Customer Reviews

Forged by Chaos (Warhammer Online)

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

 

 

The Raven Host is about to march upon the Empire. To ensure victory, they must locate the Bastion Stair, a portal to the Realm of Khorne. There they can unleash the full power of the Winds of Chaos. The Spear of Myrmidia beckons for all who know how to use it and release Kakra the Timeless.

The marauder Kormak is a mutant warrior of the Wastes, capable of twisting his flesh and bone at will into new shapes. He is in chains, unwillingly traveling with one of the groups toward the Bastion Stair. Once he is in the Realm of Khorne he must challenge the Blood God's wrath. In the meantime, Kormak will kill all who dare to call him slave.

***** FIVE STARS! Dark elves so beautiful and evil that they attract and repel simultaneously, orcs with massive bulks but little wits, and dark sorcery striking wildly against all adversaries are but a few of the clashing delights found within these pages. Werner had previously proven to me how vivid and twisted his imagination must be to create such fiendishly compelling stories, but this time he proves that he can also do as well with the Warhammer Online series, if not more so. Battle, blood, and treason drip from every page. A charming addition to Warhammer's library. *****

Reviewed by Detra Fitch of Huntress Reviews.

Book three in the Warhammer Online series see the Chaos forces of the Ravenhost battling the Empire, harnessing the power of Chaos. These novels in the Age of Reckoning series are an alternate timeline from the Warhammer Fantasy universe proper as they are based on events from the Warhammer Online Game. Werner has also written for the regular universe under his own name and the surname Bruno Lee. This is well written and typical Warhammer. Blood and chaos with the world at stake. Fun pulp fiction.

You can expect all the Warhammer books to have some similarities - battles, magic, unhuman creatures, gore and grit, backstabbing and scheming, jeweled dagger hilts concealed in the laces of her straining bodice, etc.

This work is heavy (VERY heavy) on the battles and scheming, and pretty good in the straining bodices department, but doesn't have much else in the way of plot or character development. I don't read these books expecting Dostoevsky, but, except for a few well-fleshed out scenes, this one reads like a video game.

The descriptions are rich and evocative, and the battles are presented blow-by-blow. If that's enough for you, go for it.

C.L. Werner gives readers a look at the bad guys' point of view in "Forged By Chaos." It's the third tale in the book series based on Warhammer Online's Age Of Reckoning game.

In this story, the Raven Host have their sights set on the Spear of Myrmidia, hoping to capture it and release the full force of the Winds of Chaos on the Order of the Griffon and all humans. In order to obtain the spear, the Raven Host send a group of warriors lead by the Chosen, Urbaal, to dare the wicked Bastion Stair and all of the dangers that lie within it.

Urbaal picks up a champion in the marauder named Kormak along the way, who he frees from the slavish hands of Tolkku the Kurgan. Kormak is key to this entire book, and is a very intriguing character.

Also interested in the Spear are a group of Dark Elves headed up by the likes of the seductively sinister Beblieth and others such as Pyra and Vakaan and a band of Orcs just looking for a fight under the guidance of their leader, Gorgut.

All three of the groups cautiously join forces in order to survive the Bastion Stair. However, each group plans to dispatch the others once the Spear is claimed. Within each group as well, dark and deadly agreements are made.

What you end up with is a lot of deceit, bloodletting and outright murder among the members of the groups. As they march toward their individual goals, the body count skyrockets (in Empire numbers and internally as well).

While Kormak is definitely very interesting, the Dark Elf assassin named Beblieth is even more enjoyable to read about. As deadly as she is beautiful, she proves to be a worthy ally and enemy of the Raven Host. I looked forward to each one of her appearances on the page.

Werner is in top form with his descriptions of warriors, creatures, locations, and battles. He leaves out none of the gory details. If you enjoy adjectives, prepare to be satisfied.

The story unfolds in a rather chaotic fashion. To be quite honest, there are so many players in the game that the reader can easily find themselves lost in a sea of characters. It did take me awhile to discern exactly who was who, but the key players, namely Urbaal and Kormak, stand out from the rest.

If you enjoy Werner's other work (I'm fond of "Grey Seer"), you'll definitely enjoy "Forged By Chaos." I highly recommend it to fans of any of the Black Library's books, particularly the Warhammer series.

Forged by Chaos tells the intertwined stories of Chaos, Dark Elves, Elves/Humans, and Orc factions, mostly from the point of view of the bad guys. For a story based on a video game, it's not bad. It kind of reminds me of some of the Diablo based books I've read.

