World of Warcraft: Exploring Azeroth

The Eastern Kingdoms

By: Christie Golden

Narrated by: John Behlmann, Henry Lloyd-Hughes, Heath Miller

From the shining towers of Silvermoon to the sulfurous Blackrock Mountain to the white stone castles of Stormwind, the Eastern Kingdoms are vast and full of wonder. Every corner of the majestic isle contains countless stories, treasures, and more than a few secrets that some would prefer stay buried. Follow Spymaster Mathias Shaw and Captain Flynn Fairwind on an expedition across the Eastern Kingdoms for king and country as they chronicle its history and catalog the weapons, armor, and powers untold that are scattered across this sprawling dominion.

Penned by best-selling author and Blizzard Entertainment writer Christie Golden, Exploring Azeroth is your first step on a truly remarkable journey across the beloved lands of Azeroth.

©2021 Blizzard Entertainment (P)2021 Blizzard Entertainment

Brilliant

Well set up. Smooth reading. I loved the style of a journal.
Another great from Christie Golden. How great is it to have the main characters narratinG.

excellent

make more of these. panderia, outland, etc. this is good stuff.

very well put out

Extremely well read.

The narrator and supporting characters are all very funny and interesting to hear chime in. This is mostly a like encyclopedia more than a traditional book, but they do an amazing job of reading it in a way that makes you feel like you’re sitting next to them just having a long discussion about the Eastern Kingdoms.

Inoffensive but pointless.

I was expecting some sort of travelogue or story about a journey through the Eastern Kingdoms of Azeroth, but this book merely describes about a dozen regions of the continent in a manner similar to what you can read for free on WoWpedia or the WoW wiki. Embarrassingly, the old book 'Lands of Conflict' which released around 2004 as a supplementary guidebook for the Warcraft tabletop game did a far more thorough and interesting job of introducing and fleshing out each region of the Eastern Kingdoms.

I imagine the physical edition of the book would probably rate a bit higher, as from what I've seen, it contains a lot of nice art and might be nice to have on a coffee table. But as for this audiobook version, by the end of it my only takeaway was basically 'yup, he described that zone in a way that is consistent with what I learned about it from actually playing the game'.

Not interesting

TL,DR: May be fun for a newbie, but boring to a veteran.

This book is well written, but to someone who knows the lore intimately, it does little to add anything. Chronicles and Traveler are both much better in that regard. Fairwind's interventions are superfluous bordering on obnoxious. I regret the purchase.