Arthas: Rise of the Lich King

This book from Christie Golden was fun and easy to read. If you have never heard of World of Warcraft and the RTS games that spawned it then you might be a little lost as to what is going on. This book has been released to help promote the newest expansion Wrath of the Lich King and gives a bit of an explanation as to why players were not fighting him before now.

The story takes place as three characters recall various points in the life of Arthas Menethil, who becomes the Lich King during the events fo the Warcraft 3 game.

The opening scene of the book actually requires understanding of the nature of the Lich King to fully comprehend. The Lich King is the spirit of an Orc Shaman named Ner'Zhul who was imprisoned by the Demons who wanted to control Azeroth and sent to Northrend to do so. In the opening scene the spirit of Ner'Zhul is sitting at a table with the humanity of the man who was once Arthas Menethil, which is portrayed by the youth he was long before all this happened. The humanity is sick and frail looking like it is clinging on with it's last threads.

The story then takes you to Arthas as a youth and proceeds to tell the story of his growing up stopping to show the events that turn him into the man who becomes the Lich King. It shows and intriguing look into the past of the character and leads to another short break. The second section of the book opens with the character Jaina Proudmoore (another main character from Warcraft 3) as she drifts into remembering what Arthas was like. The story then shows the love affair between the two characters and takes you through the events of Warcraft 3 from the perspective of a person who is not resurrected or able to build almost infinite troops. 

After another short interlude the story introduces Sylvanas Windrunner (a character Arthas killed and tortured in Warcraft 3 after becoming a Death Knight) and shows a bit of her plans, and then jumps back to cover the events of The Frozen Throne expansion to Warcraft 3.

I enjoyed the book and found it to be a good read. I do think some of it might be hard to follow if you know little to nothing of the Warcraft world and mythology. Although I think it could still stand as a story about the lengths one might go to if they are not careful.