#zehkhan

[azerothtravel]

A Hero's Funeral, Orgrimmar, September 24, 2019.

[katieskarlette]

Shadows Rising: A Reaction Post

Short, mostly non-spoilery version:  I liked it overall.  I give it a solid B, maybe a B+.

I was disappointed in how little Nathanos and/or Sylvanas content there was, but I think proclamations of the ship’s doom are premature.  

I’m intrigued by the first rumblings of new character development for certain characters, especially Anduin, Alleria and Turalyon.

I was rooting for Talanji so much.  She’s great. Zekhan is a cinnamon roll too pure for this world.  Sira was kind of boring. Fairshaw is so darn heartwarming I can’t stand it. I like Bwonsamdi more now. The lack of Wrathion is unsurprising but unfortunate. Nothing new with Tyrande but she’s already poised for major development in Shadowlands.

Much longer, spoilery version below.

This ended up being more of a ramble than an essay, but there’s a lot of disjointed thoughts pinging around in my head, so let’s dive in.

Overall, I enjoyed Shadows Rising.  Was it the best book ever?  No.  Not even the best Warcraft book ever.  But it was an enjoyable read.  It’s always a treat to get into the heads of characters we mostly know in passing from in-game events.  There are internal, emotional beats that cannot easily be explored in the game, and the books are a way to build the world and the characters in a more introspective, slow-paced manner.  I like that.  (That’s not to say there are no action scenes, because there definitely are.)

Talanji, Jaina, Zekhan, and Anduin were all written well and sympathetically.  Maiev’s only in a couple scenes, but she felt off to me.  Nathanos was very in-character, in all his snide, sour glory.   Flynn and Mathias are great together.

The pacing was fine.  The descriptions were good, and it all felt grounded in the game world (i.e. landmarks, ambiance, the ridiculous amount of stairs in Daz’alor...)  Each of the Horde leaders got a moment or two in the spotlight.  Despite a fair amount of chapters about Anduin, Alleria, Turalyon, and Jaina, it still felt like a Horde-centric book to me.  Not that that’s a bad thing.

Prologue:  Gayness detected on page 8!  And it’s even something I kind of inadvertently predicted.  In my reaction post for Before the Storm I wrote, “ In this book alone, it would have been so easy to have that blacksmith bringing a helmet as a gift to his long-lost Forsaken husband instead of friend.”  That’s basically what we have here.  I don’t know if they were married, and neither were blacksmiths, but the Westfall moonshiner describes one of the Forsaken slain in Arathi as “the best man I ever knew and loved.”  Tada!  See how easy it was?  Add Jago x Wilmer to the growing list of LGBT rep in Azeroth.  (Even if they’re super minor characters in the long run, it’s still great to see.)

There might be some kind of parallel to be drawn between Alleria failing Anduin (by not finding/killing Sylvanas) and Nathanos failing Sylvanas (by not killing Bwonsamdi) but my brain is too overloaded from binge-reading to articulate it right now.  Both failed their king or queen, but both were also given nearly impossible tasks. 

Alleria and Turalyon are definitely being set up as antagonists.  We are clearly supposed to side with Jaina on this, and be uncomfortable (if not outright horrified) at their torture methods.  It’s especially disturbing how they use their respective void and light powers to accomplish their goals.  I mean, on one hand it’s great that both sides of the great cosmic divide can work together, and their marriage seems stronger than it was for awhile there, but yeesh...can you not torture people?  I know, ends justify the means, slippery slope, greater evil, blah blah, but still...that’s not okay.  It’s yet another sign that the Light is not necessarily good (or the void necessarily evil).

I welcome conflict within the Alliance, though.  That’s been the Horde’s thing for long enough.  Time to see how the blue side deals with its rifts.

In chapter 2 Nathanos is annoyed when a dreadtick flies by his head.  What, was it too similar to a bird for his liking?  Heh. 

All that time in Nazmir, and we didn’t get to see a single crawg!  Harumph.

It took three chapters and 39 pages to finally get something from Nathanos' perspective, and he was much more scarce going forward than I had hoped.  The bits we did get from his perspective were great and in-character, but I wanted to get into his head more.  Most of his scenes were from the POV of Sira or the troll villain instead, and while Apari was a good character I find Sira to be pretty one-dimensional. 

I kind of got paternal vibes from Nathanos toward Sira, though.  He was like, “I’ve been undead a lot longer than you; I know how to handle the bloodlust and such.  Get it out of your system at appropriate times but learn to control yourself.  There’s more to (un)life than slaughtering people.”  She herself, though, was just “Rawr, I hate everything and want to kill anything that moves.”  I mean, I get that she’s been through some traumatic stuff, but I didn’t find myself invested in her at all.

