Sylvanas (World of Warcraft)

By: Christie Golden

Narrated by: Patty Mattson

Length: 15 hrs and 39 mins

Publisher's Summary

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The epic, definitive story of Sylvanas Windrunner, one of World of Warcraft’s most enduring and iconic characters, as chronicled by bestselling author Christie Golden. 

Ranger-General. Banshee Queen. Warchief. Sylvanas Windrunner has borne many titles. To some, she is a hero—to others, a villain. But whether in pursuit of justice, vengeance, or something more, Sylvanas has always sought to control her own destiny.

The power to achieve her goals has never been closer, as Sylvanas works alongside the Jailer to liberate all Azeroth from the prison of fate. Her final task? Secure the fealty of their prisoner—King Anduin Wrynn.

To succeed, Sylvanas will be forced to reflect on the harrowing path that brought her to the Jailer’s side and to reveal her truest self to her greatest rival. Here, Sylvanas’s complete story is laid bare: the breaking of the Windrunner family and her rise to Ranger- General; her own death at the hands of Arthas and her renewed purpose in founding the Forsaken; the moment she first beheld the Maw and understood the true consequences of what lay beyond the veil of death.

But as her moment of victory draws near, Sylvanas Windrunner will make a choice that may ultimately come to define her. A choice that’s hers to make.

©2021 Christie Golden (P)2021 Random House Audio

Epically Read

Lady Mattson not only presents her character well but reads all with a beautiful performance.

More Great Audiobooks Like This, Blizzard!

Sylvanas read by Sylvanas herself? Yes, please! Patty Mattson does an amazing job of narrating the book, and Christie Golden's writing is wonderful. The audio production is also of high quality. It is easy to listen to and immersive. These qualities make this an audiobook well worth owning. Thank you to all involved in making this work!

Blizz, please make future audiobooks with good audio quality and narrators who know the characters well. I've had to skip several of your audiobooks because of those issues. Keep making future works like this one because it is a great audiobook. Thank you :-)

Another Golden Turd

They say that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. If this is true then I must be insane, because I know how much of a lousy writer Christie Golden is and I keep giving her chance after chance.

And she’s utter crap, every time.

The Golden Bots will run to her rescue and downvote this review, but that doesn’t change the fact that Ms. Golden is the worst published author since the pathological liar known as L. Ron and that her fans haven’t bothered to read a novel better written than Twilight or Fifty Shades of Crap. Her dialogue is perhaps, perhaps, a middle-schoolers’ fan fiction. Her pacing is lousy, her descriptions are all the same. In short, she just sucks.

Only the voice actress of Sylvanas, who narrates this audiobook, keeps this from being one star bargain bin nonsense found at your local Dollar Tree store. Her acting in her narration is amazing.

I hold on to the hope that Blizzard will finally get its act together and hand Ms. Golden her pink-slip, but with the direction that they’ve been taking over the last decade I am losing hope.

Best of a bad situation

It can't be overstated enough, this book was cleaning up a poorly shown story in World of Warcraft game. I have generally fond memories of this character from my time in the game. The problem with this story is taking a character that was essentially abused physically and mentally and made her become the abuser with genocide added in for good measure. It split the Horde and dissolved any semblance of honor it once had. There are errors in the book, though they're not what made the story bad. I sympathize with the writer as this was one massive mess to fix. Which is why I rated the story better than one star. The narrator was good as she is the character's voice actor. I feel her character. What made her who she was, took a beloved anti-hero and made a villain. I'm more in shock that anyone would consider this a good story. Goodbye Sylvanas it's a shame you never got the chance to live in relative peace after Arthas.

There was only 1 problem

Everything but the last chapter and epiloge should have been out before the expansion came out. Since it's release was with the final major patch, I can't help but feel like the talents of C Golden and P Mattson were used to fix the in game story.
Gripe over, this book was most excellent! loooove it.

Sylvanas 10/10

Hello everyone, I want to start off by saying I am WoW player and I have been since the Burning Crusade days. Sylvanas has been one of my favorite characters in game for a long time, but I really had no insight on why she said what she did, but I get it now. Sylvanas was a great book and it gave the reader/listener the backstory of Sylvanas and took you every step of the way in her life, all the way up to the end game content and the events that took place in the Shadowlands. I definitely recommend this book to anyone who loves WoW and wants to understand where Sylvanas was coming from 10/10.

great book!

I loved hearing about slyvanas as a kid! the ending seemed a bit rushed to me but I believe the purpose of the book is to show you her life as a living.

The Path from Lady Moon to Dark Lady

Narration carries it, the High Fantasy from the first half of the book while she was Lady Moon is so satisfying

The Best of Warcraft Stories

Admittedly, the last 2 Warcraft books had begun to sour me against where the WoW storyline was going, as well as the in-game content. While not entirely the direction I would have wished for my favorite Warcraft character since the RTS games, I can live with the fate Sylvanas is currently fulfilling. The story was good (1000x better than BtS), and the voice acting by Ms. Patty Mattson was superb, as ever. I highly recommend this book to Loyalists and Rebels alike.

If you enjoy pain

I was a Sylvanas fan for the 14 years I played WOW (quit as of 9.1 SL) but this book is painfully bad. Maybe it’s supposed to be written for a child 8-10 year old, but as an adult it felt like I was being hand held as my guide pointed out every reference and feigned hidden nuance several times over in a cartoonish voice. I had hoped, beyond hope, that this book would lessen the damage the current Blizzard crew has inflicted on their own game/lore/canon - it did not, rather it’s in complete alignment with the current disaster the game has become. Thank God I used a worthless credit as opposed to spending actual money on this utter garbage.