World of Warcraft: Mage

Nice to meet you here at cheap WoW gold site, we provide you the best WoW gold. I'm going to take a moment here, before I start, and talk about Warcraft: Death Knight. Death Knight was the precursor to the book pictured above, part of the "class" series of manga that TOYKYOPOP is releasing for Warcraft fans. Death Knight made a really, really good first impression of the series, outlining the lore behind the death knight Thassarian, who has been featured heavily both in the death knight starting area and later in Icecrown as a member of the Valiance Expedition. That's right, the Alliance forces -- and the book goes into his past and how he came to be, as well as expanding a little on the lore behind Koltira Deathweaver. That said, I was incredibly excited when I heard there was going to be a new "class" book coming out, and even more so when I heard it was going to be the mage class. I was hoping to see a book about Jaina, or maybe even something about Antonidas and his history.

What I got was Warcraft: Mage, a book written by Richard A. Knaak, illustrated by Ryo Kawakami. The book tells the story of a young mage in training named Aodhan, who we've never seen in game before, and an assault by the blue dragonflight on Dalaran that nearly led to the city's destruction, which we've also never seen referenced in game. This already had me questioning the book, but the premise seemed interesting enough given that the blue dragonflight did have their own story going on in Wrath, so I picked up the book and gave it a read.

The bad

Warcraft: Mage is a book that had a lot of promising possibilities that sadly never happened. The book covers a small section of time that players never really saw referenced in game, featuring a character that players have never encountered in game, with a resolution that again, will likely never be referenced in game, leaving little for the average Warcraft player to care about. The artwork sadly falls a little flat due to lack of detail, especially in comparison to Kawakami's work in Legends vol. 5. While the writing is technically apt, the story itself doesn't really seem to hold any importance in the Warcraft universe, leaving me wondering why I bothered picking up the book in the first place.

The good

Despite the lack of background detail, Kawakami is still just as good at drawing people and expressions as always. The villain has a distinctly "creepy" vibe about him, and Kawakami did a good job of capturing that slightly "off" feeling you get when you sense someone isn't quite right in the head. Knaak's writing is solid in this book, and the story itself is easy to follow -- the attack by the blue dragonflight and their motives for doing so is never brought into question; it's made crystal-clear.

Warcraft: Mage ultimately left me confused as to what exactly the common factor was between the class manga series. While Death Knight was very clear on its story, motives and what it set out to tell us, Mage fell sadly short and makes me question whether there really is a cohesiveness to this series beyond the titles, and buy WoW right here. If you are a fan of Warcraft manga, Richard Knaak or Ryo Kawakami's work and want to complete your collection, go ahead and pick this manga up. If you're looking for nail-biting entertainment or expansion on Warcraft lore, I'd give this one a pass -- the story itself has no bearing on current events in game, so it doesn't appear you'll be missing anything lore-wise from skipping this book.