The exploits of the Orcs were my favorite part of the story by far. Da Boss is looking for magical trinkets so he can get da power and Gorgut provides plenty of comic relief during his quest just from his shear stupidity...and as leader he's the smartest one in the group! There weren't really any lines that make you laugh out loud, but you'll probably crack a smile or two. I especially liked a line about how he considered going against hundreds of humans by himself a fair fight, mostly because he had trouble comprehending numbers greater than twenty. The best I can tell, Orcs enjoy war but aren't really all that good at it, attacking each other as much as the enemy; due to animal like breeding and body type they just crush their enemies by a savage force of numbers. Strangely, I've never head about any female Orcs so I'm not sure exactly how that works out...

There are some good battles throughout (especially towards the end) and it is cool to see things from the enemy side. Many times reading other books, I've wondered what the bad guys were up to and how they looked at events. I guess one problem is that the author doesn't exactly set up a hero (or I guess it would be anti-hero) in the story, so there wasn't that much to anchor it. It's hard to explain, but it felt like things just sort of happen in the world more than happen to any specific character.

I found a couple aspects of the story tedious. The first is that humans are shown as such weak cannon fodder that one wonders how they have an empire at all. The elves should just send in maybe a hundred elite warriors and just kill the entire Empire inside of a month. It gets to the point of ridiculousness how one sided battles go. I also quickly tired of all the double crosses. Everybody and his uncle seems to be a double agent, a triple agent, or have some kind of super secret plan to grab power for themselves. How do you win anything when you're more likely to lose soldiers to your own allies than your enemies? Oh yeah, repeatedly hearing how hot the female elves were, well that wears thin even before the middle of the book.

Overall the book just didn't have much depth. I felt like I was watching flat images in my mind rather than a 3D production. It was a pleasant story, but I didn't really find much beyond a surface level in the actions of characters. They had the aforementioned scheming, but mostly they seemed to be scheming just because. In my opinion, even Kormak the supposed main character didn't have enough development, though he gets a bit more late in the book.

I won't say this is a bad book; I don't regret getting it and actually quite enjoyed it, but I would say there are probably better books out there you can spend your time on. I personally find ones centered in the Warhammer 40k universe to be more interesting, but if your thing is the older time period Warhammer genera and you're just looking for a light read, then by all means give this book a try.

As I slogged through all of the various competing (literally) villains in C. L. Werner's "Forged by Chaos", a question occurred to me -- can one write an enjoyable novel where one likes and identifies with none of the characters? These really bad villains are all after a holy (unholy?) relic of magic power.

After reading this, I'd say the answer is parts of it may be enjoyable, but overall it's not the treat some of the other volumes in the series have been to read. While it's true that sometimes "bad" characters are more interesting than "good" ones, the mose compelling are "mixed" characters -- the ones who are flawed and have for example good motives but misguided intentions . . . or vice versa.

The evil characters are interesting, but rather like looking at comic book characters. More subtlety and insight into their purposes would have made a much more compelling story. The "dialect" of the Goblins was a real distraction too, as they were the only "race" with a specific slang. One of the enjoyments of great fantastic fiction for me is "problem solving" along with the protagonist, and there is no single presence large enough to produce that sensation here.

If you are interested in the series, it's probably a useful read, but otherwise, it only seemed moderately entertaining.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS.

Herr Werner has once again released a real page turner.
The action revolves around six factions:

I) A chaos war band led by Chosen of T'char, Urbaal the Corruptor. He brings along Naagan - a disc riding sorcerer, Tolkku - a skull collecting zealot, Kormak - a mutating marauder and a whole bunch of cannon fodder.

2) A Dark Elf force led by Prince Inhin. He brings along Sardiss - a Black Guard Captain, Pyra - a dread sorceress, Beblieth - a delicate but deadly witch elf and even more cannon fodder.

3) A High Elf Arch-Mage Dolchir leading a small army of Sigmarite followers (read - cannon fodder).

4) The heroic Black Orc Warboss Gorgut Foechewer. He leads his merry horde with his able bodied lieutenant Dregruk, relying on the holy protection of the great shaman Snikkit, and sending out his dependable scout Zagbob the Squig Hunter to find the way, all the time advancing with his loyal boyz. [Extra orcs are not cannon fodder - they just die heroically to save their Warboss]
(Ok - so - I really was pulling for the orcs in this one, so sue me.)

5) Chosen of Khorne Slaurith and his many champions.

6) All the other foes that end up as corpses by page 250.

The action revolves around The Spear of Myrmidia, a potent weapon of olde.
The orcs just want loot and sparkly magic to rule the greenskin lands but everyone else?
The Dark Elves crave it's power to topple their king.
Urbaal wants it to free a greater demon of the Raven God letting loose the winds of magic as never before.
Dolchir wants it to close a portal shutting off the winds of magic for all time.
Slaurith wants it as another trophy.
And the corpses? Well, someone's got to die this is Warhammer after all.

