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Title: Grey Seer
Series: Warhammer: Thanquol & Boneripper #1
Author: C.L. Werner
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 296
Format: Digital Edition

Synopsis:

Thanquol is a skaven magician, one of the Grey Seers. After having several of his plots foiled by Gotrek and Felix, Thanquol is sent on a dangerous mission to Altdorf, capital of the Empire, to recover the Wormstone, a huge piece of warpstone that will give its user tremendous power.

Of course, being skaven, Thanquol plots how to seize the stone for himself or at least how to use it to climb up the rungs of power. But since his “allies” are skaven too, they all are also planning on how to take it for themselves.

Upon finding out that the Stone is actually weapon more effective against skaven than humans, Thanquol plots on how to wipe out the city of Altdorf AND the skaven city of Under-Altdorf, thus gaining prestige and favor with the Council of 13. A human wizard of Altdorf has been keeping an eye of the skavens and with his cronies does his best to stop said plan. The other skavens of Altdorf also do their best to stop Thanquol, since dying isn't really what they want to do.

The book ends with Thanquol's plan going awry yet again, most of the skavens fighting him dying and most of the humans fighting the skavens dying.

My Thoughts:

First off, Boneripper is just a name that Thanquol gives to his current giant rat bodyguard. It's almost more of a title than a name, as he seems to go through them at a pretty rapid pace. Now that I know that, I won't be expecting a real duo as main characters.

I've not read any of the Gotrek and Felix books, which I gather is where Thanquol is originally introduced. From the little bit that is referenced, I'm not sure I WANT to read those books. They sound like a right pair of brutal thugs. Given, I'm getting that from Thanquol's viewpoint, but even still.

So, I finally read a book about the skavens. Giant magical rat people with all the characteristics of rats. Cowardly, self-serving, backstabbing and generally bad guys. You'd think that would depress me but for some reason it really didn't. What DID get me down was how the humans opposing the skavens were just as much scumbags, even the wizard guy. With characters like that fighting against Chaos, I'm kind of glad Chaos ends up taking this world.

I keep going into these Warhammer books thinking they're alternates to the Forgotten Realms books. Ha, not even close. Warhammer is bleak, bleak, bleak. It is a good thing I have a month or two between them. Any sooner and I'd be overwhelmed and have to defenestrate myself, which just wouldn't be cool.

I'll definitely be finishing this trilogy. I've also got 2 more Age of Legends trilogies to work through but after that, I don't know that I'll be staying in this world anymore. It's just too bleak and depressing for me.

★★★☆☆ ( )

Oh my. Can't seem to get into this one. I've read sci-fi all my life. Fantasy for fewer decades. This was tedious to start out and to be frank I didn't get far. What action I saw was uninteresting. (Mysterious stuff was happening... Creatures were dying, and somehow it was boring.) The writing was well enough done. The plotting... well how can I say as I wasn't engaged enough to finish. Perhaps at another time I'll see it differently. Or perhaps it's just best not to delve into this series at this point. (It's my first Warhammer book.) In any case, I know people who think it's 5-Star stuff. My advice would be to approach it with care.