Saturday 31 August 2013

0) - The Plan


Hello people,

My name is John, and i have been a fantasy and warhammer fan for almost 25 years now.  I firmly blame this on Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, Heroquest and White Dwarf magazine.  Strangely it was 40k i started playing first, lured by the temptation of Space Marines!  Eventually i decided on a Tyranid army and regularly spent all my pocket money on them.  With the advent of the 4th edition of Warhammer Fantasy Battle though they introduced the concept of Army Books.  Saving up for one of these i ventured into town and visited a shop called Plan 9 (no GW in Aberdeen in those days) and bought Warhammer Armies Orcs and Goblins -


From then on i was addicted to Warhammer Fantasy Battle.  I loved the background and the world it had built.  Now thanks to the magic of ebay and amazon i have almost every single edition of Warhammer, all the books that support it (Army Books, Realm of Chaos etc) and all the novels that have been published.  Very expensive now i think about it, and explaining why i had just spent £80 on a book called The Lost and the Damned is pointless unless you are talking to another Warhammer nerd.

Anyway i recently moved house and was sorting out all my books when i thought of an idea for a blog, if not a very ambitious one.  I am going to attempt to review all the warhammer novels, going in order by year published.  Now the good news is i have not read some of these books since when they came out which means i have forgotten what actually happened in it so it shouldn't bore me to tears.  Another reason for doing this is i get the feeling that the classic range of fantasy novels are still the best but i wonder if that's because i just enjoyed it more when i was younger before i got old and like all old people think it was better in my day.

Well that's the plan anyway, so ill give it a crack and see how it goes.  A quick check on Wikipedia shows the first year of warhammer novels are from 1989, when i would have been 9, its going to be interesting to see what i think of them now.  As i have no idea which month they came out in or order i am just going to pick at random.  Well i say random, i am going to start with Drachenfels which i seem to remember being awesome.

Works sending me to London for some holiday cover this week so its coming with me for the read.  Here goes nothing!