"The hours flew by.
In the play, and without, the forces of darkness gathered."
Man, I had forgotten how good Drachenfels is.
Try as you might to efface it, there is a certain stigma attached to the Warhammer label. People from outside of the setting are quick to dismiss it as adolescent drivel, riddled with bad writing, worse characterization and a lamentable catering to a business model not conducive to originality or plotting. And they're not entirely wrong. But occasionally there comes a novel that blows those preconceptions out of the water.
The Genevieve novels were written before the entirety of Warhammer was set in grimdark stone, and though it still is dark and horrifying at times it very much has a different feel to it than wat came later. There is no real desperation here, no sense that this world is doomed; instead this is a world that, though there might still be hardship and evil and violence, is also filled with joy and love and art. There's barely anything to do with battles or war and instead the first novel's narrative revolves around the staging of a play.
20 years after he vanquished the great enchanter Constant Drachenfels, crown prince Oswald engages the services of the down-on-his-luck greatest artist the Old World has ever seen.
And though he rather have nothing to do anymore with the fickle nobility, frequently unappreciative of the works of true genius, Detlef Sierck, stuck in debtor's prison, has no choice but to accept and stage a play based on the prince's past exploits.
Swayed by the inspiring Oswald and his companions, the beautiful immortal Genevieve Dieudonné especially, Detlef is soon swept up in the passion for his work, and in spite of the rumours of bad luck and portents of doom, he slowly begins to create a production that has the potential to be one of the greatest works of the age.
But soon after they begin to arrive at castle Drachenfels, where the play will be held in front of the richest and most powerful rulers of the the Empire, as the prince's friends begin to turn up gruesomely murdered, it swiftly becomes apparent that a great darkness is stirring once again.
The characters are hugely likable and memorable, Detlef and his associate Vargr Breughel especially, and the story is riveting and quite original, certainly unprecedented or unfollowed within the setting. The narrative is engaging and moves swiftly, even as it is filled with surprises and mystery, tons of humour, black or not, and, since this is Warhammer Horror after all, a fair amount of horror.
After some initial misgivings, on re-read it became apparent that even though the impact of the horror elements might have been defused a little bit too much for the entire read to classify as pure horror, the sheer variety of them fully make it deserving of the label.
Insanity, sadistic serial killers, a haunting here and there, vampires haughty and humble, body horror and murder tableaux, insanity, unceremonious and shocking death, brooding, gothic castles, and so on.
But horror is more than just its trappings, and even back then a student of horror, Newman knows that it hits all the harder as it doled out sparingly, offset with humour and wit. He is one of those natural writers, somehow capable of imbuing his narrative with colour and vibrancy, while effortlessly fleshing out his setting and characters with seemingly inconsequential information that frequently turns out to be more important than first expected. He uses some writers tricks perfectly and here in Drachenfels, the spectacular fifth act of the play itself is simply brilliant.
A hugely enjoyable and very satisfying novel.
-Small note, having read the short stories recently. Drachenfels overlaps with Newman's short stories in the earliest Warhammer anthologies. Both No Gold in the Grey Mountains and Ignorant Armies take place in the 20 years between the ending of the quest to end Drachenfels and the beginning of the Detlef Sierck storyline.
-Lastly, because I just couldn't leave it be: Another note, this time on Warhammer compatibility.
In many ways Kim Newman's Genevieve does not fit at all in the Warhammer Old World as it came to be. It breaks too many of the settings' rules, and in more than a few cases the lore has evolved to actively exclude some of Drachenfels' main story elements. The locales don't always add up, there are some curious outdated details on cultures, races, historical events, the traits and capabailities of certain characters are outdated, and so on.
But the novels are so good, that even though they don't actually fit in the setting anymore, virtually any reader of Warhammer, dedicated to the concept of overall continuity as they may be, will gladly close an eye to any inconsistencies they might find.
Now, with the Warhammer Horror label, gathering the darkest tales of their properties under its imprint, the Black Library quite smartly took the opportunity to republish the Genevieve tales. They stand on their own quite well and no further reading is required (or indeed, encouraged) to make sense of the world that they inhabit.
No comments:
Post a Comment