If you’re curious about the books, we’re here to offer a bit of guidance.
Here’s the complete guide on how to read the books in chronological order.
We’ll do our best to avoid spoilers in our mentions here.
But some books, just the setup can spoil previous books and in-game storylines.
Be careful if you’re sensitive to spoilers!
What Aren’t We Mentioning?
To start, let’s trim the fat a bit.
There are a few things we aren’t going to mention in our list for simplicity’s sake.
Here are a few things we’ll be skipping out on.
Short Stories
Nothing deep, those just aren’t books.
We’re sticking to printed ink-and-paper books, and most of the short stories are available through online media.
Most often, a short story is to show an off-screen event or to bridge pieces between expansions.
The comics also occur over long stretches due to being serialized.
Because of this hazy timeline, it’s difficult to say where such things would land.
These visual novels also vary in how canon they are.
This is likely the most popular Warcraft novel, so we’ve gone ahead and placed this here.
Chronicle Volumes
The Chronicle volumes are tricky.
All four volumes pick a moment in time and dive deeper into it.
However, they tend to stretch over long periods of time.
For example, Chronicle Vol.
1 starts at the beginning of the cosmos, yet stretches all the way up to the First War.
The same is true for Vol.
War of the Ancients is the foundation for a great deal of the story of the franchise.
We see Sargeras’s first assault, the Sundering, the corruption of Deathwing, and much more.
Some of this novel’s canon is hazy.
This story shows the original lore of how the Horde came to be.
The Last Guardian
From here, novels document the events of the franchise rather thoroughly.
That’s because we’re entering the First War, which takes place duringWarcraft: Orcs & Humans.
As such, these books will begin documenting the games themselves, as well as the events between them.
The Last Guardian is our primary First War novel.
Read this story to see how the Orcs first came to Azeroth.
Tides of Darkness
Tides of Darkness is a novelization of the original Warcraft 2 game.
Captured and enslaved using the Demon Soul (remember War of the Ancients?)
Alexstrasza is being used to birth new dragons to serve the Dragonmaw clan as weapons of war.
Her consort, Korialstrasz, teams up with the hotheaded Human mage Rhonin to attempt to free her.
You’ll see familiar names like Arthas, Sylvanas, Jaina, and countless more.
Parts of this novel show events from other pieces of media.
Parts of the book also take place just before the Wrath of the Lich King expansion.
Chronicle Vol.
But most of Volume 3 is focused on the events of the Third War.
This is the period of their original timeline before they do so!
We’ll keep it chronological, don’t worry!
It’s only in one main category because some expansions had less to discuss than others.
It’s also a follow-up to a manga series titled Shadow Wing.
This story takes place around the events of Burning Crusade.
World of Warcraft: Illidan
This story is a bit of an oddity.
These gaming mice give you all the buttons you need for MMOs.
Stormrage
Moving into the Wrath of the Lich King, we have Illidan’s twin, Malfurion.
This story focuses deeply on Malfurion Stormrage and his journey through the Emerald Dream.
If you’re a fan of Lovecraftian spookiness, Stormrage is a great novel to look into.
This novel heavily features the Emerald Nightmare, a twisted realm created by the Old Gods Yogg-Saron and N’Zoth.
The Shattering: Prelude to Cataclysm
I mean, it’s in the name, right?
No matter what you’re into, this is a fantastic novel.
Wolfheart is the main novel, focusing heavily on the champion of Lo’gosh himself - King Varian Wrynn.
Not quite trusting the bestial Gilneans, Wrynn finds himself battling with his own inner beast as well.
Taking place around Mists of Pandaria, this story contains one of Jaina’s most important story moments.
Bake with Bidoof, cook with Kratos, and saute with Sonic.
Dawn of the Aspects
This is another tricky one.
Taking place in five parts, this story is focused heavily on visions being experienced by Kalecgos.
War Crimes focuses on the deposing and defeat of Garrosh Hellscream.
There were some short stories and comics, but those don’t fit our current criteria.
Legion, too, mostly uses comics and online short stories.
you could also place the previously-mentioned Illidan novel here, as some of it occurs during the Legion expansion.
Battle For Azeroth And Forward
From here, the novels weren’t flowing quite as quickly.
Before the Storm
The factions of Azeroth have bound together to fight against the Legion.
Before the Storm takes place just after Legion.
This story follows the frantic aftermath of the War of the Thorns and the Fourth War.
These books will fill in all the gaps in your knowledge of WoW lore.
Eastern Kingdoms follows Flynn Fairwind and Mathias Shaw, exploring the eastern continent during the time just before Shadowlands.
Kalimdor follows the characters Rexxar and Zekhan during the same time period.
As the name suggests, they’re covering the western continent of Kalimdor.
These are great books to learn more about the world as a whole.
There’s quite a few Exploring Azeroth volumes - six!
- but they’re difficult to put on a timeline.
you could toss most of them around this same timeline.
This book occurs during Shadowlands itself, taking place about halfway through the expansion during the 9.1 patch.
This story focuses deeply on Sylvanas and her life throughout the story.
Because of that, some of this story takes place in the past.
The bulk of events are during Shadowlands, taking place around when the book was released.
However, some of the book takes place during the Dragonflight expansion.
Since it’s the only book of the expansion, we’ve seen it fit to place it here.
Most of the books are canon, but there have been some shifts and alterations from modern storytelling.
Some of Arthas’s story was changed slightly in Shadowlands, for example, as was some of Sylvanas.
The Warlords of Draenor expansion reworked who many of the original Orcish chieftains and people-of-interest were as well.
What About The Warcraft 2016 Movie?
That movie also isn’t canon, unfortunately.
Unfortunately, it veers very far from the established canon and is not considered to be part of it.
Bookshelf full but you still want more merch?
Here’s our favorite bits of Warcraft merch in 2024.
