The Books of Stan Nicholls

An omnibus edition containing 'Bodyguard Of Lightning', 'Legion Of Thunder' and 'Warriors Of The Tempest'. The story involves Captain Stryke and the Wolverines, an Orc warband. It was interesting to see the orcs simply as professional soldiers for a change, as opposed to the remorseless agents of evil they usually are. The Wolverines become caught between their evil and vengeful former employer, the sorceress Jennesta, and the armies of humanity, who view the orcs as monsters. They become embroiled in a quest to find the mysterious and magical 'stars'. Sadly, aside from the interesting new perspective, this book is pretty bad. The battle scenes are repetetive and dull (in a needlessly brutal sort of way), the quest presents plot holes you could march a warband through and the characters of the Wolverines themselves are pretty unremarkable. There are also times when Nicholls adds a particularly gory or violent scene as if to simply see if you're still paying attention. For instance, there's one scene when Jennesta has lesbian sex with a woman, killing the woman in the process ('she climbed down from the altar and unstrapped the bloodied unicorn horn she used as a dildo'), and for the life of me I don't know what that scene was in aid of. Oh, one other thing that I did like about it is the subtle twist at the end. Throughout the book we are presented with the familiar concept that humanity is the invader, encroaching on the territory of much older races, but Nicholls disabuses us of our preconceptions when he reveals that the humans are in fact the natives of Maras-Dantia and the other races are the interlopers. Still, not enough to prevent this book from being dull and fairly trashy.