The plot starts off easy going, tying up a few loose ends from the former book in the series, Elfslayer, and then takes of as a classic slow travel novel – they walk, they walk, they walk etc. Once they finally arrive the plot suddenly changes pace as the characters are caught in one gridlock after another and you get hooked right until the end. This results in a slow flow at first, but soon takes of and hits a crescendo approximately 25 pages before the end of the book. This is where the book really gets creepy!

The style of the plot and build-up in the story is not something new and highly innovative, but it plays on nodes that are well known and works well. This makes the novel a solid and maybe a bit safe hit. What gives this novel an edge, is the twist in the end. You might have suspected that something was wrong, but this is horrible! What is to become of out favorite duo?

Nathan Long is an expert at writing tie-in fiction, and Shamanslayer is no exception to this. If you like the Warhammer world, there is definitely something in there that will interest you. One of my favorite parts is the subtle reference to the second installment in the epic WFRP campaign The Enemy Within. It is not blunt or too obvious, but you still catch yourself thinking “Wait a minute! I’ve been there once!”

When our heroes are not killing beastmen by the hundreds, Felix spends a melancholic moment contemplating the link between the evil that men do and the power of Chaos. Through the poet, Nathan Long delivers a profounding subject in an otherwise lightweight action-packed novel about a Dwarf and a man killing monsters in large numbers. It takes serious skills to pull this off, and Nathan Long strikes home in this novel. It made me put down the book and consider the world situation of a brief moment. Impressive!

As always the book is told from the eyes of Felix Jaeger as sort of a re-caption of his travels with the Slayer. This works well, as you, with a little imagination, get the sensation of being told the story by someone who was actually there. The actions, especially the parts concerning combat, are described very lively and though he does not do it that often, Nathan Long is quite good at describing the surrounding milieu where the plot is set.
The language is lightweight and very well structured, which makes this a light and comfortable read you are able to chew through in a satisfying high pace late at night.

All in all a great Slayer novel from the hand of Nathan Long, that once you spot the beatsman horde keeps you reading untill you are drenched in equal amounts of sweat and gore.

The book follows Hoche through almost a year and is divided into chapter each describing the shift in his life, status, environment and mindset. It is quite amazing to follow the changes that man goes through during these few months and the way the book is sectioned only supports this. You are often left with a short breathing space to digest the how comprehensive these changes would be to a man. This is necessary as you are otherwise occupied with the captivating story and at the same time highly impressed by the extensive complexity of the plot. I have read this book twice now, and during the second read, I was still amazed by discovering new twists and turns and details, that I had overlooked the first time.

James Wallis has a classic approach to secret agencies, deep undercover agents and double agents we would know from any secret agent or super spy book, but the way he has adopted this seamlessly into the Warhammer world is where his creative talents and skills as a writer really shows. I like to think of myself as quite familiar with the executive powers in the Warhammer world, but reading this I was easily convinced that several secrete agencies exists right under our noses. That is impressive.

The book mainly describes the actions of Hoche in classic third person style. The usage of the language is strong, captivating and yet still very light reading. The major strengths of James Wallis is his abilities to let the language dance lightly around the otherwise highly complex plot. That is absolutely no small feat!

Overall this is a fantastic book. The plot is complex and the description of the changes in the simple soldier’s life for Karl Hoche is thorough and highly atmospheric. A highly recommendable book.

The plot is fairly simple, yet it still guards what is going to happen on the next page. Only on rare occasions, were I able to predict what was going to happen later in the book. This makes the book a great read, in my opinion, as you get captivated by slowly solving the next challenge and then the next. Unfortunately it also makes the book last shorter, as you just have to read one more chapter before putting it down.
Being as simple a plot, as it is, it did not impress me in any way regarding the complexity, but I think the good story compensates for this. The amount of references to other novels were minimal, if existing at all, which also goes for explaining the world of Warhammer 40.000. In general you could say that the focus i mainly on the story and action, while the world is used as a background setting and the plot is linear.

The book i written in third person, and it follows either Inquisitor Roth, his henchman the hunter Silverstein or his superior Inquisitor Gurion. The time line between them is mostly parallel, but at times it breaks up and jumps back and forth a bit. This is not used to its full potential, but it still works pretty well.
The character’s actions are described in simple words, but the description of the scenery, clothing and architecture has a very high level of detail. Almost to the point of excess, in my opinion. This puts you in the mood for how the setting would look and feel like, but it also puts a higher focus on lower level of detail on the actions, despite it still being written in a quite acceptable way.
The language is fairly light and easy to read. It has a nice flow, which enables you to read chapter after chapter without threatening to put you to sleep.

In general a good book, which is straightforward to read and quite entertaining. I have a feeling that we haven’t heard the last of Obodiah Roth

The book has an exciting mix of plots, an quite a few very good ideas. Disappointingly, though, it is quite poorly written. It took me many long nights to get through this book (but what matters time for a vampire, right?), which actually had the potential to be something special, but just did not do it for me. It was like the stories never came to life (yet another vampire joke, sorry), and I repeatedly lost interest in it. More than once I considered giving up and start reading another book.

Overall a disappointment, in my opinion, despite the brilliant and intriguing composition and some hint of reference to Anne Rice’s narrative style. I have seen af other reviews, that disapproves of the novel, but somehow it is still quite popular. My guess for the reason behind this, it the facts that it features a young, blond and lusty vampire girl as its main character.

The book is put together by a series of chapters which each contain one or two assignments for the mercenaries. The chapters’ headings are the four seasons, which is a chronological description of what time of year the story takes place. It gives a good effect to the book, because it helps to describe how the Warhammer world change during the year.

The group of mercenaries are put together from a motley bunch of people whom together create a well functioning group. It resembles the composition of an ordinary party into Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay a great deal, which also applies to the missions and the whole purpose behind the group’s undertakings. This makes the book extremely inspiring for your own campaigns, and it does not not take a great amount of creativity and technical skill to convert the stories into useful and extremely exciting short scenarios!

The book is in my opinion, incredibly faithful to the Warhammer world. However, there is a simple but highly embarrassing mistake; Sigmar’s symbol is a “twin tailed comet” and not a “twin comet with a single tail. Shame on you!

With Jonathan Green as the author of this book, I were not expecting the usage of the language to be anything special. He somehow, in my opinion, does not manage to get the otherwise highly amazing stories to come alive, and this results in the reader not getting gripped by the stories the same way, as it certainly would have if it had been written better. The potential is difinately there, but he lacks the strength and life in his language, that you might find with some of the other authors.

Having this said, I still think that it is a great book that belongs on my top list of Warhammer novels. Exciting action, good and very wide characterization of a truly evil Warhammer world.

Simon Spurrier’s novel Glow is a short story about the Witch Hunter Richt Karver’s work to unravel the mysteries of a new and highly toxic drug called “Glow”, which is supposed to make everyone happy. Instead it drives people crazy and warps their bodies into terrifying mutants. It is a great detective story and the Witch Hunter Captain is not one to be taken lightly.

Head Hunting by Robin D. Laws is a short story in the series about Angelika Fleischer. She and her companion Franziskus meet with the very curious philosopher Dr. Schreber who offers them a job getting the head a local villain for his collection of skulls. The task proves a bit more difficult than first expected. This short story could easily be reconstructed into a Warhamme adventure, and it has all the nasty little twists and grim surprises that make it perfect for the Warhammer world.

The Small Ones is the first of two short stories by C. L. Werner. It is an extremely creepy and very Lovecraftian story about an evil sorcerer that exploit the complex hierarchy among the children in a small outback village to regain his youth. The way C. L. Werner describes how these innocent children are turned into coldhearted killers is all the way through a hair-raising experience! It is scary how any human can spawn such a disturbing story and still be allowed to walk free after dark.

Graham McNeill’s story Three Nights is about three Bretonian brothers fearlessly setting out to slay a breed of vampires from the Dragon Warrior clan. They are highly confident that they will be able pull of this feat all by themselves, and their believe in their abilities are what keeps them going on in their quest. At first it seems like a typical heroic hack and slash story, but as you read on it has all sorts of themes to it. The ties and battles amongst brothers, the believe in a common course and ones abilities, and quite a few more.

The Road to Damnation by Brian Craig is a story about an Estalian sea captain and an Arabian pirate’s venture into the Wastes in search for a hidden city supposedly filled with all sorts of valuables. On their travels through the desert they have a few fights with a gang of orcs and goblins. When they, in a highly unlikely manner, find their goal it turns out that something must have been left out in the tales about treasure. The story is quite good and displays the very special relationship between the sea captain and the pirate very well. It shows how manipulative the forces of Chaos that are at large in the Old World really are.

Mark of the Beast is what I suspect to be the first in the series of Torben Badenov and his band of mercenaries by Jonathan Green. It tells us how the company of soldiers under Captain Torben Badenov is left for dead by their incompetent general and picks up the trade as a gang of mercenaries instead. It is about how a small army of the Empire tries to hunt down a herd of Beastmen that have been ravaging the surrounding area. It turns out to be more than just a simple pillaging herd of Beastmen and Badenov’s Band will get more than their hands full with this one. The Badenov stories are always interesting and very well though through. I think that I will be using this story as a one-off story with one of my Warhammer Fantasy roleplay groups.

Matt Farrer’s short story Jahamma’s Lesson is a brilliant story about a Dark Elf invasion on one of the Bretonian duchies. Jahmamma is an extremely highly skilled assassin that is to sneak through the land and into the Duke’s castle and end the lives of all the Knights in their beds before the Dark Elf army starts the invasion. But as always with the Dark Elves everyone has their own agendas. It is quite interesting to read about the Dark Elf culture as there is so very little about them, and I really find their whole complex and intriguing social structure very exciting.

A Good Thief by Simon Jowett is about a poet and thief that can’t read. His poetic skills provides him jobs at the finest socials levels, but his lack of etiquette and love for the drink often result in him being on the run from the law. A certain magister, who has no time for poetry by the way, is willing to set him free provided that he does a job for him stealing something very special. Not knowing anything more than he will be certain when he sees the object, he is sent off to retrieve it from a bandit king who has taken control of an outback village. The object turns out to be of high interest, and yet not, for the thieving poet. This is a quite simple story, but none the less it fits quite well into the Old World and would make a quite nice scenario. My players in one of my Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay groups will definitely be looking for an object they will know is the right one when they see it in the near future…

Lastly the book finishes with a classic; A Brunner novel by C. L. Werner called What Price Vengeance. Not knowing the true chronological order in which C. L. Werner wrote all the Brunner novels I still suspects this one to be the first one, as it starts very differently than the others. The reason for my suspicion on this is that this is not a story written by the scribe Erhard Stoecker, which is the normal introduction to the Brunner novels. It starts out with the story about a group of mercenaries returning to claim vengeance for being sent to death by Viscount de Chegney. By killing the son of the viscount and kidnapping his infant grandson they intent to blackmail him to paying twice the amount they were given for their job. This is where Brunner comes in, as he is hired to retrieve the grandson and now only heir of count hood of the de Chegneys. The rest of the story is dealt with in typical coldhearted and effective Brunner style, with a little moral twist in the end. This is yet another great Brunner story in this brilliant series.

All in all the book is very good, and full of very different stories in terms of writing style and themes. It is defiantly worth the read!