Black Library Warhammer Novels

As others have said, the C.L Werner Vampire hunter books are utterly fantastic!! the Blood Bowl books are definatley worth a look too!!!

Try to avoid ANYTHING written by Gav Thorpe as it reads similar to a kid writing and reading in class "What I did on my holidays"

Nick Kyme's books are apparently written by a strategically shaven money, no honestly.......

Guardians of the forest is a blindingly good Wood Elves book!!

All the Thanquol books are great, but that's just me.

The Vampire omnibus is good, sometimes GREAT, but more often, good.

Gotrek and Felix are great fun, every time I read the books I want to start painting Slayers!

Cure of the Necrach by Steve Savile is also a very good book.


I started collecting/reading the Black Library books when they first came out, and over the years it has been a VERY mixed bag of quality!!!

I haven't read a ton of fantasy books, though I have read a lot of 40k ones, I enjoyed the first 3 Gotrek and Felix omnibuses and the Brunner omnibus, I also read the first 2 Thaquol and Boneripper books which are good, especially if you're into a more... grim base for humor and are okay with a good body count for likeable characters and protagonists in general. The only criticism I can honestly think of that nagged me for more than a second was that in the Gotrek and Felix books the author doesn't really paint a good picture when it comes to the size of the monster they're fighting, but that could just be me, for the most part I enjoyed the books and they make me want to play slayers and my favorite of the books in the Omnibuses was the one that took place in Albion, I think it was called Giant Slayer.

I've read way too many of the Black Library's stuff. Let's just say that I love it as a guilty pleasure and a source of fluff, but I wouldn't say it's "literature" by any means. And I guess I'm still a bit miffed that there aren't many, if any, books done from a greenskin's perspective.

@ Rog.

I remember sitting in a meeting with Black library at Lenton HQ years ago when they were talking about releasing the books, first they said, 40k= Sven Hasel in space. they followed it up with there will be no books with Orcs and Goblins in either 40k OR fantasy with them as the central characters as they wanted the books to be serious not comical and they felt that with the Greenskins nature it would make the books far too comical, plus they didn't want books full of the way they speak.

This is why you don't really see books with them.

It's a shame really. Because you could tone down the humour and do 'serious' greenskins ie. shown as the sadistic bloodthirsty monsters that they really are.

But that would upset a large portion of the fanbase. Most(?) of us don't see orcs as evil, sadistic monsters that only enjoy to kill. In my eyes orcs don't care for killing, (but don't see much wrong with it either), just fighting itself.

Goblins and orcs will, of course, take every oppurtunity to bully eachother around and boss with their underlings to show who's boss, but the picture some fans paint of them where they just want to torch the world and eat all your babies and eradicate all life just doesn't sit well with me. It makes them too much like Chaos. Orcs aren't innately evil, they just love fighting and despise anyone who is too soft to think of the world in any other way than a place where the strongest lead, because "might makes right".

For example, the Orc Warboss "Manflayer" from Dragonslayer seemed distinctly un-orcish to me.

Theo

But the dumb thing is that they have plenty of oppurtunities to not make it OTT comical (which in WFB at least they seem to be less zany than those in 40K) as there's at least one orc they could put in the Age of Legend books; which would be Azhag. Not only would it provide with insights on what the leftovers of Nagash is trying to do or think but would also give little inner conflicts or dialogue between Azhag and The Great Necromancer. It could also show the slow but inevitable influence the crown had on Azhag and how despite it Azhag's orcy will kept him from outright possessing him.

Heck if they really wanted to do it from a non-warboss viewpoint they could focus on some "freeboota" or mercenary orcs like Ruglud (or at least someone similar) so they would take part in the action and a better in-depth view of greenskin society and how one warband can jump from one WAAAGH! to the next.

All in all I'm just hoping that when the Battle for Black Fire Pass Forgeworld book comes out that there will be plenty of Orc perspectives, just like in Imperial Armour 8.

This post has been edited by Grimskul25 on Apr 24 2012, 03:42 PM

Ever read "Orcs" by Stan Nichols?

now thats some tuff Orcs, not warhammer orcs, these are a bit smarter. but theyre the real deal.

Amen to that. As much as I like Imperial Armour, the Warhammer Forge books really stand head and shoulders above them and I can't wait to see one featuring my favourite army as the main antagonist.

There's also a book out there if you can find it called "Grunts" it's all about orcs. It's truly fantastic!!

I'll give you a flavour of it " ....Bring me another Elf, this one seems to have split"

the most recent fantasy book i read was the shadow king from time of legends, its all about the rise of Alith Anar, one of the best books ive ever read, really recommend this to everyone

I have been reading the Gotrrek and Felix books and would certainly recommend the one called "Giantslayer" I like them all but this one is head and shoulders better than the rest!

Wazoo

Well in my book orcs and goblins are definately evil (don't be fooled by the zany humour side). They love cruelty, torture and all that kind of stuff. There is a reason for example why they refer to halflings as "squealers". The difference between orcs and chaos is that with orcs its a more banal casual evil, mostly killing for their own ego and amusement. Whereas chaos is more insidious, corrupting and perverted - encombassing evil in all its many forms.

That's my take anyhow.

This post has been edited by Craze_b0i on Apr 25 2012, 09:57 PM

Glad you enjoyed it, as for me, again it's typical Gav Thorpe, everything was crammed in by the end of the book, I'm guessing that he forgot it wasn't a trilogy. It started off fine but then it was rather rushed by the end, but hey, that's just my own opinion on it.

Like I said before; an 8 year old reading out his "what I've done on my holiday"

This post has been edited by Gruntfuttock on Apr 26 2012, 01:13 PM