Book review: Broken Honour

I vaguely remember reading "Warrior Priest", another Empire Army-book, and while I liked that one just fine, as much as I like this one, the details escape my memory, and I suspect the same will be the case here.

There are lots of positives if one enjoys a simple, fairly grizzly story where folks die in droves and surprises are few and far between. The characters are fine, but lack (unnecessary) depth, and I am sure one could probe Dirty Dozen-type films and find some evidence of theft or heavy inspiration.

The plot? Beastmen gather in Hochland, smarter and meaner than ever, and Eriksson, a mercenary captain, recruits some convicts to fight in the war against them. Yes, these guys may as well be in a penal imperial guard unit in 40K, and I suspect the whole story could fairly easily have been modified to switch setting. Anyway. A beastman touches a stone and becomes a smarter than your average beastie, and with a mind for tactics, he rounds up all his buddies with horns and start to eff up Hochland. You can probably guess a lot of the rest. Eriksson and his band of convicts are your surprise heroes, of course. Rag-tag band that they are, they still do well, rather than just slit Eriksson's throat and flee...

Robbie Earl can write, but it seems like he has difficulty keeping loose ends from flapping, as I seem to recall from some of his other books, or perhaps it's just me missing the subtleties and everything is in order, or perhaps these are in fact hooks to hang new stories on? "Write us a sequel, Rob." "Sure! Easy-peasy!" What happens to Freimann or Vicksberg? What's the deal with Hobbs? The plot is really not that confusing, and the characters are neither that brilliant or nuanced, so it seems fair to suggest that they could all be accounted for without that much effort or drudgery involved.

I do recommend this book. It's a good romp. It won't stay with you for long, raise any questions or hurl you into an existential crisis, but it's engaging and easily swallowed.

An aside... Another generic cover picture with no relevance to the content. Names throughout the book... are fairly random, some narrowly escaping that not so funny tongue in cheek.

3,5 out of 5 skulls, stars or twin-tailed comets or whatever it is.