What do you think?
Rate this book
Da Gobbo #3
Da Gobbo Rides Again
A Warhammer 40,000 Novella
The Red Gobbo is beloved by gretchin everywhere - a symbol of revolution, freedom and, at the very least, an afternoon off work. Orks, on the other hand, think the Red Gobbo is rubbish.
READ IT BECAUSE
Follow a painboy as he tries to cheer up a bunch of gretchin. How far will he go in his quest, and is the Red Gobbo really the answer he's looking for?
THE STORY
When the bitter cold of a nuclear winter bites at a Blood Axe encampment and the grots fall into a terrifyingly compliant depression, painboy Stimma is forced to try the unthinkable. With no Red Gobbo around to stir the grots from their malaise, he must make one, using science, cunning and acts of incredible violence.
As Stimma hunts for knowledge, accompanied by the orderly grot Goggulz, he unravels the mystery of the Red Gobbo, delves into the bizarre world of ork revolushunaries, and unpacks visions that hint at the origins of grotkind.
And soon, Stimma discovers the Red Gobbo is no mere grot - and much more than he bargained for.
The Red Gobbo is beloved by gretchin everywhere - a symbol of revolution, freedom and, at the very least, an afternoon off work. Orks, on the other hand, think the Red Gobbo is rubbish.
READ IT BECAUSE
Follow a painboy as he tries to cheer up a bunch of gretchin. How far will he go in his quest, and is the Red Gobbo really the answer he's looking for?
THE STORY
When the bitter cold of a nuclear winter bites at a Blood Axe encampment and the grots fall into a terrifyingly compliant depression, painboy Stimma is forced to try the unthinkable. With no Red Gobbo around to stir the grots from their malaise, he must make one, using science, cunning and acts of incredible violence.
As Stimma hunts for knowledge, accompanied by the orderly grot Goggulz, he unravels the mystery of the Red Gobbo, delves into the bizarre world of ork revolushunaries, and unpacks visions that hint at the origins of grotkind.
And soon, Stimma discovers the Red Gobbo is no mere grot - and much more than he bargained for.
116 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 11, 2023
17 people are currently reading
103 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
December 25, 2024
This was another nice surprise in the Red Gobbo series. I’ll admit I was quite confused at first given we follow and ork in this book (in the previous two the ork was dead at the beginning of the story). There’s also a lot of lore about orks in this one. I got to meet painboyz, mekboyz and weirdboyz all in one (for someone who hasn’t read ork books this was new). So we follow this ork, and the grots are unusually compliant, and I kept wondering why, so did the ork… so we spend a lot of time with him trying to fix the grots, and I just had this nagging sensation at the back of my head that something was terribly off and that Googlez was very suspicious.
In the end it all made sense and it was a wonderful wrap up to the story. The book also ties in the other previous books so it’s nice if you read them in order. It was fun, I learnt a lot, and Dar Red Gobbo managed to surprise me once more.
In the end it all made sense and it was a wonderful wrap up to the story. The book also ties in the other previous books so it’s nice if you read them in order. It was fun, I learnt a lot, and Dar Red Gobbo managed to surprise me once more.
January 5, 2024
Really good. Just about everything you could want from an Ork story. Certainly a novel angle on a Red Gobbo tale. I really hope they keep these stories coming.
January 7, 2025
Despite never hearing of this author before, this might just be the most fun Ork book I've ever read. Hilarious from start to finish.
December 25, 2025
2.5 ⭐️ - I came into this expecting a fun story about Grots and what I got was a paper thin excuse to highlight the different types of units in the Ork faction. By far my least favorite in this series so far. Very disappointing.
November 9, 2023
Fun quick read, but to me it is certainly the weakest of the 3 red gobbo stories with Mike Brooks'' da gobbos revenge, being the best. I hope they keep the annual tradition going but i would much prefer they give it back to Brooks or give Nate Crowley a shot after his book about Thraka.
December 4, 2023
There's something wrong with the grots. And painboy Stimma takes it upon himself to solve the problem. Or at least to find someone bigger than him so smash it for him.
In the third year of BL's 'Da Gobbo'-Christmas tradition, another author gets to write their take on the revolushunary Red Gobbo. After Mike Brooks and Denny Flowers, this time it's Rhuairidh James' turn to dive headfirst into the zany, violent world of 40k's Orks.
James is only starting out as an BL author, previously having only published one 40k and two Age of Sigmar short stories. I've only read his 40k short, but damn if that wasn't a hit debut: The Sum Of Its Parts impressed by originality, eloquence and heartfelt sincerity and immediately put James on my "I have to read whatever they write next"-list.
With 'Da Gobbo Rides Again' he continues to impress. It feels like a post-apocalyptic slice of life novella, with Stimma wandering about an Ork camp that has just finished successfully conquering/battering/destroying an Imperial world. Stimma moves around the camp with a slightly-less-rubbish grot in tow, seeking out ever weirder oddboys of his acquaintance to find a solution to an unusual change in behavior of the local grot population. Each oddboy is a memorable character and seems to live in their own bubble of orky, violent absurdity, and each has their own idea on how to fix the grots, leading to tremendously entertaining situations along the way. (Side-note: Is this what an Orky 'domestic 40k'-story looks like?)
