Customer Reviews

Empire in Chaos (Warhammer Online)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you are in pain, as I am after back surgery, grab this book and "have a ball." It is hard to put it down.
By the way, I have every Warhammer (or WH 41) book ever published in Great Britan and US.
So, it's not over the top nacho but solid and good reading.

This is Warhammer. Non-stop action with much turmoil and destruction. A must read for anyone who likes fantasy and battles!

Empire in Chaos bills itself as the novelization of the MMO game Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. I'm not sure how accurate that can be since by their nature MMO games don't follow any single story. Each player's experience should be unique. However, the book works very well as an introduction to the convoluted Warhammer universe.

Though I don't read much fantasy anymore, I've always had a soft spot for the Warhammer novels. They steal just as much from J.R.R. Tolkien as most other fantasy does, but they have married it to a grim and violent outlook that seems more at home with Robert E. Howard. For me, this formula works. Also, the writing tends to be of a higher caliber than many tie-in novels.

Anthony Reynolds' writing is well suited to Warhammer. The book is full of expert, vividly described scenes of battle. He is equally talented at describing small skirmishes between our heroes and rogue bands of goblins and large scale battles between armies of orcs and dwarfs.

The characters don't have much depth to them, but are still interesting to read about. My favorite character was the elf, who has very few lines of dialogue in the novel. Mr. Reynolds did a good job of portraying the relationship between the silent and somewhat alien elf and the human woman whom the elf has sworn to protect.

One weakness of his writing is that he does tend to overuse some words. The dwarf must have been described as `dour' fifteen times at least. Also the book shows signs of minimal editing in order to get the book out by the game's release. Lines that should have been caught ('A bony spine of bone' for instance) were common.

Still, I can forgive the lack of editing. The book after all is a product meant to advertise a game and had to be turned out quickly. The main problem with the book is that it functions better as an introductory guide to the world of Warhammer than it does as a novel. Though the book is full of interesting and enjoyable characters and exciting sequences, there is no real overarching story. No final goal for the characters to achieve. The characters just sort of go from event to event. This is similar to the style of MMO games, but does not make for an interesting storyline in a novel.

It was inevitable I would pick this book up since I've been playing alot of 'Warhammer Online. Anthony Reynolds has written a number of Warhammer novels. This one is neither very good or truly awful. It does not have alot of depth. What it does have is a reasonable exploration of a good chunk of Warhammer locations, and interplay between the various warhammer races. I'm not sure I can agree with his portrayal of the elves though. Another Warhammer Fantasy novel I read portrayed them differently than they're laid out here. Other reviewers have said this is not Anthony Reynolds strongest work. I will be pleased if that is the case, since I am trying to read ALL of the 'Warhammer Fantasy' novels. Really this would get 3.5 stars if I could do that. Not a bad place to start for a new reader.

I'm more of a Warhammer 40K fan since Warhammer, though it came first, is essentially Warcraft. But after playing a little bit of Warhammer Online, I decided to give the book a try.

The book takes about 2 or 3 chapters to get into, but once you get into it you'll have a hard time putting it down. The book follows three characters initially, so it's hard to say who the main character is but if I had to choose one I would say it's the witch hunter Udo Grunwald. Since witch hunters are very interesting people, all the sections of the book that deal with him are never boring.

The fights and action parts of the story are described well and the use of detail when describing a wound can be pretty intense. However, this is also one of the problems with "Empire in Chaos." There are only so many ways you can describe how someone go shot in the head. After about the fifth time it was described as "chunks of skull and brain" being scattered, it started to feel monotonous.

The book is not without it's faults though. Reynolds quite often goes into unnecessary diatribes on the detail of a person, place, or object. It's too much detail. Also, as stated before, the action sequences feel a little stale since all the same words and actions are used to describe the fights. The ending also was pretty terrible. There is a set up for a sequel with the next villain being obvious - but that doesn't save this book's ending from being a total let down that climaxes to nothing really.

It's a good read if you want to read on more of the Warhammer Online world and get familiar with the different races and classes, but I can't see a hardcore reader of Warhammer titles finding anything too special about this one.