Orion: The Vaults of Winter

Orion #1

by Darius Hinks

At the heart the wood elf kingdom of Athel Loren, the forest-king Orion slumbers through the winter months to be reborn each spring and resume his arboreal throne. However, this year he awakens to discover a foul canker at the core of his eternal spirit – he has been cursed, though by whom and for what reason he does not know. In the grip of a furious rage he leads the asrai to war, but as the corruption spreads to the woodland realm around him, he feels his power waning and must rely upon his loyal subjects to help him unmask the traitor within their ranks.

Genres: Fantasy

416 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2012

About the author

Darius Hinks is an author, writing primarily in the science fiction and fantasy genres. He was born in Birmingham, England, in 1972. He works and lives in Nottinghamshire. Hinks' first novel, Warrior Priest, won the David Gemmel Morningstar award.

Reviews

[Alexander Draganov · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mind says that the book is three stars - at time the plot was confusing, the character developement awakard, the writing targeted for Black Library geeks. But heart says - five stars, it's about Elves, had the awesomest battles and cataclysmic magic.
So four stars :D

[Cao D Le · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hardcore Warhammer fan here, and I love the world it resolves around.
So I was really excited to start reading this book finally.
Hmmmm really hard to decide if I like it or not, the character building is somewhat lacking, and the way the writer writes Orion really annoys me, he portrays Orion as a hulking arrogant brute which makes him part of the problem in the story.
The book doesn't do the Asrai justice compared to how they are written in their Army books, so it's difficult to either admire/respect or fear them e.g. compared to how one was to read about the Spartans and Master Chief in the Halo universe.
The books spend more time with describing the scenery than progressing with the story which gets tedious and boring at times.
And the vocabulary which it uses can be old sometimes which makes it difficult imagine what the writer is trying to portray... (luckily the kindle has a dictionary highlight function which explains what the words meant)
It only starts to pick up at the last 5 Chapters and ends in a somewhat cliffhanger fashion... Interesting enough to consider wether or not to continue reading the 2nd book.

[Michael T Bradley · Rating 4 out of 5]

What the hell, man. This has got to be one of the strangest Warhammer fantasy books I've read, and I feel like that's saying a lot. So ... Orion is this ... idea (???) that gets reborn every year (!) (I guess imagine the Endless from Sandman, but on an insane cycle where a LOT of creatures get sacrificed to be subsumed by their personality), but this year someone has interfered w/the magic so that Orion comes in ... corrupted. And so instead of focusing on the problems of the day (like the invading beastmen horde), Orion is upset that the magical beasts who gave him his power were a little uppity.

So while forest elves die by the bajillion, he goes off & fights giant birds or whatever. It is WEIRD, man. I was thinking the other day, 'I need to finish that book,' but I checked my kindle copy, and I DID finish it. No clue how it ended up, but I guess I'll figure it out when I get to book two. (Or be thoroughly lost.)

[Gavin Gates · Rating 2 out of 5]

As a set up this in an interesting idea, instead of focusing on the Elves of the forest in which the novel is set the main character is a god whose powers are waning due to a curse. Unfortunately that really is as interesting as it gets. From page to page it just does not really seem to pick up pace or actually get anywhere of interest. The end is opn the other hand a real cliff hanger leaving a big opening for more to follow on in which case Orion may just be a bit of a back history to something a lot bigger. I hope so, but on the strength of this one, I'm not likely to invest the time to find out.

[Tammy Schilling · Rating 1 out of 5]

After 60 pages, I finally threw in the towel. How do people read this drivel? It's not a novel, it's a bunch of overly wordy descriptions of Warhammer models and some afterthought attempts at story making to drag you from one description to the next. Glad I only got it from the library.

[David Swanborough · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a good book no doubt about that but doesn't stick in my head.

The pacing is little slow for a Warhammer book and I have yet to go on to book 2

(I read book 1 September 2024)

It struggles to show why Ariel loves Orion and struggles to show how Orion is being different as there's no reference

Best part is the way wardancers fight and interact with rest of the elves

Read it if you love wood elves

[Dartigeres · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting book, that ends with a cliff hanger. There is likely to be more books to this particular series. The entire premise of this this book revovles around around a mistake Drycha made, a demon and a high elf noble where fighting and landed in the forest in the past. Drycha did not let the noble finish off the demon, insteade she imprisoned the demon and killed the highelf. Fast forward years later this is combing back to haunt her and instead of blaming her self for her and the other brunn mistake she is blaming the wood elfs and is on a crusaide to kill them and or eject them from the forest with the help of the other spirits of the forest.

In the end this back fire on her and the demon is freed, swaths of the forest are chared ruins, the wood elf populations has taken a terrible hit. All of the things she did to try and kill or imprison Orion have failed and back fired.

The entire book revolves around this one consept don't blamb myself for my own mistake blamb others for them and try and take revenge on them.

[Kayla Perisho · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story is good, and I enjoyed learning more about Orion, however the Wood Elf culture in this book was very different from previous WE books I've read and that was a little jarring.