In an interview about his Ork novel 'Brutal Kunnin', Mike Brooks said about writing Orks: "[...] the key to orks is that they seem funny, unless you’re the one they’re happening to. It was interesting approaching [a story] from the ork POV however, because of course to orks, what they’re doing isn’t horrific, it’s normal." This sense of darkness and horror bubbling under the zany antics is definitely something that James is tuned into; what for the Orks is just another day at camp is a post-apocalyptic hellscape for everybody else (see the "creative" experiments the oddboys casually undertake with human prisoners).
It's hard to describe, but there's just such a vibrant, manic energy to James' take on the Ork PoV. Barely a paragraph goes by without a quotable line, and the seemingly simple story is stuffed with cool little tidbits in terms of world building, ork psychology and philosophy. He really manages to write the story through a mind that's alien to us humans, a feat that is the great opportunity to Xenos stories in general, but is hard to pull off and sometimes ends with aliens being written as just another bunch of humans with a slightly weirder culture.
The novella format feels like exactly the right length for this story, with room enough for James' to play around with Stimma and his menagerie of ork buddies/enemies but concluded at just the right moment to end with a bang without overstaying its welcome. I dont want to talk about the ending overly much, but I just want to point out that it elevated to story from 'very good' to 'truly great' for me.
To sum up: Da Gobbo Rides Again is great fun from first page to last, a post-apocalyptic slice-of-life novella full of memorable characters that's endlessly quotable and ranges from laugh-out-loud funny to existentially terrifying - all in that particularly orky way that BL writers get better and better at hitting and successful varying. Great stuff, I'm definitely looking forward to more by this proming new voice!
In the third year of BL's 'Da Gobbo'-Christmas tradition, another author gets to write their take on the revolushunary Red Gobbo. After Mike Brooks and Denny Flowers, this time it's Rhuairidh James' turn to dive headfirst into the zany, violent world of 40k's Orks.
James is only starting out as an BL author, previously having only published one 40k and two Age of Sigmar short stories. I've only read his 40k short, but damn if that wasn't a hit debut: The Sum Of Its Parts impressed by originality, eloquence and heartfelt sincerity and immediately put James on my "I have to read whatever they write next"-list.
With 'Da Gobbo Rides Again' he continues to impress. It feels like a post-apocalyptic slice of life novella, with Stimma wandering about an Ork camp that has just finished successfully conquering/battering/destroying an Imperial world. Stimma moves around the camp with a slightly-less-rubbish grot in tow, seeking out ever weirder oddboys of his acquaintance to find a solution to an unusual change in behavior of the local grot population. Each oddboy is a memorable character and seems to live in their own bubble of orky, violent absurdity, and each has their own idea on how to fix the grots, leading to tremendously entertaining situations along the way. (Side-note: Is this what an Orky 'domestic 40k'-story looks like?)
In an interview about his Ork novel 'Brutal Kunnin', Mike Brooks said about writing Orks: "[...] the key to orks is that they seem funny, unless you’re the one they’re happening to. It was interesting approaching [a story] from the ork POV however, because of course to orks, what they’re doing isn’t horrific, it’s normal." This sense of darkness and horror bubbling under the zany antics is definitely something that James is tuned into; what for the Orks is just another day at camp is a post-apocalyptic hellscape for everybody else (see the "creative" experiments the oddboys casually undertake with human prisoners).
It's hard to describe, but there's just such a vibrant, manic energy to James' take on the Ork PoV. Barely a paragraph goes by without a quotable line, and the seemingly simple story is stuffed with cool little tidbits in terms of world building, ork psychology and philosophy. He really manages to write the story through a mind that's alien to us humans, a feat that is the great opportunity to Xenos stories in general, but is hard to pull off and sometimes ends with aliens being written as just another bunch of humans with a slightly weirder culture.
The novella format feels like exactly the right length for this story, with room enough for James' to play around with Stimma and his menagerie of ork buddies/enemies but concluded at just the right moment to end with a bang without overstaying its welcome. I dont want to talk about the ending overly much, but I just want to point out that it elevated to story from 'very good' to 'truly great' for me.
To sum up: Da Gobbo Rides Again is great fun from first page to last, a post-apocalyptic slice-of-life novella full of memorable characters that's endlessly quotable and ranges from laugh-out-loud funny to existentially terrifying - all in that particularly orky way that BL writers get better and better at hitting and successful varying. Great stuff, I'm definitely looking forward to more by this proming new voice!
February 11, 2024
This was an interesting insight into orcs from Warhammer 40k world.
The language of the book was a bit difficult to follow without someone to explain and guide me.
This book is not something I would recommend for a first book from Warhammer 40k.
Blaise and casual violence and gore were accompanied by a whole slew of meaning and required pacing in my reading.
It's a cute little book and I would have loved for it to have had some more background content other than adds for other books that are not even part of the series...
The language of the book was a bit difficult to follow without someone to explain and guide me.
This book is not something I would recommend for a first book from Warhammer 40k.
Blaise and casual violence and gore were accompanied by a whole slew of meaning and required pacing in my reading.
It's a cute little book and I would have loved for it to have had some more background content other than adds for other books that are not even part of the series...
April 26, 2024
This is the rarest of beasts, a fully optimistic Black Library book. That’s not to say it’s not dark- the portrait it paints of Ork society is as brutal and grimdark as anyone could want. As soon as I finished it, I got to thinking- is it hyperbolic to describe The Red Gobbo series as the best that BL have published, and I don’t think it is. Every installment has been perfect, and in some ways better than the last.
The author has written possibly my favourite ever BL short and now possibly my favourite ever BL novella. This bodes well for his (hopefully) inevitable full-length title…
The author has written possibly my favourite ever BL short and now possibly my favourite ever BL novella. This bodes well for his (hopefully) inevitable full-length title…
February 25, 2025
This is exactly what you want from an Orks novel. It's fun, silly, violent, and weird. The author captures the voice of da ladz (orks and grots both) perfectly, making an easy read.
These kinds of novels (those with extremely dry, British humor) tend to have that annoying sentence-level thing where there are too many adverbs and commas. It creates a lighthearted, conversational tone but can be a bit trying to read from time to time.
Other than that it's top-notch, whether you love da orks or you just want a funny scifi read.
These kinds of novels (those with extremely dry, British humor) tend to have that annoying sentence-level thing where there are too many adverbs and commas. It creates a lighthearted, conversational tone but can be a bit trying to read from time to time.
Other than that it's top-notch, whether you love da orks or you just want a funny scifi read.
December 6, 2024
The weakest of the red gobbo books so far for me. There was a bit less orky humour than I'm used to in these novellas, and the focus was on different types of weirdboyz, not on the grots themselves. Thats fine, but not meant for a red gobbo story in my opinion.
Still a fun and worthy orky read, and I did appreciate that a red gobbo story was finally set in winter! Even if it was a nuclear one...
Still a fun and worthy orky read, and I did appreciate that a red gobbo story was finally set in winter! Even if it was a nuclear one...
December 12, 2023
A fun, quick little read. The length of this felt just right. An orkish adventure full of memorable characters that makes you feel like you were trudging around with them. Not a lot of depth but I wouldn't have wanted it otherwise. This was supposed to be fun! I'm happy I found this annual tradition and really want to get my hands on the first two books!
December 31, 2023
A silly but very fun romp of a painboy and his grot trying to solve the mystery of some grots after a rather successful Ork WAAAGHH. Messing with freebooterz, mekboyz, weirdboyz and lots of ridiculous Ork antics in between, 'Da Red Gobbo Rides Again' is a short but solid read and an easy recommendation if you're a fan of greenskins and the less serious side of 40k.
March 25, 2024
‘Wot if… dere was a way to make da grots feel dat way, but only inside?’
‘Wot, like we’d believe in ourselves, but we’d still be rubbish?’ asked Goggulz.
‘Yeah, somefing like dat.’
‘Somefing dat fixes da problem in our heads but means our bodies are still rubbish and grotty?’
Such a good book.
‘Wot, like we’d believe in ourselves, but we’d still be rubbish?’ asked Goggulz.
‘Yeah, somefing like dat.’
‘Somefing dat fixes da problem in our heads but means our bodies are still rubbish and grotty?’
Such a good book.
January 9, 2026
This is my favourite Gobbo book so far, seen through the eyes of an ork, with a good protagonist, a good sidekick and some fun characters along the way, with a nice plot twist at the end. Really fun book, with a good insite to ork and got life.
December 2, 2023
Gracioso. Interesante. Sencillamente tonto. Lo disfruté. Claro está, no lo considero memorable ni me dejó más que un par de risas y un buen rato.
December 14, 2023
Blooming marvelous and a great ride to be brought along for. A must read for all fans of 40k and fun Sci-fi alike.
December 20, 2023
Wow!!! This was so much fun. Had me cracking up consistently. Definitely pick this up if you can.
December 28, 2023
Really fun with plenty of laughs. Only picked this up based on the authors previous Guard short story and I’m thoroughly glad I did.
December 31, 2023
Short sweet and a 'orrible little adventure
January 21, 2024
Great book, felt very short and the ending was rather rushed after a good build up
March 15, 2024
Spectacular, two idiots fighting other idiots. Very orky
Read
March 24, 2024Though the author of the original - Mike Brooks - mastered writing about orks, this is the best Gobbo tale yet.
April 20, 2024
real fun
July 30, 2024
Excellent story....a really fun read.......highly recommended.
August 23, 2025
A nice red gobbo story
November 10, 2025
I'm critical when it comes to franchise fantasy but this was surprisingly clever. Fun read!
November 27, 2025
Pretty funny, but also unexpectedly attacked me with very interesting lore.
The Weirdboy stuff had me cracking up and listening intently with curiosity one after the other.
"Hurrah".
The Weirdboy stuff had me cracking up and listening intently with curiosity one after the other.
"Hurrah".
Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews