Bel Shanaar assasination (hope this is right forum)

[Playa23]

In the Malekith novel Bel Shanaar is killed in his room by being poisoned and subsequently suffocated by Malekith. In the rulebook he is assassinated by Malekith in the Shrine of Asuryan. Does anyone take the novels seriously from a Druchii historical perspective or are they there for a fun read? Also how do you guys rate Gav Thorpe as a writer? Are his other novels better than "Malekith"? I felt that the novel had its ups and downs but I'm reading the first volume of Malus Darkblade and over-all it is a much better novel and it seems that a lot more effort has been put into it. I've noticed that some of you have felt the same way in other forums. Also, other than the Darkblade novels, do any of guys have any recommendations on which are the better novels? Anyway I think that the Druchii have the most interesting history and atmosphere about them (just adding my 2 cents). Thanks for any comments.

[Mr. anderson]

As for "historic" accuracy - no, none of the books are any good (elves DON'T have beards, for goodness' sake. It's just wrong) as you find personal interpretations and alterations to the background in almost all the books I've read. This is not necessarily a bad thing (as long as elves don't start growing beards), but you cannot take the words for granted in terms of warhammer background. Even I made my army background less bloodthirsty - GW has gone way over the top with our army book this time around. I'm not a huge fan of any of the warhammer books, to be honest. None of the writers are shining stars of literature (they don't even come close to Goodkind, Tolkien etc.) and I feel that all books have a lot of glitches (i.e. phrasing that could be done way better with a bit of editing).

Some of the Gotrek and Felix novels are a decent read (don't expect anything beyond the level of Eragon, Harry Potter and their likes in terms of how thought out they were, in fact the Harry Potter books often have many more plot twists - which says rather a lot). Almost all the books are straightforward hunt-the-bad-guy style tales which are entertaining in their own right, but they don't leave you with that slightly sad feeling that you get when you have finished an extremely good book.

[Playa23]

Yeah I just read that in the Darkblade novel the other day... moustaches? Where in the name of Khaine did that come from anyway? I had images of what an elf looked like before I began reading the book and some of the descriptions of moustaches makes them look like Mongol raiders in my mind. Anyway I saw this discussion of beards somewhere else on the site so I don't want to revisit the topic. Anyway, I didn't expect these novels to rival some of the best fantasy works out there I just thought they'd be a little... better... I read some of the work on the Asur site and was thoroughly impressed and as a result I thought the quality of the novels would impress me even more. Thanks Anderson for being my only reply so far (PLAYA23 hangs his head in shame ) I enjoy reading your replies on this and other forums

[Hjiryon]

In general, if you want to read good fantasy litterature, books associated with a game system is not where you want to look. This certainly holds true for the warhammer world as well.

You should read warhammer novels if you're a huge fan of the world and setting, not if you want decent writing. Sad to say, some of the stuff (not all of it, mind) written un Ulthuan.net is far and away better than the average GW novel in quality.
In all justice, of course, they're also much shorter, and I'm not sure Ulthuan.net fan fiction is better than what you find on so many other forums - it just happens to be what I've read.

I'm not trying to bash authors or anything here, it's just the nature of the beast. Give an author free hands to create his own story, and chances are he'll do a much better job than when tied up a specific world not of his own design.

[Sulla]

As for "historic" accuracy - no, none of the books are any good (elves DON'T have beards, for goodness' sake. It's just wrong) as you find personal interpretations and alterations to the background in almost all the books I've read..

I love the moustachioed elves in darkblade. Lets face it, DE are comic book villains; evil for evils sake. They should have moustaches to twirl.

[Carolus]

Evil or not, it looks (or sounds like it looks) silly on elves

[Sulla]

Evil or not, it looks (or sounds like it looks) silly on elves

It nlooks cool in the darkblade comics and it looks ok on my dragonlord.

[Mr. anderson]

Evil or not, it looks (or sounds like it looks) silly on elves

It nlooks cool in the darkblade comics and it looks ok on my dragonlord.

please do post a picture of that.

I shall only refrain from bursting into incadescent rage if the moustached elf comes with a cigar and a corona with lime...

I enjoy reading your replies on this and other forums

Thankyou

I'm not trying to bash authors or anything here

If you pay money for something, you are very well in your rights to say you don't like something. If an author writes a book, he has to be prepared to take negative feedback.