Page 42, as a bunch of trolls are about to be slaughtered:  "Hungry birds circled, expectant of a big meal, and Nathanos so hated to disappoint."  WHAT?  Nathanos wanted to do something nice for BIRDS?  I know, the phrasing fits with his dry, sarcastic sense of humor, but considering the running joke about him hating birds, it still made me go, “Huh?”

Chapter 5 (and later on, as it turns out):  Zekhan having a soft spot for kids is too precious for this world.

Page 51:  Thalyssra's eyes were "sparkling as she gazed across the room at Lor'themar."  Awwwwwww.   There was a surprising amount of ship fodder in this book overall, with Lor’themar x Thalyssra, Turalyon x Alleria, Fairshaw, and Zehkhan x Talanji all getting a moment or two (or more.) 

Chapter 6:  Anduin says, "Turalyon, take Alleria Windrunner and investigate these deaths."  You know, Alleria...YOUR WIFE?  I don't think you need to say her last name there, genius. 

While I’m being snarky about the editing, there were at least two times where the word “grieves” was used instead of “greaves.”  I spotted a couple other little things that a better editor (or one with more time, maybe it was rushed, I don’t know) would have caught.

Chapter 7:  More matter-of-fact LGBT inclusion for minor characters, this time a lesbian troll couple who want to marry.  Yes, thank you Blizzard, keep it up.

Chapter 8:  If you’re going to make the “Zappy Boy” nickname for Zekhan canon, having Bwonsamdi be the one to wink at the camera and use it was a great decision.  I can totally imagine him saying it.

We learn the name of Varok’s wife/Dranosh’s mother:  Remda.  Although I read elsewhere that the vision Zekhan saw of the Saurfang family in the afterlife was just Bwonsamdi’s B.S., it was still cool.

Chapter 13:  Nathanos wearing cologne?  Love it.  And it’s not even to cover up the rotting smell, because apparently his new body doesn’t stink like some undead; it just doesn’t smell like a living person, either, and some find it unnerving.  So he wears cologne.  That’s such a delightful little detail, and surprisingly considerate of him.

Sira complaining about bugs:  "We'll be eaten alive."  Uh no, you'd have to BE ALIVE for that to happen. Tsk.

Nathanos being called "the pale rider" makes me think of old cowboy movies.  Like, “You greenhorns better clear out; the Pale Rider is comin’ to town and there’s gonna be trouble.  Go wake up the sheriff.”  

Sira says that while on the voyage to Zandalar the dark rangers liked to tell the tale of how Nathanos was promoted to Ranger Lord by Sylvanas.  I'm surprised he lets them gossip like that!  His quests in vanilla made it seem he wanted to keep those parts of his past on the down-low, at least from the player.

Chapter 14:  Thrall's second kid is Rehze.  *blink*  Reh-zee?  Rez?  Ruh-zay?  I guess she’s not named after anyone.  After he named his son Durak (sort of after Durotan) I assumed he’d continue the pattern with kid #2.  Maybe she’s named after one of Aggra’s relatives.  (Later I read on Wowpedia that the author actually said she dislikes the “fan service” trend of naming children after other characters so she just picked a random orcish name.  I don’t think it’s fan service, because lots of real-life people do it, but okay.  Fair enough.)

Speaking of orcish names, there’s an orc page helping out the council named Gunk.  Like, what you clean out from under your fingernails after gardening.  Gunk.  LOL

Aww, that’s no fun...Maiev's wearing a cape trimmed in white fur, not daggers.  What happened to her impeccable/deadly fashion sense?

Chapter 16:  Zekhan starting to clap at Talanji's speech and then stopping and shrinking back when he realized no one else was applauding was so freaking adorable.

Chapter 17:  Fairshaw, full steam ahead!!!  Their chemistry is everything I hoped it would be.  Learning a little about Flynn’s tragic past was both fascinating and heartbreaking.  (We learned his mom’s name: Lyra Fairwind.  R.I.P.)

Chapter 18:  Proodmoore keep has a gallery with floor to ceiling oil paintings of the Proudmoore family, extended family, and beloved friends.  It now includes Anduin.  I can’t help thinking that, in a different timeline, Arthas’ portrait would have been there.

Will wonders never case?  Ji Firepaw actually gets to do stuff!!!  GASP!

"Thrall understood that to other humans Wrynn was said to be pleasing-looking, but to the orc, Anduin simply looked like a small, pink boy swallowed by clunky armor."  So it’s canon that Anduin is good-looking in-universe.  But LMAO at Thrall’s description.

Chapter 22:  From Shaw’s POV, "These odds ranked pretty low...  Maybe just above the time he had relied completely on a shoddy network of spies embedded in a cheese business."  OMG leave Elling Trias alone!  He did his best!  LOL

Shaw wanting to hang out in a mountain meadow and whittle bird calls (perhaps even with a special someone) was so touchingly normal.  That’s the kind of characterization that the books are so much better at than the game.

I actually like Bwonsamdi more after reading this.  Not that I disliked him before, but I didn’t have a strong sense of him due to not playing Horde as much in BFA.  He’s a well-done gray character:  not good, not evil, insightful but a smartass, part of the great cycle, out for himself but also taking his duties seriously (saving troll souls from the Maw.) 

I’m not entirely sure that we needed as much from Thrall’s POV as we got.  I mean, sure, he’s a familiar character with ties to a lot of others, so it was easy to drop him into situations, and his ties to Jaina made cross-faction communication easier, but he didn’t seem as relevant to the lore of Zandalar and the Shadowlands as some other characters.

Maiev seemed OOC, especially in the Stockades scene.  I know one of the themes of the book was “people change,” and I suppose I should be happy that she has a more moderate viewpoint nowadays, dialing back the Lust For Vengeance Meter from eleven to maybe a five or a six, but it didn’t feel like Maiev.  Especially because her message of “maybe don’t go overboard with this vengeance thing” was aimed at Tyrande, of all people, someone who Maiev has had quite legitimate reasons to dislike for a very, very long time.  I could see her maybe mellowing out a little in front of fellow Wardens, but Tyrande?  Eh, it didn’t feel right to me.

No surprises from Tyrande in this.  She’s still steely cold, vengeance-obsessed, consumed by anger.  Not that I blame her, but it’s not healthy.  I know we’ll be exploring her situation more in Shadowlands, so this was more of a reminder/reinforcement of where she is right now.  It was kind of funny how Thrall, Baine and Calia tried to talk to her and she just gave them the stink eye and the silent treatment, though.

I’m fine with Anduin exploring his dark side a bit more, as long as they don’t go overboard with it.  I like him as an earnest, good-hearted character.  It’s only natural to test your limits, though, especially in times of crisis.  Power corrupts, and he’s got plenty of it, both politically and magically, so I can understand Jaina and Mathias being a bit uneasy.  Add to that the increasing themes about the Light not being as benevolent as we originally assumed, and there’s potential for interesting plot there.  In the end I want Anduin to stay firmly on the side of good, empathy, compassion, etc., but a deviation into the shadows along the way isn’t a bad thing for the story.

I imagine every single person who read about Anduin sneaking off to the Lion’s Pride Inn in Goldshire smirked about that place’s reputation on certain RP realms.  I was surprised he didn’t find scantily-clad elves and draenei dancing on the furniture.  And then it turns out Jaina was there, too.  Awkward!

Why, oh why couldn’t we have had a scene with Anduin and Wrathion hanging out (incognito, of course) in a tavern?  That was their thing in MoP, and now with Anduin desperately wanting to get away from his duties for awhile and soak up some tavern ambiance it would have been perfect.  Let Anduin show off the best taverns Stormwind has to offer.  Even though Wrathion was as much a guest at the Tavern in the Mists as Anduin was, he acted like he owned the place and Anduin was his guest, so let them turn the tables and have Anduin play host.  There could be jokes about how he better not punch Wrathion again or they’ll get kicked out for starting a bar fight.  They could have still seen the young recruits, ran into Jaina, etc.  But Anduin really needs a buddy to hang out with right now.  

And you can’t tell me after Nya’lotha fell Wrathion just disappeared again and never at least visited Stormwind to tell grandiose tales about how he stabbed an Old God, it was so heroic, and he wasn’t scared at all, and those mean adventurers were so quick to believe he’d been corrupted, but he hadn’t, and did you know Azshara was there?  And then N’Zoth almost won but KERPOW LAZERS and oh Anduin you should have seen it, etc. etc. etc.

I should be used to being disappointed about Wrathion’s absence by now, but there are SO MANY MISSED OPPORTUNITIES!

Sigh.  Moving on.

Being exposed to spoilers meant I wasn’t fooled by it, but it was still a deft bit of writing to have the dark rangers drink poison when cornered by Horde soldiers, then mention Nathanos having a vial in his coat, which he drinks when defeated--making the unspoiled reader assume he’s killing himself--only for it to be a kind of liquid hearthstone attuned to Sylvanas.  Had I not known that he survived the book I would have freaked out there.

