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Blood Bowl #2
Dead Ball
Book 2 (of 3) in the riotous new Blood Bowl series. In a fantasy kingdom where violence is a way of life, the number one sport is Blood Bowl – gridiron football where anything goes. Dirk ‘Dunk’ Hoffnung has already tasted the high life as a star Blood Bowl player but now he has to start all over again in the Goblin Leagues!
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Fantasy Football in the literal sense with ogres as linebackers, elves as wide receivers and halflings as the ball!
416 pages, Kindle Edition
First published December 1, 2005
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113 people want to read
About the author
Matt Forbeck
212 books313 followersI'm an award-winning, New York Times-bestselling author and game designer and happily married father of five, including a set of quadruplets. For more on my work, see Forbeck.com.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
June 7, 2016
This is the second book in Matt Forbeck's Blood Bowl series (and not a story about a chap who has suffered an unfortunate scrotal injury) and, I have to say, it wasn't quite as good as the first book.
The plot is very episodic and, while that's not always a bad thing, here it just makes the story feel very disjointed. I'm not saying I didn't enjoy it at all; it's still funny and action-packed; it just wasn't quite up to the standard of the first book.
I did get a kick out of the fact that our heroes, the Bad Bay Hackers, took a trip over the sea to Albion, which is the Blood Bowl universe's analog of my native UK. I suppose this trip was inevitable, given as the UK is also the home of the game these books are based on!
So, anyway, not quite as good as the first but it wasn't actually bad and I'll still be reading the third and fourth books in this series... AFTER I've read the new Stephen King novel that has just arrived on my Kindle! :-D
The plot is very episodic and, while that's not always a bad thing, here it just makes the story feel very disjointed. I'm not saying I didn't enjoy it at all; it's still funny and action-packed; it just wasn't quite up to the standard of the first book.
I did get a kick out of the fact that our heroes, the Bad Bay Hackers, took a trip over the sea to Albion, which is the Blood Bowl universe's analog of my native UK. I suppose this trip was inevitable, given as the UK is also the home of the game these books are based on!
So, anyway, not quite as good as the first but it wasn't actually bad and I'll still be reading the third and fourth books in this series... AFTER I've read the new Stephen King novel that has just arrived on my Kindle! :-D
April 24, 2024
A nice sequel to the first, more adventures and more blood bowl, worth a read if you liked the first one
March 12, 2019
Ok, so the second book in the Blood Bowl series. The first one was quite fun and this one continues the story.
First of all I was a little dissapointed with this. It seems the story is even more random than in the first book. Or more accurately the story in some places jumps to strange directions and takes some shortcuts. The plot in itself is quite interesting and entertaining but the execution is somewhat flaved.
Still there is some fun to be found between the covers. Again this tells many fun details about the game and the Old World. It is worth the read just because of these details.
First of all I was a little dissapointed with this. It seems the story is even more random than in the first book. Or more accurately the story in some places jumps to strange directions and takes some shortcuts. The plot in itself is quite interesting and entertaining but the execution is somewhat flaved.
Still there is some fun to be found between the covers. Again this tells many fun details about the game and the Old World. It is worth the read just because of these details.
August 11, 2021
More brutal and messy fun from the gridiron.
October 16, 2025
An interesting second installment but seemed to lack the best elements of the first and tried too hard with its humorous elements
August 13, 2023
Loved reading it but little details hurt & it was a little random. Nurgle wasn’t the right Chaos god for the cultists.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 19, 2010
Book number five for 2006: Dead Ball by Matt Forbeck
The follow up to Blood Bowl, the first in Matt's trilogy about a football-like game in Games Worskhop's fantasy world of Warhammer, Dead Ball just isn't as good. There are many moments of "Problem solved, oops, problem not solved, NOW problem solved, whooops, problem not solved after all, etc. It thrashes a bit, this one does.
He adds more detail to the world, but for all the changes, by the end of the book, nothing is substantially different - like a REALLY unsatisfying time-travel story. The group of bit players filling out the team were all killed and replaced by other bit players several times, and the main characters rely on the same old schtick as in the first book.
A disappointment. I'm not sorry I read it, and I'm still looking forward to the last in the trilogy, but Matt has to show me something new next time or I'll bail on the series after book three (Oh, and Matt has recently signed on to do #4 in the series; I guess they're selling well.) It's a fun read if you like the Games Workshop experience, but not as much texture to sink your teeth into.
The follow up to Blood Bowl, the first in Matt's trilogy about a football-like game in Games Worskhop's fantasy world of Warhammer, Dead Ball just isn't as good. There are many moments of "Problem solved, oops, problem not solved, NOW problem solved, whooops, problem not solved after all, etc. It thrashes a bit, this one does.
He adds more detail to the world, but for all the changes, by the end of the book, nothing is substantially different - like a REALLY unsatisfying time-travel story. The group of bit players filling out the team were all killed and replaced by other bit players several times, and the main characters rely on the same old schtick as in the first book.
A disappointment. I'm not sorry I read it, and I'm still looking forward to the last in the trilogy, but Matt has to show me something new next time or I'll bail on the series after book three (Oh, and Matt has recently signed on to do #4 in the series; I guess they're selling well.) It's a fun read if you like the Games Workshop experience, but not as much texture to sink your teeth into.
November 21, 2015
Very frustrating. While I THOROUGHLY enjoyed the first Blood Bowl book, this second one starts off immediately with even more ridiculous puns & groan-worthy comments from the pundits at a game. Pretty quickly, most of Dunk's team is taken out, and I could just tell that we were heading in the direction of ... tryouts again, which means overall this book was going to be rish/wash/repeat. I LIKED Blood Bowl, but I don't want just another version of the exact same book.
I'll probably still give the third one a shot, because I did like the first one so much, but man, I hope it's better than this one.
I'll probably still give the third one a shot, because I did like the first one so much, but man, I hope it's better than this one.
December 5, 2016
Fantasy, 2nd novel of the series
Join Dunk Hoffnung on his attempt to bring honor back to his family's name by playing the deadly fantasy version of football.
The driving plot of this novel is that Blood Bay Hackers gain a magical trophy which corrupts everything around them.
This novel wasn't horrible, but it was a far outcry in comparison to that of the first in the series. No real character development occurs.
Join Dunk Hoffnung on his attempt to bring honor back to his family's name by playing the deadly fantasy version of football.
The driving plot of this novel is that Blood Bay Hackers gain a magical trophy which corrupts everything around them.
This novel wasn't horrible, but it was a far outcry in comparison to that of the first in the series. No real character development occurs.
January 5, 2014
This series is set in the Blood Bowl world which is a bit like the Warhammer Word as imagined by the writers of Police Squad. Its laugh out loud funny through a series of gripping adventures full of amusing stereotypical characters that has something of Discworld mixed with Gotrek & Felix about it.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews