Warblade
By David Ferring
- Warblade
-
Author: David Ferring
- Series: Konrad Series
-
Publisher: Games Workshop
- ISBN:
- Published:
- Pages: 256
- Format reviewed: Hardback
- Review date: 25/10/2008
- Language: English
- Age Range: N/A
Warblade is the third and final book of David Ferring's Konrad trilogy, and it arrives carrying a heavy burden. This is the volume that has to gather up every thread spun across Konrad and ShadowBreed and tie them off, and it is where my long affection for this series has to make its peace with reality. I love these books, but I can see clearly, now more than ever, where this one falls short of what it might have been.
Some context explains a great deal. The Konrad story was, I gather, originally conceived as something far larger than a trilogy, possibly as many as seven volumes, and Garnett (writing here, as throughout, under the Ferring pseudonym) seems to have been told partway through that there would be no more after the third. GW Books was winding down by the time Warblade appeared in 1993, at the very dawn of what would later become Black Library, and you can feel the squeeze on every page. A story built to unfold at leisure has been forced to sprint to its conclusion.
The book moves to Altdorf, the capital of the Empire, where Konrad, now an older and harder man, several years on from where we left him and still searching for the long-lost Elyssa, becomes embroiled in a skaven plot to replace the Emperor Karl Franz with a double. As he digs, he discovers that the Chaos cults have wormed their way deep into the nobility and the guard around the Emperor himself, and that, true to the cosmic pattern hinted at across the earlier books, everything and everyone seems connected to the great struggle into which he was born. Escaping the city, he is reunited with his old mentor Wolf, and at last begins to understand his own place in the scheme of things, before gathering his allies for a final confrontation.
There is plenty to enjoy. Armed now with the mystical sword that gives the book its title, forged especially for him, Konrad finally gains some genuine agency and self-knowledge after two books of being swept along by forces beyond his control. The strongest material, by some distance, is his reckoning with how much he has changed; having survived the horrors of the Chaos Wastes and the Bronze Knight, he finds the scheming Chaos cults of the capital almost beneath his notice, child's play after what he has seen, and his willingness to hurt and kill anyone standing between him and Elyssa shows just how far the boy from the forest has been corrupted. This is the most convincing character work in the whole trilogy, and it suggests Garnett had a great deal more he wanted to do with Konrad than he was given room for.
But the constraints win in the end. The conclusion is rushed, crowded and confusing, cramming the answers to a dozen long-running mysteries into far too little space, with some resolved hastily and others left dangling. The central conceit, that one man and a band of allies, including a crew of pirates, might storm Altdorf and save the Emperor, strains credulity badly even by the generous standards of heroic fantasy; it simply does not feel plausible within the world the earlier books built so carefully. The result is a finale that is intriguing but ultimately unsatisfying, an ending that raises nearly as many questions as it answers, and that leaves you with the strong sense of a story cut off before its time.
And yet. I cannot bring myself to be hard on Warblade, because I know what it was trying to be and why it could not get there. Read as the triumphant conclusion the trilogy deserved, it disappoints. Read as the truncated final act of an ambitious, idiosyncratic, genuinely strange piece of early Warhammer fiction, written by a real author pressing against the limits of a licence and a dying imprint, it is a flawed but fascinating close. For anyone who has come this far with Konrad, it is required reading, and despite everything it gives the character a measure of the growth and the answers he was owed. Not the ending I wanted, but an ending I am glad I read, and one that has stayed with me for twenty years regardless.
Written on 25th October 2008 by Ant .
Topics and themes
Key Tropes
Themes
You may also like
-
![Three Eight OneAliya Whiteley]()
Science FictionSimilar:As a someone who studied history, I am fascinated by the past, but also the evolution of studying the past. History as we know it adapts and changes with the current way of thinking. Sometimes you must sit back and remember that things were different back then, that opinions and attitudes were just...
-
![SpiderAzma Dar]()
General FictionSimilar:There are at least two sides to every truth and somewhere in the middle is what happened. All relationships contain lies, they oil the machinery of compromise, but for a better relationship you want to keep them to little white lies. Things can quickly spiral out of control if you start to hide the...
-
![Space TeamBarry Hutchison]()
Science FictionSimilar:Space Team is one of those rare gems, a genuinely funny science fiction story that manages to entertain from beginning to end. The book follows the miss-adventures of small-time conman Cal Carver, abducted by aliens from incarceration due to a case of mistaken identity. His day goes from bad to wors...
-
![The Complete AlcatrazBrandon Sanderson]()
FantasySimilar:The Complete Alcatraz collects the whole series of Brandon Sanderson young adult novels including Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians, Alcatraz Versus the Scrivener's Bones, Alcatraz Versus the Knights of Crystallia and Alcatraz Versus the Shattered Lens. These novels follow the adventures of the 13...
-
![The Perfect StrangerBrian Pinkerton]()
Science FictionSimilar:I have come across the argument that people do not read science fiction as they cannot connect it to their own lives. Most sci fi fans know that even a book set in deep space or thousands of years in the future is often just using images of tomorrow to discuss the issues of today. However, if a read...
-
![The Cat's MawBrooke Burgess]()
FantasySimilar:In the small, sleepy town of Appleton, Billy Brahm’s life goes from clumsy to cursed. After following a cat into the road, he’s hit by a car, his leg shattered, and his summer is ruined. A mysterious cat begins to visit him at his bedside, and Billy is haunted by strange dreams. According to the cre...
-
![The Redemption of Morgan BrightChris Panatier]()
Similar:I love to read books; they transport me to unfamiliar places. I will go there even if these unfamiliar places are dangerous like the Hollyhock Asylum found in Chris Panatier’s The Redemption of Morgan Bright . A story can transport you, as can characters, but sometimes the structure of a book does t...
-
![Batman: The Killing JokeChrista Faust]()
Science FictionSimilar:The Batman Universe comes in all shades as long as they are dark blue, dark grey or black. You have your lighter fare such as LEGO Batman or the 60s incarnation and you also have your darker versions. Tim Burton’s Batman was dark, Christopher Nolan’s was darker still, but both owe homage to the iter...
-
![Sherlock Holmes and Dorian GrayChristian Klaver]()
FantasySimilar:Forget Marvel and their Marvelverse, the place that I want to be is in Christian Klaver’s Victorianverse. This is an alternative history of the era, but also of the fiction of the time. In the author’s 'The Classified Dossier’ series, Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson have already come across the li...
-
![The AdjacentChristopher Priest]()
Science FictionSimilar:Christopher Priest is without a doubt one of the finest writers alive today. Rather than compromise his stories for the sake of easy understanding Priest writes undiluted and it's up to the reader to pay attention; to digest and to consider what the story really means, or at the very least what it m...
