Jaina Proudmoore: Tides Of War (2012) - Plot & Excerpts
If you play WoW, you know what happens here and how it ends. As any other WoW novel, this is simply an escapist, fast, nonthinking read that satisfies your shameless nerdiness. The novel has its flaws in terms of narrative structure and pacing (really slow and boring at times), it's pretty lazy in its exposition, it has a fair share of plot holes and dumb, improbable situations, but you were expecting those, weren't you? That said, it has its fun moments. And you can probably finish it in a couple days if you have nothing better to do. It was a relaxing change of pace after reading a bunch of academic books for my Masters. So, not horrible for what it is. I enjoyed it but it's not the best book. I was invested in the story before I started reading and that probably affected my ability to enjoy it. Even though it is not great, it's a lot better than the bits of story we get in the game.*Spoilers*I wish that Blizzard would care about the stories more and tie them closer into the game. None of Baine's story is really in the game. It is obvious from the book that Baine would have been the reasonable choice for Warchief, but for some reason they went with Vol'jin last minute. Perhaps because they don't want the horde to be too reasonable (Thrall/Baine/Carine), but can't be as blood thirsty as Garrosh. Maybe Vol'jin could be a medium.The book revolves around Jaina's change of heart about mercy for the merciless. It was handled fairly well. Her motivation is clear, I teared up at a certain death scene, but there is a disconnect on how extreme it makes her at first.We are lead to believe that even with all her history with her father and Arthas, fighting against those who are close to her for her ideals of peace, that she was still capable of snapping into a revenge spree. It's suggested that the magic of the focusing iris may be affecting her mind, but that is never really dealt with.Having said that and even though it's not written as part of Jaina's inner dialog, I can see how this battle is different for her. She called in all the good will she had built up with her allies and even within the horde. Many people came to defend Theramore because of who she is, because they respected and cared for her.To ask someone go out of their way, do something difficult or painful, just because they care about you, is an extremely difficult thing to do. It requires a lot of trust in the relationship to feel safe that there is no resentment or passive aggression going unspoken. Jaina was able to do that she had faith that she was doing the right thing.For all these people to sacrifice themselves for her, put trust into her and her ideals, and then be literally obliterated for it, it's reasonable to think that her faith in those ideals would be shattered.While the book shows that this happened, it doesn't go into this idea being apart of the fuel behind her change of view. We don't hear her thoughts on how her allies faith in her meaning their deaths truly affected her, we only see the results.
What do You think about Jaina Proudmoore: Tides Of War (2012)?
If you like fantasy reads and a strong female lead, you will enjoy this book
—ams91
One of the better warcaft novels, but still a warcraft novel.
—JLD
