Book review: Wine of Dreams

My, don't I read a lot these days? I read this a while ago, but I am procrastinating as far as painting miniatures goes.

 

Whether or not this is Brian Craig's best book or not... I would perhaps not go that far. It is one of the earlier Warhammer books when these were perhaps geared a little more towards inspiring roleplaying in the Warhammer World and not so much towards selling the latest revamped army for big battles. But I digress...

This is essentially a coming of age story, as a young boy in a small town in the Empire get involved in the family business as a wine merchant. Riveting, eh? It IS actually surprisingly good. Not because you learn anything about pinot noir or anything like that, but because it offers a nice contrast to the cast of characters in other Warhammer novels who are "merely" badass warrior-types. This book goes a long way on the strength of having essentially "promoted" what would have been supporting cast in any other book where the focus is on warlords and arch villains and such. These are ordinary people facing inordinary things as Chaos creeps up on them, and this works well.

It is difficult to reveal much of the plot without spoiling the whole story for people, so I won't attempt it really. There are indeed horrors right on the doorstep in the little village, and it is foolish to dream of adventures, running after girls, drinking wine...  Nah, it's not fair to paint this as a cautionary tale in that sense, and Craig would perhaps not appreciate it if I suggested that his book has a puritan message. The book does revolve around whether or not Chaos can be handled, managed or perhaps "sipped", and themes such as temptation, curiousity and conflicting loyalties adds depth.

I will pause momentarily to wonder why quite a few of the older Warhammer books seem to feature gypsies, when gypsies are hardly dealt with either in the actual roleplaying game or boardgame. Yes, I know of the strigany/strigoi-stuff, but apart from that, it seems somewhat neglected in the higher level official stuff, yet present in several books. In this book there are gypsies playing a vital part in the story as well, and it all works quite well. They are more or less the only true stock characters. Unlike many other Warhammer books, there are not many purely functional, artificial or two-dimensional characters as such (a stout soldier comes close, but is sufficiently well written). Hooray for that. And for me the idea of dramatic encounters with Chaos in the middle of the otherwise reasonably safe Empire offered a fine contrast to some of the more large scale adventures in other books.

Read this book if you're sick of grandiose "slay the demon, before Chaos claims us all!"-books, grim tales of grim anti-heroes in grim circumstances or ill-disguised sales promotion. This book is not selling anything. Well... maybe wine.

Rating: 4 out of 5. A few annoyances here and there.