Black Library Book Club III - 'Heldenhammer'
Heldenhammer (Graham McNeill, 2008)
In Black Library Book Club, I pick Black Library texts pretty much at random that I have encountered in second hand book shops or have grabbed for a bargain online. If anything, I’m more tempted by novelists, novels and characters I’ve not come across before. I enjoy reading them for pleasure and offer here nothing more than an armchair pulp fantasy fiction fan’s casual review:
Heldenhammer
Graham McNeill
(Black Library Publishing, 2008)
Summary:
Sigmar Heldenhammer, the mighty son of King Bjorn of the Unberogens, finds himself forced into leadership of his tribe following family tragedy. A young yet charismatic and mighty warrior, he and his fellow tribesmen - a varied cast of men, women, dwarfs - must face down ravening hordes of Norsii and orcs and goblins from the scarred wastelands to the far North of their territories. And Sigmar, somewhat of an upstart, must convince them all to unite behind his vision of a unified Empire of Men. Heldenhammer, the first in the Sigmar trilogy of novels by Graham McNeill, deals with a time far in the past of the Warhammer Old World. This volume charts Sigmar’s rise to awesome power, his burgeoning desires and ambitions to unite the World of Men against vast hordes of orcs and countless other enemies, and safeguard the fate of humankind for generations to come.
Review:
I’ve read plenty of McNeill’s work over the years, and I’ll admit I do tend to champion him as one of the most consistently readable Black Library authors from the stable of talent they have up their sleeves. His contributions to the eye-wateringly vast Horus Heresy series alone stand out as fine examples of sci-fi novels that I think even a ‘non-fan’ of Warhammer might enjoy, or at least not find too difficult to grasp without knowledge of the lore. I hadn’t, to date, come across much of his work in a Warhammer Old World setting, however, so to encounter Heldenhammer was a particular pleasure.
I tend to find McNeill is eminently able to build credible casts of characters who slot readily into narratives that move along at a decent pace. McNeill couches them in well-encapsulated arcs that aren’t ever shy of making nods to a handful of classical tropes without ever getting baggy. It’s something, sadly, that I’ve found can be a problem occasionally with Black Library texts - some could have fared better as short stories, or novellas, and so on. Incidentally, I wonder how many Black Library novels clock in at almost exactly 400 pages?
In Heldenhammer, we are introduced to Sigmar as an idealistic and very much in-love member of his tribe who, according to his father, King Bjoern, still has plenty of growing up to do before he inherits the title. So far, so quasi-Viking fantasy. He’s surrounded by a rich cast of friends with whom he bounces from one skirmish to another, earning stripes smashing serious orc face. Double tragedy occurs, however, which serves as a key juncture in Sigmar’s heroic journey and McNeill guarantees that things rocket on apace from there.
Gerreon, one of Sigmar’s oldest friends and compadres, is quickly set up as an antihero with a grudge to settle. Misguided, he is convinced Sigmar is responsible for one of the aforementioned tragic events that determines much of the course of the narrative. And, if we widen the wedge here, arguably, the course of Old World history. I would say that McNeill’s only swing and miss with this one is that Gerreon’s part in this tale is just not quite neatly and conclusively tidied over by the end. Of course, I’m sure that has something to do with it being a trilogy and the second of the books is hot on the tails of this one, but it just felt the tiniest bit misplaced.
The narrative culminates in an absolutely barnstorming battle against a ravening horde of greenskins, led by their beastly warlord-on-wyvern, and we are treated to a well-justified and detailed beginning for Sigmar who manages somehow to unite a disparate and cantankerous array of tribesmen and women to a common goal. Of particular note was a very well constructed and written quasi-purgatory scene in which we see two key characters meet again and decide on the fate of much of the Old World. An odd comparison, but one I hope you’ll tolerate - I was reminded of Harry Potter meeting Dumbledore in a spiritual Platform 9 ¾, and their deus ex-ish discussion of what has happened, and what could be to come. It slappeth, as I believe the youth are wont to say.
I’m growing to really enjoy the flavour of the ‘Time of Legends’ series, one which I wasn’t aware of until picking up a couple of the titles for this blog. With Heldenhammer, squint, and you have in your hands any title from Bernard Cornwell’s The Saxon Stories. We have warring tribes, we have massive blokes with massive muscles and massive beards, we have drinking halls, we have bosomy barmaids and mighty warrior women. McNeill just goes for a little more pepper in the proverbial pot and gives us dwarfs, orcs, wyverns and some good old fashioned Old World magic to boot. For my money, it’s as close to a Silmarillion-esque foundation mythos text for the Old World as we could have asked for, but without all the elf-song and slightly over-long poetry. I was really, really keen to see what McNeill was going to do with an origin story for a character whose lore I thought could always have been enriched, and I wasn’t disappointed.
Happy hobbying - until next time.