Book review: Knight of the Blazing Sun

I have been quite busy lately, both with life/work/etc and with "The Hobby", so this blog is due for some attention at last.

I have read Knight of the Blazing Sun by Josh Reynolds, a popular Black Library writer who has also written some of their 40K-stuff as well as some other books about knights in his Bretonnia-books. I like his stuff, generally speaking, though the Word Bearers books got a little too heavy on the blood and battle stuff for my taste. But back to the book at hand...

Whenever someone is sent to investigate the death of an emissary anywhere in a Warhammer setting or perhaps in general, we can all be sure that dark powers are afoot and that larger/further misdeeds are planned. Every single time. It is never just a case of some guy having an actual accident, so that our hero gets to turn around and go back home again having found nothing interesting to see. So, same old in this book, but we do accept that, and the plot here is never hard to unravel for a keen mind (ie not absurdly drunk or mentally disabled): A knight of the Blazing Sun is sent to check up on his brothers on an island off in the North (Danger! Danger!) near Marienburg, after the death of the previous guy that the grandmaster sent to do the same, and all is not well there. Lets leave it at that.

Reynolds knows his history for sure. This comes through in his Knights of Bretonnia-books, and here as well. He knows his Templars, and he's boned up on "norse" as well, sprinkling the narrative with some norse words for colour. Well done, mr Reynolds, as so much is indeed won with a few details. One might cheekily suggest that a not TOO extensive re-write could have transported this story to 40K, where inquisitors, rogue space marines or guardsmen etc might all have substituted the characters in this book and seen the plot survive almost intact nevertheless. Here we have knights of the South with the interesting goddess Myrmidia as their patron pitted against the norse who continue to be the most interesting people in Warhammer, stuck as they are on the edge of Chaos and in religious turmoil.

We are not treated to terribly much detailed info about particular exotic locations in this book. There IS a bit about what Myrmidia and her knights are generally all about, and this is weaved into the narrative in a rather succesful way where it doesn't come off as too contrived for the characters to either be explaining themselves or thinking about stuff that is obviously already a fairly strong presence in their lives. There are quite a few other examples in books like this where some random character sits around thinking more or less out loud about what his role is... as you do. Not. I think I can give a passing grade to the effort made in that regard in this book.

Random things that I did not like in no particular order: The meeting of the chieftains with its slapstick squabbling, guy transforming into a bear, random riverboat tryst, trident-hand knight.

The book is well written, never boring or predictable beyond the acceptable, and descriptions are vivid and crisp. Perhaps Reynolds is experienced enough to know exactly what he can fit into a book of about 400 pages, or perhaps his editor sliced it just right, because it seems to have neither too much or too little fluff, and the characters have just about the right amount of depth and development for a book of this type.

I give this book four stars or skulls or what have you, and a spearhead pointing up. For it to reach five, it would have needed more obscure nods to templars and such, and some weeding out of the stuff that annoyed me. All in all, a very good Warhammer-book.

Finished treeman

Waiting for elves to play with.

This guy looks mean, and would just not work with halflings. Partly because he looks so mean, but also because I have just the one, and only a fool fields halflings with one tree.

His foot is quite big, yes. That is due to him being a non-slotta. I cut his blobby foot, to a slice out and repositioned his legs a bit in order to fit him on a 30 mm.

He got sanded and flocked with a more summery mix that I would normally like, but I am currently experimenting with my basing.

The gold shoulder pad is not an ideal choice, but that matches his team mates.

Treeman

While painting the porky orc'ies and getting fed up with it, I distract myself with some side projects. The necromancers I have to finish? No, of course not!

So here is a treeman. He needs pads and some work on the base, but he is close to done, and obviously looking for elves to hang out with.

Comments always welcome.

Scoreboard

When you visit your local Netto and find two bags of sticks and little flat pieces... Do you think 'score board for blood bowl' or "what do people want with these?"

I glued the together and on to some posterboard. There's sand on the posterboard, awaiting some drybrushing and tuffts of grass that I have been promised...

The rest is simple. Drilled holes for pins, scored plasticard to look wooden, painted on numbers. Voila.

Living dead girl

Zombie cheerleaders. Yes, well, strippers had no business on the sidelines, so that is all there is. They really do rouse the crowd.

No conversion or anything. The slightly unimpressive level of detail on the skirts make them a little flat, and the faces are quite washed out, but this was not a terribly prolonged paintjob either.

Team colours are for the Odenwald Goolies, languishing in midtable, frustrating their coach and about 65 percent painted.

Willy goblins

Surely this will read to some like the tale of a battered wife who has gone back to her abusive partner yet again. "You moron!" some will shout and point to that post where I talked about the size of Willy's miniatures. Why buy more of those? Why review them here?

1. These were goblins, and I do love goblins dearly.
2. It was a good deal. You got access to an exclusive mini, stretch goals, dice, and a fat discount.
3. Even if these gobbos would turn out to be big, I had use for them.

So... they are kinda big. Not huge, but bigger than the GW ones. I have not got the Meiko team to compare with, but surely these are about that size. They will not work as snotlings, that is for sure, and they may look a bit daunting for your old dwarves to face.

They have grinning faces, mean ones at that, and good, realistic poses for the most part. They look alive.

The trolls are fecking huge. Not my favourites, though the Hungry Saturno is a nice fiend to have, and he looks more evil than the others.

I did not get the secret weapons. I got a ref and a gob in a bear costume and a crowsuit. Why? I liked them, though they may not be very useful as such. They do ooze character though.

All in all... I am okay with tgis purchase.

Book review: Vermintide

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.