Amazon.co.uk Review
Legion of Thunder continues Stan Nicholls's "Orcs: First Blood" trilogy, which began in 1999 with Bodyguard of Lightning. The neat premise is that tough orc soldiers--the villainous cannon fodder in generic fantasylands ever since Tolkien-- appear as heroes. Humans, if not exactly evil, are unwanted immigrants whose presence poisons this otherworld's wellsprings of magic. Book one saw orc commander Stryke's warband the Wolverines forced into conflict with practically everyone, leading to a quest for (as ever) five magic artifacts, and ending in multiple cliffhangers. Headlong action continues through Legion of Thunder, with the separated Wolverines splitting further to tackle impossible-seeming challenges while repeatedly threatened by minions of evil queen Jennesta, assorted bounty hunters, slave traders, kobolds, goblins, imps, sea-dwelling "nyadds", sorcerous automata, and religious fanatics with a fondness for smiting the heathen. Much vicious skirmishing ensues. Meanwhile Stryke continues to have strange--prophetic?--dreams of an orc utopia. A mysteriously appearing and disappearing personage called Serapheim hopes to direct events for reasons of his own. And the magical "instrumentalities" so far collected are singing a seductive mindsong to which it may be unwise to listen. By the end of the novel the surviving Wolverines have an army or two hotly pursuing them. Can they possibly survive for book three? Fast-moving, gory fantasy adventure, with flashes of black comedy. --David Langford
Product Description
War is throwing the land of Maras Dantia into chaos: war between the elder races and the invading humans; war between the two sects of humans themselves.As the armies gather and the magic leaks away from the land Stryke and his warband of orcs are on the run from everyone; from the orcs that Jennasta has sent after them and from the humans who will kill any orc on sight.Stryke's quest for the artifacts that will secure the destiny of the orcs and, if they but knew it, all the races old and new in Maras Dantia, has never been more urgent and more difficult. As the net closes in and his troopers fall one by one to foes that even they never imagined in their worst dreams, time is running out for Stryke, for all orcs and for Maras Dantia.
