I picked up "Vermintide" because I was asked if my collection of Warhammer novels included any with skaven in it. The answer was pretty much no, with there being a bit of skaven in a few of the ones I had, but none that were primarily about skaven, as I have not got the Thanquol and Boneripper-series. Fortunately, there was this book which was by an author unknown to me and not part of a series.
I was not technically correct about any of those things, apart from skaven being prominently featured. The author is C. L. Werner, a man with many fans, including a few in my circle of friends. I count myself as a sometimes fan, as I like some of his books (Wulfrik, Palace of the Plague God, Blood for the Blood God), but not all (Forged by Chaos? What a a piece of...). I find that I like his work best when it isn't a fry up of a film, so I have steered clear of the Brunner books so far, but I may dip my toes one day if I hear persuasive arguments in favour. So yeah, Bruno Lee is a pseudonym. I guessed as much when I bought it, but never checked whose.
Second of all, the book kinda ties into other works, as it has some characters familiar to veteran Warhammer readers and a few references to other "famous" Warhammer characters who are simply mentioned in passing. Some may find that awesome, either because they like that sorta familiarity, or because they like the sense of an elaborate tapestry where all the books are connected and fit neatly together. They usually don't though, so I suppose one solution is to just have the same four guys write most of them, and that plan is fine, if you've got the right guys.
Is Werner the right guy? The plot was good. I won't reveal it, but of course it involves tunnels full of foul ratmen with fiendish schemes, treachery both among human and skaven alike, and some characters that are quite cool, along with some that are... less cool. As usual, Werner has quite a good rogues gallery, and the villains are very villainous indeed, making (most?) of the protagonists seem more generic. The hero, Heiko Geissner for instance? No mental image of him for me, and he came across as quite generic, even if I have come to appreciate older heroes as I slide further and further out of the "intelligent late teens boy"- reader segment. There were some attempts at explaining motives, pitting different morals against one another, etc and I was quite impressed with that in a 250 page novel where stuff all does blow up. It managed to not seem too added on or annoyingly out of place, and the only thing some readers might not like is how Werner has a tendency to kill off quite a few characters, often in a way that's best described as callous or unceremonious, so... brace yourselves for that.
Oh yeah, and seeing as how it was the international Women's Day yesterday: There is absolutely no female contribution in this whole book. Well, if there is, it's part of the backstory for a character, and that woman was a whore. So... Yeah. No Xena, no Pippi, no Hillary.
I did like this book, primarily because I thought the plot was fairly solid for what it is, and because it made very good use of its 250 pages without there being either a need for more or any point where it dragged on to no use. Like I have said before, some of the longer books have pointless long "A to B"-sequences where your gamemaster would roll dice for a random encounter if this was a night of RPG'ing, but when you're down to 250 pages this is most often avoided, and things don't get too complicated to be resolved with a big fight at the end.
I give this four stars out of five*. This was like a nice warm soup, hearty, but maybe not very filling.
*Maybe three and a half due to the character with the Trainspotting accent who just always pisses me off.
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