within the already established universe.

One of the main complaints I've seen of his writing is how he's taken regular characters and then morphed them into unflawed perfect beings over the course of a book.

[Shauk]

I'm just not a fan of warcraft lore as a whole. It's all so cliche and the characters never seem to have a "human" moment of realization of what they're doing on a grander scale. It just seems like sophomoric writing to me. I've read the entire well of eternity trilogy, I never read anything beyond that so I don't know if he's improved.


My favorite fantasy style series is still the R.A. Salvatore megalogy (lol, I don't know what to call it, cuz it's a lot freaking more than a trilogy)

[Baraka_Guru]

You know what they say: great books make terrible films, and great films make terrible books.

Well, the same principles generally apply to video games too, I'm sure. I mean, how much merit do any of these things have? I have no desire to read the books based on Halo, Star Trek, Star Wars, or World of Warcraft. I'm sure there are novelizations of Everquest and Mass Effect as well. Forget about it. It's usually a mistake. The good ones are the exceptions to the rule.

The original Dragonlance series was based on an actual D&D game session. It's an exception to the rule. I started my fantasy reading in the Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms worlds. There is a lot of crossover between novels, video games, and pen-and-paper gaming there. As a whole, I don't think they're particularly good novels. (Though I admit to enjoying R. A. Salvatore's Dark Elf stuff back in the day.)

The best stuff for reading is the stuff written with the explicit attempt at being fresh or original, and that is difficult enough to begin with, considering how much is already out there.

I try to avoid "Based on..." wherever I can. It's usually disappointing. Enjoy the good stuff created as they were intended, be they novels, films, or games.

That said, it's never easy to create these new things based on originals made in another format. They probably don't give this writer enough credit for his decisions/expectations and work on the World of Warcraft books. It can't be easy. Then again, it'd be a rare thing if they were actually good. I'll never know first hand. I'll never read them.

---------- Post added at 10:26 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:08 AM ----------

Originally Posted by Shauk

My favorite fantasy style series is still the R.A. Salvatore megalogy (lol, I don't know what to call it, cuz it's a lot freaking more than a trilogy)

I think they call it a "series."