I've always enjoyed the Gotrek & Felix books. They are a pretty light read but are set against the backdrop of the Warhammer World which provides some gaming colour.
Part of the attraction has been their long running feud with the Skaven Grey Seer Thanquol and his offside Boneripper. From memory we are now up to Boneripper VII as previous incarnations have met a tragic fate. Thanquol always has a masterplan for world domination that is generally held together with rubber bands and string. It always falls apart spectacularly with him finding a convenient scapegoat to blame his ill-fortune on. Recently he has been given his own books and now we get to see him take centre stage in the End Times story. Perhaps this time.....
The premise of G&F is a Trollslayer seeking his doom as penance for past shame. Over Xmas I read "The Serpent Queen" which detailed travels in the Southlands and Nehekara. It gave some excellent commentary on Tomb King culture and society, as well as being a good story.
With the release of the End Times, Black Library are releasing a final trilogy for G&F. The first of these is "Kinslayer" which I read over New Year. It is set in Kislev and the Troll Country and is contemporaneous with the current End Times books. The story sees a lot of the characters from previous books being thrown together by circumstances north of the Auric Bastion in Kislev. It backgrounds the schism in the Chaos ranks where Throgg has taken Praag and refuses to allow entry to human Chaos forces.
Finally after what must be 15-20 books we find out the "shame" of both Gotrek and also the other Slayer, Snorri Nosebiter.
No Skaven interaction....sad face.....but it is interesting that there are 3-4 mentions of the Chaos Dwarfs' activities - something GW has avoided in the "official" End Times books.
Kinslayer is a good fun read. Well worth the price of a download.
I have only read the first 2 books is there much change with the new writer
ReplyDeleteNew guy not bad. I think he is third author after William King and Josh Reynolds
DeleteNathan Long was the main writer after King finished. He produced 5 books I think, of mixed quality (I by far preferred his last two but the other three mixed some interesting character stuff with ludicrous action scenes).
DeleteJosh Reynolds has only done 'out of time' novels, anything not having Slayer in the title isn't in the series as such, more call backs to earlier adventures.
David Guymer is the new guy. He's a good author, his Queek book is pretty good and in that and the Thorgrim novella he's shown he can write dwarfs. I have yet to read Kinslayer, but looking forward to it!
Aah, that's right. Nathan Long jumped the series forward about 10-15 years right?
DeleteHe picked it up after King had sent them to Albion. I'm not sure about the time jumps, but Felix was written as if he was touching 50 or so in the latter 3 Long books.
DeleteInterestingly, the second Long book, Manslayer, is set in the Storm of Chaos, which of course never happened. No sir, not at all. Guymer's current trilogy is the first time Archaon has invaded the Empire, that other stuff was a dream. Or something.
I will have to make an effort to read them all in order. I have just finished in the last few weeks the Konrad Sarga it was good. I remember White dwarf put 2 chapters of skaven slayer in and had William king play the battle report showing my age now
ReplyDeleteI remember that too! Great old stuff! Tho' must shamefully admit that William King's permy hair frightened me a little...
ReplyDeleteJ