Book review: Zavant

I managed to get a lot of reading done over the holidays. This is what happens when all you basically do is open presents and digest food. This combines well with reading, and I continued my journey through the old "classics" of GW's fantasy books with Gordon Rennie's "Zavant".

I knew Rennie's work from the excellent 40K novel "Execution Hour" as well as a few short stories here and there. To me he is one of the best writers under the GW banner. I have not read any of his other works, so I do mean specifically under the GW banner, and not in a general sense. This is probably not his best book, however...

Oh. Before we begin properly: What an ugly cover. Zavant looks like he went on to father Beavis, and Vido looks like my friend Martin from Blood Bowl. That latter factoid is of course neither here or there, but... wow.

This is not so much a novel as it is a collection of shortish stories about the character Zavant Konniger, a sort of Sherlock Holmes of The Empire. I had just re-watched the Sherlock Holmes films the other day, so the thought was not far off to begin with, but it is no doubt a deliberate pastiche. Zavant, a sage detective (or was that detective sage?) and his halfling sidekick Vido basically fight crime. Or chaos. Evil. You know, stuff that heroes fight. Because this is perhaps THE thing about these stories: Zavant and his fellows basically fight stuff. While there is some talk of deductive reasoning and a long list of cases mentioned, Zavant basically just kicks ass, and we are not treated to a great deal of mystery as such, and when we are, the answers are pretty obvious, and the plot resolves itself by means of some violence. Is this okay? Well, sure, who would honestly enjoy a book where a "Schierluck Heimers" and "dr. Wassonst" went around Altdorf cracking cases that were rewrites of Conan Doyle's books? Not me. Would I have liked a character who was a little less omnipotent and garnished with silly abilities like "martial arts taught to him by a traveller from Cathay"? Yes, I would.

I am not saying that Rennie couldn't write a true mystery to save his life. I believe he probably could. The writing is excellent in many ways, vivid, evocative and with some really nice touches here and there. I particularly enjoyed the tale with Nurgle-stuff  in it (! Spoiler!), even if that one really is a prime example of stuff just happening to Zavant and co. more so than any actual detective work getting done. So what I am saying, is that a more happy medium could have been found, if the mysteries had been turned a bit more mysterious, Zavant himself had been streamlined a bit and there had been fewer "big brawl"-endings. That may just be my personal preference though.

It is not quite clear to me if this book is conceived with the WHFRP career system and rules in mind, but it does not have any MAJOR battles where thousands die, and that DOES count for something in my book. It sometimes gives you these muddled "adventurer" types - for better or worse - who then require more personality to come to life, but in spite of Zavant Konniger's patchwork character, the cast is overall quite good, and Rennie manages to stay clear of using the same four or five German names that so many of the other books peddle, and there are some very good characters in some of the stories.

Rating? I give it 3,5 stars or skulls or whatever it is that I give these. It is a bit like Christmas dinner with all the trimmings, where some of it is delicious, but other stuff is... not as good as it looked.

Book review: The Enemy Within

Not to be confused with the elaborate (?) campaign for the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying Game, this book offers good entertainment for the ... thinking young man.

I read somewhere that Warhammer books were at some point written with instructions to write for a mature 18 year old boy reader. As I am now significantly beyond that age, I should perhaps pause and question my reading habits. "Really? Pulp fantasy novels at your age?" There. That's that done. With that troublesome introspection out of the way, I will say that I do not actually believe that to be true. Several books are clearly written for a younger audience (or an immature 18 year old boy, ie someone who is about 14) and I have reviewed some here, and this one is clearly for an older or more intelligent audience. You, dear readers. Of course.

This is the tale of a wizard and his attempt to infiltrate a cult of Tzeentch worshippers in Altdorf. As you can no doubt guess, this involves a struggle to hold on to his sanity and his morals along the way, as he faces all the troubles of the undercover agent, and wrestles with moral issues and psychological issues. This is of course dangerous territory as the pitfalls of clichés are many, and it risks becoming a bit ham fisted with only 250 pages to tie up the plot, throw some personality on the characters and so on. Somewhat surprisingly, it works out okay. No massive surprises or sage wisdom, but a hard tackle on the difficulties that characters in the Warhammer World would no doubt encounter in a brush with Chaos.

Oh, and there is some (non graphical!) sex too. One of the characters is even a prostitute. This is not something usually handled very elegantly in Warhammer books. Not that I think a lot of the books really need it either, but with a host of literally sex-less creatures in the Warhammer World(s), it is nice to see not all sexuality blotted out from the books, or neatly packaged as "that Slaanesh stuff". Not that I mean to go off on a rant about it it either, but I am sure the "mature 18 year old boy" reading this will appreciate the odd ... bit of sex.

Another good thing is that the plot does not feature large scale warfare. I have talked about this in other reviews too, and I do like it when Chaos is the worm in the Empire's apple, rather than just the sweeping tide of mayhem from the North. This book is full of the former type of action, and that suited me quite well. In fact, I could have played out almost all of the plot in the book with miniatures that I own, and on a small coffee table, so no huge armies or anything for you to wrap your imagination around.

Certain things in the book may happen a little too... smoothly. I think that has to do with the constraints of 250 pages vs 400 as some of the other books offer without having the need for them. It is nit-picking really, but sometimes books suffer from not having any ... non-useful characters. What I mean, is that when there are not enough characters to cover a great many possibilities, then sometimes you can work out the plot a bit too soon. There is nothing to throw you off the scent, you might say.

This book contains less/none of the tongue in cheek humour that blossoms in some of the other books, and you won't find characters whose German names makes your eyes roll back, or quite the poor attempts at wit that some other books tend to have. I kind of liked that, at least in this particular book where it would have felt particularly misplaced.

In conclusion... I really enjoyed it. I do tend to enjoy this TYPE of book/plot though, so the odds were pretty good, as long as nothing went wrong or turned too stupid.

Overall rating: 4 out of 5. Like a nice burger, cooked to perfection and dressed right. Not a culinary wonder, but good eating.

Troll boyfriends

Sticking to the theme for as long as I can, but I am running out of trolls at this point. And not one of them painted... That will come next, at least for some.

This one you may recognize as he is the somewhat strongly converted resin cousin of no less than two other trolls on this page. Same body, three positions, three heads, different hands... They look quite different at this point, and they all worked out to make the troll more dynamic.

Which the stupid git of course won't be...

Troll man river

Sick of these by now?

This is the third "brother" to the previous two, a river troll from GW with a GW plastic head and pad. Unlike his two brothers, he has not gotten away with relatively minor hand surgery... He had a whole arm amputated at the shoulder, and I sculpted a new one. Those effin scales took a while... but I am quite pleased with the result.

Why cut his arm? It holds a club in the most idiotic position. Elbow up, arm folded, fist vertical. I had no use for that and no means of bending it into a better position or salvage any of it really.

This fella is possibly for sale.

Know your troll!

Finished this fish mongering bad boy up for my friend Jonathan who will be painting up a team of gw goblins. The troll may feature here again along with his brother when that happens.

The body is a bended river troll, padded, and with a later edition gw plastic river troll head. Without the vomit.