World of Warcraft: Arthas - Rise of the Lich King

World of Warcraft: Blizzard Legends

By: Christie Golden

Narrated by: Christie Golden

Length: 11 hrs and 52 mins

Publisher's summary

The book World of Warcraft fans have been clamoring for - the true story behind one of the Warcraft universe’s most terrifying villains, Arthas the Lich King. 

Author Christie Golden does for Arthas what she once did for the Orc Lord Thrall in the best-selling Warcraft: Lord of the Clans, in another epic exploration of one of the key characters from the 11-million subscriber massively multiplayer online role-playing game.

©2010 Blizzard Entertainment (P)2019 Blizzard Entertainment

Monotone and lacking engagement

After hearing the thrilling prologue narrated by Chris Metzen on a Blizzard podcast, and after having been blown away from the masterful piece that was the audio book of Before the Storm by Josh Keaton, complete with musical cues and stunning voice-work, I was severely disappointed that Golden was chosen to do the full audio book.

It lacks all the immersion of the two prior narrators and felt dispassionate. I felt myself needing to turn it off at the 10 minute mark, lest I lose interest in the rest of the book.

The story, however, is beautiful, tragic, and thrilling in its own right. Golden is a fantastic writer, but a lackluster narrator. I wish that Metzen himself would have finished the prologue as he had started it. You can have a listen to it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sitdg2CMiVM

Missed Opportunity

I can't help to think that this is a missed opportunity for Blizzard. Arthas and his arc is by far the most well known story in Warcraft and the production of this audiobook does not do it justice. It's not that Christie Golden does a bad job reading it, it's that it just feels like someone is reading it to you instead of you yourself being immersed in the author's writing. They could have dedicated more resources to the production of this audiobook and made it 100 times what it is.

I recommend it for the story, it's pretty good as far as teen fiction goes...but the production is definitely lacking.

Great writer terrible narrator

I love Christie’s writing, however she is not a great narrator. You need a great narrator for a book this long.

Story was great, delivery was not comparable

Golden writes a great, gripping, and detailed story here. The surroundings are painted with precision, and events are explained more than thoroughly, leaving no stone unturned. But the delivery of the content seemed lackluster for the most part. There were times where anguish and anger were expressed excellently by Golden, but for the most part, the narration seemed feeble, almost teetering on a sense of sadness and crying that was wrought with emotion when the storyline and the context did not yield such a feeling. There was much unknowing and power written into the story, but it would seem otherwise with the tone of this iteration of the audiobook as it was. That being said, the book was written well and worth an actual read.

Great story

It was a good reading but it's very hard to listen to a woman act a supposedly deep make voice. This should have been read by two people, one for male and one for female.

Excellent

It is exciting to see more of the Warcraft novel universe being made into audiobooks. I send my deepest thanks to everyone involved in making this happen. I don’t always have time to read physical books, so I was excited to listen to all of the Warcraft novels available so far. I binged Arthas and enjoyed it as much as the rest.

Narrator

She writes amazing books, seriously some of my favorites. But in a basically all male cast it doesn’t do the book justice, she’s kinda monotone

Ghastly.

Christie Golden is one of what I call ‘The Terrible Trio’, which is made up of three of the worst authors to ever be published. I rank her with the woman that wrote ‘Twilight’ and the woman that wrote ‘Fifty Shades of Nonsense’. Much like former President Barrack Obama and current Puppet Joe Biden, these people did not become successful because they had any talent whatsoever. Ms. Golden writes, at best, around a third-grade reading level. Her writing is so atrocious that it could be used by the CIA at their Black Sites to break terrorists rather than using waterboarding on them; after a few minutes of her writing the terrorists would gladly give up the identities of the other member of their terrorist cells and all of their plans. They would even turn in their own mothers if the CIA promised that they would not force them to listen to anything written by Ms. Golden again. It should be made illegal by an act of Congress for Ms. Golden to ever write anything more involved than a grocery list.

The only thing that Ms. Golden is worse at than writing fiction is narrating.

Just a recount

it's a good book. the first act is new lore for Arthas but act 2 and 3 are just a retellingof wc3 the epilogue is new lore..

Rise of the lich king- a love story?

Maybe I just had expectations of a well paced fantasy novel... instead reads like a generic romance/ biography

Good information

It was a good information on how he became the lich King and how he was thinking through his choices. I had only seen through the games how he became the lich King but this showed me alot more and it was good.

Insanely good

10/10 would recommend to anyone. The narrator does an amazing job at making you interested in the story.

Good story, just awful writing

Way to make an interesting story absolutely boring to listen to. The narration is OK at best.

A terrible cost, a magnificent story.

Let me clarify something here. I played WoW before the first expansion pack came out. infact, I played the Warceaft games and played through the Frozen Throne campaign before I had a router. Arthas' tragedy is and always will be one of my favourite stories, and in my opinion, the best story in WoW. Christie Golden captures the pain and desperation of Arthas, Uther and Jaina so well that at times it is truly harrowing and that's why this deserves more than 5 stars. I would love to he able to get the next installment but it isnt available in England. but that doesnt detract from this brilliant part of gaming history.

Waste of time

if you know Warcraft 3 this book is obsolete. Poor performance by the author too. She makes all the exciting lore of W3 boring. Avoid at all cost!

let down by poor narration

I had to really push myself to listen all the way through. the story was ok but the narration is very robotic it's painful to listen to.

All I had hoped for

With Arthas being my favorite character from this universe, I feared that this story wouldn't live up to the character. But it truly did.
As far as I know, this telling stayed true to the original, but dared to take some liberty to fill out the gaps.
When it comes to the narration, I was blown back. I immediately thought of the character who was speaking and at some point I had to google the name of a voice actor to make sure it wasn't them narrating.
I'm overall impressed.

absolutely love this!

Arthas is one of my favourite characters in the warcraft universe. I love this book and the narrator.

A Thoroughly Chilling Story!

I've always loved the story of Arthas, and Christie really did it justice. Loved it!

Fantastic!

The Lich King is the best villain in WoW and this book tells you his tragic origin. Definitely a must read!