The Orcs have some of the best lines I've read in a long time.
Some follow:

Page 58
The goblin crept forwards, running a leathery thumb along the back of the knife. Ilsa screamed again.
'Dat gud!' Zagbob laughed. 'Make da pretty noise! Ya an' ol' Zagbob gotz plenty o' time ta play!'

Page 201
Gorgut slapped his face when he noted that the warrior's own team-mates were the first to tackle him. Thick as two dwarfs, most of his mob would have a hard time outwitting their own dung.

Page 221
It was up to him then, one black orc against a few hundred humans and their elf sorcerer.
Gorgut considered it fair odds.
Gorgut also had a hard time understanding numbers bigger than twenty.

The list of antagonists for our intrepid bands to overcome include but are not exclusive of a giant, a gorger, a troll, a couple of blood beasts, a juggernaut of khorne, a horde of beastmen, a few hordes of chaos warriors, a demon prince, a dragon ogre, dark elves, a high elf, a bunch of humans, lots of orcs and goblins, mutants and summoned demons.

Who will come in for the win?
I'm not telling.

It will help reading this book if you are already familiar with the Warhammer World Setting. Though set for Warhammer Online, which is slightly different to regular Warhammer, the characters stay true to their archetypes. The orcs are brutal and rather thickheaded( alright - they are dumb as a bag of hammers). The dark elves are vicious and uncaring. The High elf is stuck up. The southern humans are dedicated if somewhat misguided. The chaos forces cannot trust each other. The corpses? - well - what do expect from corpses. I'm not sure I would understand the story line too well if I was not fairly well versed in the Warhammer setting already. So I would have to say that the readers who are familiar with other Black Library books are probably going to get more out of this than a casual reader will. Still I do recommend it for S & S fans.

Now I'm ready for Nick and Lindsey to green light Herr Werner to write the rise and fall of Grom the Paunch for Time of Legends.

In the meantime check out his other books available now or to become available next year.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=c+l+werner+%28paperback%29&x=0&y=0

So as I immerse myself into the Warhammer realm (now including the original, 40K, and online), I find that more and more of these stories are more and more the same. However, honestly, my ideas of whether I like these books or not has not congealed yet due to the fact that most of the books I'm reading are on the Amazon Vine program. Why's this important, you ask? Well, I have not found one of them to be stand-alone (yet), and I'm never really encouraged after reading a particular book to pick up it's predecessors or successors. This one is no different. Now for the review basics:

Plot: Conflict to fight between the Realms of Order (Dwarfs, High Elves, and Empire) or Destruction (Greenskins, Dark Elves, and Chaos). More specifically, the marauder Kormak goes into the Bastion Stair, portal to the Realm of Khorne, and sets on a quest to find the Spear of Myrmidia in order to destroy the Emperor's Order of the Griffon. There is a bit of infighting on the destruction forces, but honestly, you never really find out why--all of the action is never developed beyond this fact: it needs to be done so we can get the spear and destroy the good guys. It depends which side you're rooting for, but in my mind, it is a story about bad guys killing good guys--an interesting take.

Characterization: Pretty non-existent. As with most of these books, the action is intense and vividly written about, but the characters are one-dimensional (or less). It's almost as if someone wrote a story about one of the "table top" or "online" games, but due to not really knowing any main protagonist in the game, can't really effectively develop a backstory. But like I said, this is a common issue with Warhammer books, so if you like the series, this shouldn't be a big factor.

Length: 416 pages--pretty hefty reading, but it reads fast.

Final Verdict: Meh, I didn't have high hopes on this one, and the bar was an easy reach. So, get it if you like the series--it's really more of the same from a "bad guy" point of view. Hack and slash with no character development. 3 stars.

"Forged by Chaos" is a great translation of the "Warhammer Online" game into literary form. It brings to life many, if not all, of the character classes and races from the game, weaving them into an enjoyable adventure tale, steeped in the story and lore of the dark fantasy that is the Warhammer universe. Some literary license is taken with the abilities of the classes in the interests of a good story. For example fights are short and brutal, more so then in the game, but since I imagine no one wants to read a 5 page description of a blow by blow slogging brawl this seems a good thing, and the book certainly doesn't suffer for it. Reading the novel constantly gave me the urge to fire up the game and play whatever character I was reading about at the time, so it's a compelling read for "Warhammer Online" fans. It's also a great story, that happily drags you along through blood, fire and chaos, great for fans of the Warhammer universe or the dark fantasy genre in general.

This novel is populated by some of the most popular denizens of the Warhammer World including Chaos, Dark Elves, Orcs, etc. No spoilers here, just a statement that this is one of the better Warhammer Fantasy novels from BL.