^{This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress, Blogspot, Booklikes & Librarything by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission}

 
Title:        Death’s Legacy
Series:    Warhammer: Blood on the Reik #3
Author:   Sandy Mitchell
Rating:    3 of 5 Stars
Genre:     Fantasy
Pages:     416
Format:   Scanned Digital Edition

 

 

Synopsis: Spoilers

Rudi and Hanna are on the run, yet again. They head to another big city so Hanna can attempt to join another magic college and Rudi can work. Hanna gets turned away, pretty much goes darkside and joins her mother. Rudi gets captured by the witch hunter and imprisoned at a major temple to Sigmar. There he learns his heritage and finds out that his own parents were going to use him as a vessel to hold a demon prince, only the ritual was aborted. Now Rudi has a demon entwined with his own soul.

Now Rudi must work with those who were trying to kill him to free his soul. He must not die or the demon will be freed and destroy the continent. Meanwhile Hanna has joined one of the dark gods and has her own plans for Rudi.

Rudi survives betrayal on all levels and ends up being entombed alive with a ritual that will keep his soul attached to his dead body, thus denying the demon access to it. The book ends with Rudi contemplating the coming hundreds of years as he has to lie in the tomb and moulder away.

 

My Thoughts: Spoilers

I went and looked up some Wiki info for the Warhammer novels. They have ended and apparently it is because the dark gods win and everything is destroyed in the final series or two. So that is the tone of everything. Even if the good guys can hold off the forces of chaos, it doesn’t matter because we the readers know the ultimate end.

This was not a good series to get introduced to the Warhammer universe. The story was good and the ideas were neat, but my goodness, Mitchell’s writing was technically correct, but more time was given describing their journey (in which nothing happens by the way) than when things were hopping. Long stretches of boringness that should have been excised from the book by a good editor. VERY pedestrian writing.

I saw Hanna’s betrayal coming from book 1, but I did not expect it to take the shape of the game of gods that it did. I was expecting something more personal but this worked pretty good. Hanna wanted Rudi dead to release the demon, which would have been weakened by the priests of Sigmar. Hanna and company would then have swooped in, killed the demon, gotten major kudo power points for killing a demon and that power would have allowed them to take over the temple of Sigmar in the name of their god. Which would have weakened Sigmar and strengthened their god. But reading chapter upon chapter of Rudi doing research while in prison to get to that? Boring. I thought about giving this 2 ½ stars but the ending pulled it up that half star.

Finally, the covers for this trilogy. They’ve looked really cool. They look like what I want to be reading about in a universe called Warhammer. Scary looking, bad ass beings of power with huge weapons. If the story contained within had only lived up to the bar set by the covers. I feel cheated.

I’ve got my next Warhammer trilogy that I’m going to read, but I wish I could find someone who could point me to a good beginning point.

★★★☆☆

 

1. Review of Book 1
2. Review of Book 2

^{This review is written with a GPL 3.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress, Blogspot, Booklikes & Librarything by  Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission.}

 

 

Title: Death’s City

Series: Blood on the Reik #2

Author: Sandy Mitchell

Rating: 3 of 5 Stars

Genre: SFF

Pages: 416

Format: Kindle Digital scan

 

Synopsis:

When we last left our heroes, they were surrounded by the Witch Hunter’s forces with no escape. So the beginning of this book they obviously get captured, Hanna gets a sigil that seals her powers and she’ll literally explode if they can’t get it off. But they do escape, thanks to Fritz’s now fully transformed chaos brother.

The trio hooks up with an old wanderer who helps them to Marienburg, where everyone gets various jobs to survive. Rudi continues his hunt to find his real parents and to figure out just what this “heir” thing is all about.  City adventures ensue and by the end of the book the trio have to run again, as the Witch Hunter has caught up to them.

 

My Thoughts:

Rudi has got to be the dullest clod of dirt in the whole field. He runs right into the arms of the chaos worshippers who just keep on trying to kill him and sacrifice him. I’m hoping that this time around he learned his lesson. There is obviously a schism within Chaos’s ranks [big surprise there, right?] about what do with Rudi. One group wants to sacrifice him for some reason and the other group doesn’t want to sacrifice him, but we have no idea what they DO want. With the Witch Hunter and the powers of the Empire behind him, you have a very big 3rd player.

Near the end, the Witch Hunter kept trying to talk to Rudi about something but Rudi wouldn’t let him get a word in edgewise. I can’t say I blame him but still, the stupid Witch Hunter should have just yelled “I know ‘Information X'” instead of trying to “talk” to Rudi. You can’t kill someone’s relatives and friends, then capture them and once they escape expect them to sit quietly while you explain “what is really going on”.

On the writing aspect of things. Too may little pointless details were included. I know they were written in to give the book depth and all that malarkey, but it really came across as padding. I don’t need to know about breakfast, break, lunch, afternoon, dinner and night time details of their journey on the road.

With all of that, this was a fun read. Rudi being on the City Watch gave rise to some good action scenes. I do feel like I need to hunt down a Warhammer wiki page and start reading these in more of an order than I have with the Forgotten Realms books. Random isn’t the best way to read a vast collection of books.