So, like, was Bolvar just sitting there on the ground awkwardly eavesdropping while Sylvanas and Nathanos talked/argued?  Or did he use that time to sneak away unnoticed?  LOL

Which brings us to the epilogue that’s caused so much hand wringing and wailing from my fellow Blightrunner shippers.  It wasn’t the openly sentimental interaction between them that I had hoped for, but I honestly didn’t read it as the doom of the ship.  A bump, at worst.

[If you’re not interested in the relationship between Nathanos and Sylvanas, or if you’re one of those people who simply hate his character, you can skip the rest of this post.]

First of all, Sylvanas had just broken the Helm of Domination.  That was a hugely significant thing to do, both for her personally and in the cosmic scheme of things.  Her state of mind at that moment had to have been in a turmoil.  So if she was a little distracted and tense, I think that’s quite understandable.

Second, I saw other fans being upset that she threatened/wanted to strike him.  That’s not how I read it at all.  “Sylvanas could strike him, scream and hollow out his soul, but it would not correct the failing.”  She’s not saying she wants to do that, just that she could.  The instinct to lash out in violence is ingrained in all the undead; death knights have to do it or they go mad.  So for her mind to go there in a moment of high emotion seems natural to me.  She doesn’t actually attack him or verbally/physically threaten him.  People say things like “I could have killed my brother for eating the last slice of cake” or “I could’ve strangled my co-worker when she spoiled the ending of the movie” and it’s not literal.

Third, she doesn’t say “go away, I never want to see you again.”  She says “Go where you will, Nathanos, but do not be idle” and “I expect you will return to me with means to prevent [Bwonsamdi’s] meddling.”  So essentially she’s saying, “Fine, go home, regroup, come up with Plan B, and if it’s not possible to destroy Bwonsamdi at least concentrate on countering him.”  Also note that she still considers the operation to be theirs, not just hers:  “This was a blow, but one she felt sure they could overcome.”  That tells me she expects to work with him in the future.

Fourth, and granted this is before she learns of his failure, but she’s clearly happy to have him there when he first arrives.  “’My champion,’ Sylvanas purred.  ‘Your timing could not be better.  Tell me of your victory as we take these first steps together.’”  She wanted to cross into the Shadowlands with him at her side.  Hell, that’s bridal imagery...crossing the threshold together, and all that.  The only reason she tells him to go is because his work isn’t done and she still needs him on Azeroth.  But she explicitly says “I expect you will return to me.” 

Fifth, in the line from her POV about how “the unjust ladder of their lives must be dismantled,” the “they” she’s referring to is all of the denizens of Azeroth, true, but I think there’s also a tinge of bitterness there as she looks back on her own life, and her life with Nathanos.  Destiny has not been kind to either of them.

Sixth, she says “My path lies ahead” as she prepares to cross into the Shadowlands.  It’s a reminder of the scale of the forces she is trying to manipulate.  When faced with the potential fates of all the souls in the universe, her own regrets are insignificant.  She can’t stay on Azeroth any longer, even if some part of her does want to just chill out on a beach somewhere with Nathanos and watch his blighthounds chase seagulls.  She thinks “It would not be easy, but then, her mission required great sacrifice.”  Like leaving him behind.

Even this part can be interpreted different ways:  “She heard the note of hope in his voice, fragile as a fledgling dropped from the next.”  Putting aside the humor of comparing bird-hating Nathanos to a fledgling, we don’t get a value judgment about the comparison.  Sylvanas doesn’t think about him sympathetically, wanting to protect him in a vulnerable moment, but she also doesn’t think, “Geez, what a pathetic weakling.”  It goes back to that bit in Warbringers about how she can’t kill hope.  And she can’t.  Here, again, no matter how bleak things are, no matter how displeased she is at his failure, he still has hope.  And she needs that, whether she believes it or not.

When she “flicked her fingers, as if ridding herself of a speck of muck” that can be interpreted as her thinking of him in a derogatory way, but she was also talking about Bwonsamdi in the same breath so I can choose to believe that’s who she was being dismissive of.

I don’t know.  I get that some of the language is discouraging.  She describes him as having “blubbering lips” and she’s definitely not happy with him.  But these two have been through a lot, and their bond has remained strong.  I’m sure this isn’t their first fight, or the first time he’s disappointed her.  This isn’t the end for them.  Just another bump on a very long highway they’ve traveled together.

...

OMG this has turned into a monster of a post, rambling all over the place.  I hope it’s coherent enough to follow.  I’m just in lore overload at the moment (and enjoying every second.)  I know I’m forgetting things I wanted to talk about, too, but I’m going to go ahead and post it as it is.