Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A rare gem, 15 May 2007
I've always regarded fantasy as an underrated genre. In all fairness, there are some truly shocking authors out there, and the RPG tie-in market seems to attract more than its fair share of them. Jack Yeovil (or Kim Newman, if you prefer) is definitely one of the better authors out there.
Definitely don't let the Warhammer tag put you off. Unlike many of the series out there, you don't need to have even heard of Warhammer to access this. All in all it's a very well written anthology, combining detailed, convincing characters with a rich, well paced plot. It certainly gives an interesting take on the nature of good and evil.
Well worth a read!
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Slightly uneven, but still brilliant., 31 Jul 2007
Have you heard the one about the brave prince, the dwarf, the wizard, the vampire girl, and sundry other characters on their heroic quest to rid the world of the evil magician? Of course you have, which is why that part of the story is dealt with in sixteen pages at the start, under the heading "Twenty Five Years Ago". What dominates all of the work of Jack Yeovil (actually Kim Newman, noted film critic and possessor of positively Dickensian facial hair) is that he knows the clichés, and knows you do too. Instead of relating the quest, he tells the story of what happened after, seen through the backstage drama of putting on a play about the quest. And so you find yourself reading a novel about a play about a legend based on the "real" event, which - naturally - is not what everyone thought it was in the first place. "Drachenfels" is not just a great Warhammer novel, but a great work of Fantasy that anyone interested in the genre should read, and anyone critical of the genre should at least consider reading.
The rest of the impressively thick book is taken up with other tales, with the quality varying from just-above-average to brilliant; but although bound under the name of Genevieve, Yeovil's vampire heroine barely appears in some stories in this collection, and is completely absent from others, which - along with the fact that many of the stories are presented out of chronological sequence - gives the book considered as a whole a rather disjointed air. Still, "Beasts in Velvet" is a cracking murder mystery, and even the most conventional (and thus least interesting) story, "The Ignorant Armies", is still a good read. The last story in the collection - "The Ibby The Fish Factor" - wraps the whole thing up with a light-hearted and, for the Warhammer books, remarkably up-beat note. But it will almost certainly be Drachenfels that stays with you the longest, both for the refreshingly different approach to the Quest story, and for the title character, who is sufficiently well written that he overcomes the obvious influences of Tolkien - high praise indeed in a genre which seems to knock out a cheap clone of Lord Of The Rings every six months.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Some of the first Games Workshop novels and still comfortably the best., 12 April 2007
Now I have read many of the novels published by Black Library and realise (believe me) that most are mediocre at best. If you've been burned by people assuring you that the likes of Dan Abnett and Bill King are talented writers then please, believe me also when I tell you that these are the real thing; very well written and character driven novels and short stories that really won't disappoint. Originally published some time ago, back when Games Workshop's target audience was still adults, collected together at this price these books represent a fantastic bargain and receive my highest recommendation.
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