Dragon Hunt (Warcraft: The Sunwell Trilogy, Book 1)
Dragon Hunt (Warcraft: The Sunwell Trilogy, Book 1)
Set in the same rich universe as Blizzard’s upcoming Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game World of Warcraft, Warcraft: The Sunwell Trilogy is a fresh take on the Warcraft universe using original characters and storylines. The three manga volumes follow the adventures of Kalec, a blue dragon who has taken human form to escape the forces that seek to destroy his race, and Anveena, a maiden with secrets of her own. What starts as a flight for survival turns into a quest to save the entire High Elven Kingdom from the forces of the Undead Scourge.
- From the artist of the best-selling King of Hell, cover art by Charles Park (Street Fighter, Robotech, X-men)
- Written by Richard Knaak, the New York Times best-selling author of Warcraft, Diablo, Dragonlance and English adaptor of Ragnarok
- Since the debut of Warcraft in 1994, it has sold more than 14 million copies of various iterations of the popular PC game
- Check-out the World of Warcraft game and Blizzard’s website, battle.net
User Ratings and Reviews
1 Stars Manga = Yes, Lore = No
I found this to be a weak start to what I assume will be a weak source of lore. I should have looked more closely at the description and seen that this was a manga. I guess it’s fine if you like that kind of thing, but I was hoping for more storyline, less half-naked girls and men who look like half-naked girls. Unless you simply stare at the artwork, which is fine if you enjoy ink sketches with no color, it will take you no longer than 30 minutes to read this from cover to cover. Half of that time was spent reading the prologue which is a descent summary of “The History of the World of Warcraft.”
My recommendation is, if you enjoy manga and Warcraft, you might like this book. If you’re buying it for the lore, you’re much better of checking out the wikis there’s not a lot of content in this black and white comic book.
4 Stars Decent
An interesting read and imaginative take on Warcraft lore. My only real gripe about this book (and trilogy as a whole) is length. You can pretty much finish all three books in one short sitting.
3 Stars OK…
I starting reading this short series of manga a couple years back when WOW first came out. I had never played WOW, all my friends did though. I had played Warcraft, Warcraft 2, and Warcraft 3 though. I was in San Francisco with some friend and needed something to read on the BART on the way home, and saw it in a comic store in the Metreon Mall.
I first noticed that the art was a little different than Japanese artwork, or American artwork. I realized after reading it the first time, that it was actually drawn by a Korean guy. The art reminds me of the art of the horrible manga adaptation of Battle Royal. The art is a little too serious, but very detailed. The art looks very similar to the art in the game manual to Warcraft games.
There is a pretty good summary of the history of Warcraft in the first couple pages of the book. This is a good read for people that have no idea what Warcraft is about. The story really is complicated enough to be summarized in 10+ pages of text. The storyline in the actual manga is a little sappy. It follows the story of a shape-shifting dragon and his female counterpart. There are a lot of familiar races and scenarios to the Warcraft Canon. It is a true Warcraft manga, and not just a fantasy manga with a warcraft name. There is interesting back history to those that like to play Blood Elves as well. One of the main plot elements added to push the characters on is the classic RPG tag of “I have this cursed item stuck on me and I need to get it off, lets find “Random Guy” to take it off (maybe)”.
3 Stars Warcraft continues
This is not your typical book. Because it is TokyoPop it is (forgive me) more like a comic book. As such I read it in about 20 minutes. It was entertaining though.
2 Stars And what exactly does this have to do with Warcraft?
Dragon Hunt was, by far, a disappointment. I’m sure I’m not the first to ay how excited I was to see the World of Warcraft franchise extending its hand into the world of printed media, but the result, while not horrific, was extraordinarily mediocre.
I received my copies of the first two volumes of the Sunwell Trilogy as prizes for winning one of the WoW comic contests this past year, and even the fact that I got them for free couldn’t cover up how poor I thought they were. The art is impressive, I must admit, and is towards the higher-end of manga, but it’s generic and in no way reflects the already gorgeous and well-established visual style within the Warcraft universe. Similarly, the writing style and storyline, as has been said in previous reviews, goes on and on like any typical high fantasy novel and has little or no reason to be set in Azeroth. World of Warcraft is renowned for its stylized design, clean gameplay, and a well-honed sense of humor- why would that then be stripped away to write a story about bishounen elves who can turn into dragons? Search me.
Filed under: World of Warcraft Books