I think the fact that these authors know they'll get paid (and the fact that I doubt many of them have studied literature or philosophy, or any of the other things that you need to be well-versed in to write a good book - if they had, it would show) is the greatest motivation they need to finish. One of the worst possible examples is the Prophecy novel (the one about eldar warp spiders) - most publishers would have rejected that. Publishing such an awful book under your name can do no good, but BL did it anyway, and largely because of these below-average books everywhere, I am very hestitant to buy anything from them (or even waste time readin something with the BL label), so I may very well miss some gems hidden among the garbage.

[Playa23]

It seems that the writing styles in their books is very generic within BL circles (I'm just speculating here... obviously I haven't read them all). Plus the guys writing these books must be on a strict deadline or something with GamesWorkshop because I was surprised that the authors only began thinking of the Darkblade novels in 2005 (I think...up for correction). I don't know when the first book was published but as far as I know there are three volumes and three volumes seems to be quite a stretch for about four or five years even though there were two writers (What masterful literary could an author hope to deliver in such a short time frame in three whole volumes). In a way I do feel the need to finish the book because of the passion I feel for the game... sigh. Thanks for the comments so far

[Darigaaz]

Dan Abnet lives in his own universe, it's as simple as that, he has no regard or respect for fluff. For me, facial haired, shaved head, top-knotted elves that pray to a "Dark Mother" will never be canon.

[Sulla]

Evil or not, it looks (or sounds like it looks) silly on elves

It nlooks cool in the darkblade comics and it looks ok on my dragonlord.

please do post a picture of that.

I shall only refrain from bursting into incadescent rage if the moustached elf comes with a cigar and a corona with lime...

.

I'll try to rustle up a photo of him sometime this week.

[Playa23]

Wait! I think there are only two volumes... just trying to correct something I write above

[Drainial]

Of Darkblade books? There are far more than three, I have read five and I have not read them all. Or perhaps you meant the omnibuses, not individual books, anyway...

As for the quality of BL books in general I think they can be generally described as 'a good read, if you like that sort of thing' with occasional moments of 'what am I reading, I can't believe I paid good money for this'. They are a nice break if you want something simple and easy, nothing more.

The only author in BL that I would want to read if he published an independent novel would be Dan Abnett, the Darkblade books cannot wholly be blamed on him since it was Mike Lee who did most of the writing, though I cannot speak for the quality of the graphic novel.

To be fair Graham McNeil is worth reading (well spirits of the Forest is, and that is the only book of his that I have read, but whether that is a rarely achieved peak or par for the course I don't know), certainly better than Malekith which is one of Gav Thorpe's worse books. But I think it was bound to fail, trying to cram so much into that one book; skipping over centuries is not the way to build characters, suspense or indeed stories.

The 40k books are (on average) quite a bit better, especially the Dan Abbnet ones.

So to that lengthy sermon I simply add that if a Druchii can have a floating castle he can grow a goatee if he wants to, even if it makes him (or indeed her) look like an idiot.

P.S. We have some pretty good writers here at Druchii net too, if you want to sample some of the best try this http://www.druchii.net/viewtopic.php?t= ... ght=dizuan, Sea of Shadows is easily publishable in my opinion.

[Playa23]

On the cover of the book I bought its says its a volume so I assumed that it comprised of several novels (I know there are quite a few 'individual books'). I don't have the book nearby but it lists the books at the beginning (The first volume or omnibus consists in excess of 700 pages) when I wrote 'volumes' up above I guess I was trying to parallel the amount of work with the amount of time to point out that one should not be able to easily dish out great literary work in such a scale, in such a short amount of time. As for the goatee the way I thought of it was that they were incapable of growing a beard goatee or mustache... but who really knows... its fantasy. Thanks Drainal for putting the effort into that lengthy sermon it was a good read and had good advice (As for the link I'm going to read it right away). Cheers

Yeah I just checked the book now, it has 'volume one' written on the cover (It has like four novels within excluding the intro)

Have to admit that the books (Malus) are actually better than I stated above. As I've gone along I've definitely enjoyed them more as the story progressed. Sometimes I've found a few things a bit irritating but overall the novel does not seem too bad.