Amazon.co.uk: White Wolf (Damned): David Gemmell: Books

Amazon.co.uk Review
David Gemmell is Britain's most popular writer of hard-edged heroic fantasy. White Wolf opens a new subseries, "The Damned", set in the world of his Drenai saga and featuring the invincible axeman Druss the Legend--now well into middle age. But the central character is Skilgannon the Damned, deadly wielder of a very special pair of swords and a former general whose nickname comes from a war atrocity that he does not deny. His attempt to make a new life as a monk ends abruptly when civil unrest threatens the monastery and Skilgannon's old fighting skills come into play with appalling effectiveness. In flashbacks to decades earlier, a young Skilgannon painfully and plausibly learns the warrior's art, until his boyhood finishes in a blaze of horror. He finds true love, but his lady is also in love with power and gives the orders for a city-wide bloodbath that makes him forever The Damned. Now known as the Witch-Queen, she won't forgive him for leaving her...

Other stories intertwine with Skilgannon's. There's a young lad who wants to be a swordsman; a fey girl haunted by voices; twin brother fighters, one with a personality ravaged by brain cancer; and Druss the Legend, still indomitable but beginning to worry about his heart. Their paths entwine in a land full of disorder, hostile troops, desperate refugees, and escaped arena beasts (sorcerous hybrids of man and animal). Gemmell excels at combat scenes, with a pace, timing and gripping conviction rare in the genre. He makes it clear, with grim compassion, that opponents aren't just straw men to be knocked over. Skilgannon is forced to kill people he admires, or who admire him; even legitimate self-defence turns sour when we hear the version told by the dead man's fiancée. At the climax, Skilgannon, Druss and their surviving companions stage an audacious assault on a particularly obnoxious villain's well-defended fortress. Much bloodshed follows, with satisfactory settlement of many debts and a final gleam of hope for the future. More tales of Skilgannon will surely follow. --David Langford

Review
In this first part of an absorbing fantasy series, we are introduced to a new and compelling hero - Skilgannon the Damned, master of the legendary swords of Night and Day, now hunted by his former lover, the Witch Queen, who is mesmerizing in her beauty and ruthless in her quest for power. Once her rescuer and right-hand man, Skilgannon chose to leave her service after one atrocity too many. But the gentle priesthood he has joined cannot still the tormented fire in his soul. When a frenzied mob threaten to massacre his brethren, Skilgannon is forced to return to his calling and resume the life of a warrior. His quest is to resurrect his dead wife, through the magical powers of a mythological goddess. With him flees the boy Rabalyn, his life forfeit after killing a childhood enemy, and the timid Brother Braygan, whose only wish is a safe haven. He is soon to realize that in times of war there is no refuge. The Witch Queen's armies are in constant battle against would-be usurpers - beneath their might, the common people are crushed. While battling a mob of frenzied mutant beasts, young Rabalyn finds himself saved by Druss the Legend, still a mighty axeman and courageous fighter. With him travel Garianne, lovely but cursed by voices that plague her inner mind, and the inseparable twins, who also seek the curative power of the legend. As the two parties merge, joined by swordsman Diagoras, they find themselves in constant peril, stalked at once by the Witch Queen's henchmen, intent on Skilgannon's assassination and hunted by the Joinings, a terrible mingling of human and beast. Elsewhere, the young girl Elanin has been kidnapped by the mysterious 'Ironmask'. Wishing only for her father and 'Uncle Druss', she hides in cupboards, innocent of what abominations are intended for her. But the legendary Druss is finally ageing - will he reach the temple of healing before his strength gives out? From the author of

White Wolf (Damned) (Hardcover)

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