Before the Storm by Christie Golden

Fake politics are kind of like real politics, right? They're both inane and stupid, after all! HAahhahaahhaahahhaha wow I'm pushing the envelope with that kind of humor.

Oh my god, poor Anduin. His arm has inexplicably morphed itself into a slutty zombie, this book is going to be so sad :,(

So at this point in time most people who are going to read, and review, this novel have already done so. I'm a few weeks late to the party, but I didn't want to simply review this book in particular. Instead, what I wanted to do was read the book, digest it in my yummy wummy tummy for awhile and then compose a review not just on the book itself but also on its author, Christie Golden, and ultimately on Warcraft storytelling as a greater whole. Before the Storm serves as a good representation, I believe, of a lot of what is right (and wrong) with Warcraft and with the people who are behind writing it. Now that most people have either read it or at least skimmed a couple dozen reviews of it, I wanted to offer a sort of retrospective take on the book.

As preface to all of this, I want to outright state that I found this novel very mediocre. It was actually a little hard to even get through because it was rather boring to me. This is unusual for a Christie Golden novel, because generally I find her to be a decent author. She does, however, have some very serious pitfalls and unfortunately those classic pitfalls are in very full effect through the course of the book. But hey, let's lay the preamble to rest and talk about the goddamn book.

PART 1: THE GODDAMN BOOK

Before the Storm centers around the events of the MMO/torture device World of Warcraft, taking place immediately after the game's most recent expansion and immediately prior to the events of the game's most upcoming expansion. Some people question why a video game would choose an exterior novel to contain story instead of fitting story into the game itself and there's actually a very funny story behind that. See, one day when he was a young child, Chris Metzen was walking down the street when suddenly he was assailed by two armed thugs who threatened to cut the boy down. Suddenly, however, a truck of English dictionaries tipped over and crushed Chris Metzen, badly breaking many of his bones. Seeing no reason to keep harassing the boy, the assailants wandered off. Metzen was forever indebted to books and to this day continues to pay it forward. The end.

So anyways, the book focuses on the two factions of Warcraft, the Horde and Alliance, and follows the conflict they face both against one another and against themselves. What promises to be a sort of political thriller, however, turns out to be a very, very boring slog. The first issue is that the book focuses heavily on the Alliance and Anduin with nearly twice the amount of pages dedicated to Anduin and his meanderings than to Sylvanas and the Horde. This by itself wouldn't be a real issue, but Anduin is fucking boring. Anduin being about as interesting as a turtle turd is really the linchpin of the novel's issues because he's so heavily focused on. Anduin is a problem. He's never been the best written character in the lore or anything but in this novel he's particularly badly written. Anduin manages to be borderline Mary Sue while at the same time boring as hell. 

What makes Anduin so boring to follow? The issue is actually inflamed quite a bit by how boring the Alliance is in general in this book. Anduin being boring and the Alliance being boring really feed into each other and each issue makes the other one worse by association. Every single Alliance chapter for the duration of the novel is just one long tale of everyone getting along and praising each other and being buddies, with only token amounts of conflict happening between the characters. Genn Greymane is a loving fatherly figure to Anduin who only defies his king for several moments of heated arguing. Anduin is a boring asshole who, like a rejected Disney princess, whines about wanting to marry for love instead of for politics. Everyone is everyone's friend and any character-driven conflict is heavily glossed over and put down almost as soon as it is picked up. This is made even worse by the fact that the Horde chapters, in comparison, are very interesting. Because with Sylvanas we actually get a lot of conflict and political tension between the characters. They butt heads, they argue, they scheme against each other. Stuff happens.

So you read through three boring Alliance chapters in a row, slogging through Anduin trying on different hair bows and crying on flowers, only to get a tiny taste of a Horde chapter that gives you the kind of stuff you actually want to read about. Christie Golden, you sultry little tease. I'd hit you in the head with a brick if I wasn't so distracted by Anduin BEING A TOTAL PUSSY. 

Here's a lesson storytelling. Conflict drives characters and characters define conflict. It's a very powerful and healthy way of constructing a story. Characters create conflict and then that conflict shapes how the characters act, which leads to more and different branches of conflict which funnels back into the characters... and so on and so on. When you have characters that experience either no conflict, or very shallow conflict, you don't get characters that do very much. While a story doesn't always need a direct conflict of some kind and you can certainly make a specific type of story that exists without one, a story like Before the Storm is one that really, really needs some god damn conflict. 

The worst thing about this is that the Alliance teases a lot of conflict. There's promise of it there, Golden simply never picks up on any of it. Genn doesn't like the Forsaken, Anduin needs to have an heir, Anduin is in friendly contact with members of the Horde, Moria has to work directly with her estranged father, Velen has to worry about petty mortal conflicts when he's aware of so much more at stake, Anduin has to somehow make a morally righteous choice regarding the Azerite, etc. There's SO MUCH there to lead to emotional and character turmoil amongst our Alliance heroes, but none of it is ever really utilized. 

Anduin is in a position to make a good intentioned mistake with the Azerite. Anduin is in a position to make a good intentioned mistake with not focusing on securing his future with an heir. However, he's written as if he's always in the right and as such, he falls very flat and ends up being very two-dimensional and, well, boring.

In the end the novel reads very slowly and a lot of time is spent detailing just how good of friends the Alliance characters are and how all they do is shower each other with praise and love each other and go into the backroom to hug and kiss while Golden furiously masturbates to the thought of Genn "Ol' Daddy" Greymane 'crowning' Anduin's boyhole.

Before the Storm by itself is a mediocre book. In the scheme of WoW novels it's not the worst, it's no Stormrage or Cycles of Hatred, but it's very middle of the road. I'd compare it to the Arthas novel (also by Golden) or the Cataclysm expansion novel The Shattering (also also by Golden) in terms of content and quality. If you liked those books, you'll probably like this one well enough. If you found either of the aforementioned novels hard to get through, then this is likely going to be the same way.

The book, for all it says and all that happens in it, suffers from the universal issue of the Alliance being boring and one-note morally good guys who never do anything wrong. It's Sylvanas and the Horde that have all the internal controversy and take all the dubious actions. Everyone keeps talking about how Sylvanas slaughtered her own Forsaken, regardless of their loyalty, in a bid to preserve her position of power. Is anyone talking about Anduin and his whole "~marry for love~" bullshit? Spoilers: No, no they are fucking not.

Even when Anduin indirectly lead to Sylvanas slaughtering the Forsaken, due to Anduin attempting to orchestrate Forsaken defection, the writing never once questions Anduin as a moral character or as a person. It plays it off as if Anduin is wholly good and devoid of general criticism. Anduin sits around being loved by everyone, being "the chosen one" and any mistakes he makes are either shallow in consequence or he's depicted as ultimately having been right (or not at least not wrong). Add in some really stupid 'power' to tell when things are "right" because a giant bell fell on him and what do you come out with?

Anduin is a Mary Sue.

PART 2: THE GODDAMN AUTHOR

I like Christie Golden. I think that, given the right material, she can create good stories. Rise of the Horde, Lord of the Clans and War Crimes (ignoring some of that book's glaring problems) are all very good novels that are good not just as 'WoW books', but are also good by their own merit. A lot of people dump on her, especially over this recent novel, and call her a shitty writer. I don't think she's a shitty writer, but I do think she has some incredible problems and Before the Storm was simply the best (worst?) example of all of Golden's pitfalls.

One thing I want to also address is that Golden does not have sole power over writing the story. A lot of people don't understand this and so she (and other authors) get blamed for writing stupid shit. Golden doesn't have control over the story itself, she just writes it into a book format. Other writers, internal to the game's development, decide the general story structure (this character does this, this happens to that, etc) and Golden merely takes that story outline and writes it into a book. She can take some liberties here and there, adding an original character or two or whatever, but overall she has a lot less power over writing the actual story than a lot of people think. Suffice to say, Golden is not the person who is coming up with the next expansion. But let's talk about what Golden is shit at!

Golden can not write romance. She can not. I say this all the time and I will continue saying it until the day I die. My gravestone, the marker of my eternal resting place, will read in large block granite font: GOLDEN SUCKS DICK AT ROMANCE. There wasn't a lot of direct romance in Before the Storm but there was trace amounts of it (some sappy, hammy scenes between Jaina and Kalec and all of Anduin's marriage-for-love aspirations) but it was still present enough for me to notice it. Golden's romance writing is, literally and with no hyperbole, fanfiction-tier shlock. It's very formulaic, which is the worst thing of all. It's always "female character loves male, contrived drama keeps her from expressing her real feelings, the two share multiple moments of love-lost passion teasing while the female asserts their love can not be, eventually they have a happy ending and love each other 4ever".

I'm not making any of that up. Every single time Golden gets her hands on romance it's the same god damn thing. Turalyon and Alleria, Jaina and Kalec (twice now in two separate fucking books), even Thrall and Aggra followed a more condensed yet equally generic version of their own (Thrall and Aggra are arguably Golden's worst offenders on the virtue of Aggra being a shitty character).

Golden adds original characters into the story to do nothing but form a shallow relationship to one of the main characters and then eventually die. Remember when I complained that Golden's romance writing is formulaic? Yeah well, the only thing more formula than her romance writing is how she handles original characters. No joke. I can represent it in a literal formula. Watch.

OC + RM + Cl = D

Our formula is, Original Character (OC) plus their relationship to a main character (RM) plus the cliche nature (Cl) of that relationship equals that character dying. Don't believe me? Let's examine the examples. Remember that dwarf girl Anduin wanted to fuck in The Shattering? How about Anduin's manservant in Before the Storm? The little gnome thot from the Jaina novel? Durotan's lieutenant (that he had for all of three pages) in Rise of the Horde? Though Falric and Marwyn weren't killed by Golden herself, they received about the same treatment in the Lich King novel, being written as generic friends to Arthas whose only purpose was to eventually get killed. Golden randomly chose to make Shokia a Garrosh-supporter in War Crimes, effectively 'killing' her as far as ever being utilized again. 

The point is that Golden creates some shallow character to serve as a cliche buddy-buddy to one of the main characters in a shallow and ultimately very pointless relationship before she has the character killed. It's disgustingly formulaic and the second Wyll, Anduin's trusty and never-heard-of-ever-before servant, showed up in Before the Storm it was blatantly obvious he was only showing up to die for a weak plot element. This is really a problem because having a character die can be a very important plot device for your story. To build a relationship up between two people and then have one of them die, leaving the remaining character to sort through the emotional distress of a partnership cut short, is something that can serve a very good purpose in your story. Introducing a random fuckhead who we're just told is Anduin's BFF butler and then kill him so Anduin can be so sad :,( is fucking weak.

So the issue with Golden is that she's terribly formulaic. Her romance follows a formula, the way she uses her original characters follows a formula. Nothing is exciting about seeing a character die who we've only just met and have no investment in other than being told "Anduin likes this guy", nothing is exciting about Anduin meeting a dwarf and wanting to fuck her only for her to die in the space of a few chapters. Nothing is exciting about Jaina and Kalec hamming it up in dimestore novel romantic distress. We know Golden will have their romance work out in the end, so all of this fake drama is just pointless foot dragging so Golden can pretend she's building up to a real payoff.

You know what I think the real issue with Golden is? She's an Alliance fangirl. Nothing she writes concerning the Alliance is ever very good because she doesn't paint them as characters, she paints them as idyllic flowerbabies who love each other and have no real problems with one another. Her best works all involve her writing about the Horde. This novel by itself is the perfect example of that. The Horde is at ends with each other, there's tension and political intrigue at hand. The Alliance characters share some shallow arguments. Which side is more interesting to watch? I'll let you answer that for yourself.

PART 3: THE GODDAMN WARCRAFT

Warcraft is a strange beast. It's hard to call Warcraft storytelling any one thing; bad, good, slow, fast. The one thing that summarizes it no matter what your opinion or the current quality of writing, however, I think is confused. There are multiple different writers all writing different shit and trying to keep their headcanons in tandem with each other, often to varying degrees of failure. We can see blatant mistakes made amongst the writers in examples like Garrosh from the Stonetalon questline. Other, more subtle, issues arise from writers like Golden who present Anduin as some kind of morally righteous Mary Sue when, in-game, writers and developers plan for him to take a much more morally grey path. It makes it hard for characters and stories to end up feeling relatable when oftentimes their behaviors and motivations end up all over the fucking place. This is, sadly, the nature of MMO storytelling and there's not much Blizzard can do except try their best to not mess everything up beyond repair.

In-game Greymane and Rogers break orders from Anduin and attack the Forsaken in Stormheim. What does Golden do with this? Nothing. How likely is this to ever come up in the writing again? Very unlikely. One set of writers (quest writers/internal development writers) planned for a conflict between Greymane and Anduin. Golden went off in an entirely different route, leaving the original story element on the floor and bringing up some stupid marriage problem that, again, will probably never show up in the goddamn game. It's hard for characters to feel like characters when they're tossed back and forth like this, and it's hard to have a good story when your characters are getting fucked up the ass. Unless your story is about people being fucked up the ass. I guess. As far as I know, Warcraft has very little assfucking going on. Unless you're inside Christie Golden's mind, where Anduin is gaysexing every other male character. In the case that you are, in fact, inside Christie Golden's mind, if you ever get a moment's break from screaming forever, could you try looking up why she thought Aggra was a compelling character? Thanks.

Warcraft is inherently hard to write a story for because it's an MMO with a split playerbase. Writers have to walk on eggshells because one faction can't lose too much or win too much or be too good or too evil, or else they risk pissing the other faction off. Often times this means open conflicts such as wars or battles end in some kind of contrived stalemate, normally "if one faction loses something, the other faction has to lose something, too". This is why Vol'jin and Varian die. This is why we lose Undercity and Teldrassil. This is why Admiral Taylor dies in WoD after Nazgrim died in MoP. Alliance loses Southshore? Horde has to lose Camp Taurajo. Other times the story is created uniquely for either faction's experience, so that neither faction 'loses' an engagement and you, in fact, win the engagement on both sides. In the end, this makes everything feel very ungenuine and sterilized, like we're not living in an organic story and are instead living inside a checklist of "tit for tat" to make sure no one feels like they lost unfairly. 

This also creates an overarching situation where, even though some writers want to present a character as being morally grey, the character is instead turned into only a shallow representation of ideas that could have been morally grey. The very nature of WoW's storytelling has made it inhibitive of deeper writing and when a novel author, who has the most power and ability to flesh stories and characters out, fails to create a good product you have a situation where readers and fans are left unfulfilled and unexcited for the rest of the story. If you want your game to be storydriven, you kind of rely on the players being invested in the story, now don't you?

tl;dr: Anduin is a Mary Sue and sucks balls.

FINAL POINTLESS NUMERICAL SCORE:

4/10

It's not impossible to finish and it's far from the worst of the Warcraft novels, but I ultimately find it kind of pointless to even bother reading, which is about the worst offense the book could have considering its entire purpose is to get you to read it and understand the storybridge between expansions.