Book Review: Blood For The Blood God

I tend to go for the somewhat older Warhammer-books these days. More on the reasons in another rant, but this is one of them.

C.L. Werner usually delivers, and his writing is rich and his characters cool. Sometimes too cool, perhaps. One does have to accept a certain lack of depth in characters in this sort of lit, and that women are either hideous crones or busty temptresses, that relationships and motives are usually not terribly complicated, and that there is plenty of gore.

It's more or less why I read it...

This book is pure barbarian fiction. It's Conan-stuff, and not involving The Old World as such. It would not require much tweaking to not be a Warhammer-novel at all, and I LIKE that. I hate it when I sense stats, game mechanisms, etc at work. The setting here is so obscure (Chaos Wastes) and ill-defined that it's essentially of no consequence whatsoever, and the only explicit tie with the Warhammer World would be the four great powers, and I am not even sure I recall Slaanesh turning up for the party.

The plot in short: Many years ago a great king was killed by The Skulltaker, Khorne's champion. His kingdom fragmented, and now eight tribes (like the star of chaos, eh? Warhammer cleverness for you.) keep each other in check. Our hero belongs to one of these tribes, and he is somewhat naf, at least to begin with. The skulltaker returns after all this time, wanting the head of every tribal chief, and in order to prevent this, our hero must go on an epic quest for a weapon to slay the Skulltaker.

I am somewhat ashamed to say that I really liked this book. It captured Khorne extremely well, and it lacked subtlety much like you would expect from a book about The Blood God. It probably also lacked surprises, at least major ones.

What's bad about it? I am not particularly fond of Werner's tendency to think up a plot with a massive pattern in it. Not saying twists and turns are required on every page, but you kinda see where the story is going, and thus you go through motions and it taxes the writer's ability to entertain you with descriptions and evocative imagery. It's like watching football, knowing in advance what the score will be. This leads to hyperbole, and the whole thing is close to keeling over into silliness at times. Where your line for "silliness" is drawn will have a massive impact on your enjoyment of this book.

There is a wealth of information about tribes in the Chaos Wastes, and much like in other Werner books (Palace of the Plague God, Wulfrik) we get more depth and humanity added to these eeeeevil hordes that threaten The Old World. This is good. I like the "playthings of the chaos gods"-aspect, and the sense that these people (norse, barbarians, etc) have a raw deal, culture shaped by their environment, personalities, hopes and dreams, etc. Does that then make them less villainous? Perhaps. I don't find that to be such a massive problem, seeing as I have more than 12 summers under my belt.

Rating: 4 out of 5. It does drag for a bit here and there and gets repetitive.