Eight Lamentations: Spear of Shadows Review

[Austin]

Wow.  Before I start this let me say that I know I may come off as a fanboy, but that's only because as I read more of the new lore, I am becoming a fanboy sooooo there is that haha.

I don't want to go too in depth on particular characters because there are so many, and I think you should read for yourself and figure out which ones you like the best. What I really want to do is talk about the tone and setting of the novel.

I have very much enjoyed the AoS novels so far, but this one is now tied for my favorite (with City of Secrets).  Even though I have enjoyed the novels, I have really been missing a genuine sense of scale. Like, what ARE the Mortal Realms? The Old World I could describe for you.  Dirty, brutal, chaotic, occasionally funny.  Finally, I have more than the briefest sense of what this setting will become.  I loved the very end of Gates of Azyr.  Where you see the new Stormcast from the perspective of the lowest people, and get to be part of the meeting between demi-human and almost sub-human.  City of Secrets was awesome for a micro view of one city and what the future looked like. 

This book.  This book shows you what the Mortal Realms are.  Larger than life, primal, savage, but somehow more intimate.  Flaws and strengths are larger, nobody can hide who they are because to survive you have to embrace it.  Wood armoured demigryph knight? Yup.  A forest of spiders that makes LOTR look tame? Yes.  Duardin who build fortresses in woods, underground, in lava caves, and in the air? Of course.  A city built on a worm (doesn't get less awesome even though its been in other novels)?  Not just one city, but at least three now.

Grugni.  Read the book just for this guy.  

There is so much going on in the novel that it almost gets to be too much.  The fact that it doesn't and keeps its strength to the end is a great sign for Josh Reynold's development as an author.  It is exciting to see the foundations for the new lore coming together, because I can't wait for the day when we can visit all the little locations shown here (and hopefully more to follow in future).

Great novel, read it now, make sure all your friends buy it so we get more like it.

 

 

[Double Misfire]

Blah, I was just about to make a thread about this book!  

Overall I thought Spear of Shadows was great, especially worldbuilding stuff and the way it developed the Ironweld Arsenal, Grungi () and Neferata, and,tied into so many previous Black Library AoS books (particularly City of Secrets) but did have a few gribbles about the book overall (obvious spoilers):

Spoiler

There were too many characters in the main "party" introduced to give any of them apart from Volker and Adhema enough airtime to invest in or care about them, and on top of this no named characters past the duardin cannon crewman at the start seem to die (not even the villains!), leaving the story lacking a solid enough feeling of danger for any of the stakes to seem real, and making the book feel like a saturday morning cartoon or superhero comic. Zana, Roggen, Lugash and Nyoka could have easily been condensed into two characters instead of four, one of whom could have been developed as a foil/rival for Volker, and even killed off halfway through to throw the reader a curveball.

 

My other major grumble, and this is is speaking as an almighty WFB grognard, is the amount of throwaway references to old Warhammer background. Bretonnia, Myrmidia and Zhufbar were all significant pillars of the Warhammer World, and to see them so casually tied into the Mortal Realms, and the smaller nods to stuff like Volker being a descendant of the character staring in Josh Reynold's End Times books (and the duardin clan descended from the Zhufbarak being able to remember this!) both undermine the scope of the destruction of the old setting, and the "blank page" feeling created by the amount of time and space that have passed between it and the new one.

Having a bunch of toilets in Azyrheim patented by someone with the name "Makaisson" is frankly just weird and serves the story and setting in no way. It either tells us that Malaki Makaisson somehow against all odds made it through the End Times and survived until at least the Age of Myth; that his descendants did, which is something that would be wrong anyway, as male dwarfs born to Malaki Makisson would have taken the surname "Malakisson" (before potentially swapping it out for a different surname honouring a deed or attribute anyway); or that a completely unrelated character named Makaisson designed the plumbing system, making the namedrop entirely pointless.

Implied Aborash as a token nod living on a mountain in Shyish and training vampires for Neferata/Nagash also felt silly and like a waste of Aborash, who should be off doing something much cooler, and would have told Neferata to **** off and never bowed to Nagash. That said, he's not directly named and could easily be written off as any old Blood Dragon and not the real deal.

 

Whew. I really hope all that hasn't painted me as too negative towards Spear of Shadows, as I hugely enjoyed it and it's easily my favourite AoS novel so far. Bring on the sequel!  

Has anybody read the Eight Lamentations short Auction of Blood yet? It's a great quick read and ties nicely into Spear of Shadows and where the rest of the series might be going:

http://www.blacklibrary.com/new-titles/warhammer-age-of-sigmar/auction-of-blood-ebook.html

[Austin]

I am pretty sure the  dude you are talking about worked for Neferata in the novel Neferata. 

 

-edit

I meant to add this:

I read all of those instances you talked about linking AoS to WFB as an intentional shift from clean slate to not so clean slate.  I thought of it as an answer to all the people who hated the loss of a setting they loved, while making it clear it isn't going to be more than a cameo.  Still pretty cool that there is a Druchii Night of Khaine though.

[Double Misfire]

22 minutes ago, Caladancid said:

I am pretty sure the  dude you are talking about worked for Neferata in the novel Neferata. 

 

-edit

I meant to add this:

I read all of those instances you talked about linking AoS to WFB as an intentional shift from clean slate to not so clean slate.  I thought of it as an answer to all the people who hated the loss of a setting they loved, while making it clear it isn't going to be more than a cameo.  Still pretty cool that there is a Druchii Night of Khaine though.

I've not read Josh Reynolds' WFB Neferata novel, it's on my back burner, but Aborash in the WFB army books and White Dwarf articles wasn't never exactly enamoured with the murderous, devious vampire norm even when he was the captain of Lahmia's royal guard.

I can understand why all the WFB nods were included, but speaking as the possibly the world's most ocd WFB background fan (ask @BaldoBeardo), they felt like fanservice for fanservice's sake and unlike all of the farewell cameos crammed into Reynolds' previous Lord of the End Times, didn't serve either the setting or the story, and only made the AoS setting feel cheaper for the reasons I've given above.

The night of Khaine was very cool and felt totally appropriate. Can't wait to hopefully find out more about Khaine and his "daughters" in future AoS background!