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Ven Denst #1
Hallowed Ground
A Warhammer Age of Sigmar Novel
The Siege of Excelsis is over, but the bloody battle has left its mark on the witch hunters Galen and Doralia ven Denst. When her father Galen disappears into the wilds of Ghur, Doralia sets off in pursuit, wracked with suspicions that Galen's quest may yet spell doom for all Excelsis.
READ IT BECAUSE
Discover the mysterious past of Galen and Doralia ven Denst, in a tale of mystery and revenge set in Ghur after the Siege of Excelsis.
THE STORY
The Siege of Excelsis is over at last, and the survivors count the costs amidst the rubble of their city. Even for Galen and Doralia ven Denst, two of the most feared witch hunters in the Order of Azyr, the horrors they have witnessed are not so easily dismissed. Struggling with the traumas inflicted by the siege, Doralia's concerns only grow when her father disappears into the wilds of Ghur. As she sets off on his trail, Doralia begins to suspect that Galen is hunting down a dark secret from their past – one that might hold the key to a new threat rising to engulf Excelsis.
With the city barely recovered from its ordeal, both witch hunters must make a fatal choice between the desire for revenge and the rigours of duty – and should they decide poorly, Excelsis will pay the price.
The Siege of Excelsis is over, but the bloody battle has left its mark on the witch hunters Galen and Doralia ven Denst. When her father Galen disappears into the wilds of Ghur, Doralia sets off in pursuit, wracked with suspicions that Galen's quest may yet spell doom for all Excelsis.
READ IT BECAUSE
Discover the mysterious past of Galen and Doralia ven Denst, in a tale of mystery and revenge set in Ghur after the Siege of Excelsis.
THE STORY
The Siege of Excelsis is over at last, and the survivors count the costs amidst the rubble of their city. Even for Galen and Doralia ven Denst, two of the most feared witch hunters in the Order of Azyr, the horrors they have witnessed are not so easily dismissed. Struggling with the traumas inflicted by the siege, Doralia's concerns only grow when her father disappears into the wilds of Ghur. As she sets off on his trail, Doralia begins to suspect that Galen is hunting down a dark secret from their past – one that might hold the key to a new threat rising to engulf Excelsis.
With the city barely recovered from its ordeal, both witch hunters must make a fatal choice between the desire for revenge and the rigours of duty – and should they decide poorly, Excelsis will pay the price.
- GenresFantasy
400 pages, Paperback
First published March 19, 2022
10 people are currently reading
244 people want to read
About the author
Richard Strachan
42 books25 followersRichard Strachan lives in Edinburgh, UK. He has had stories published in magazines like Interzone, The Lonely Crowd, Gutter and New Writing Scotland, and writes for Games Workshop's Black Library imprint.
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
April 15, 2022
I’ve been a big fan of Black Library’s recent work, until this book. The over all story is interesting enough, sort of, and the characters a cool, but the book could have been a short story at 33% or the total length. The other 66% is fights where an underdog is almost dying for 10 pages but then doesn’t die.
September 30, 2023
3.5. Some lovely prose, very atmospheric, but not as strong as Strachan’s previous two novels. The first half had a lot of promise, but the second devolved into a generic, action-heavy Warhammer story - entertaining enough but nothing special.
August 9, 2023
Loved reading every minute of this! Absolutely excellent writing, great characters and some really great action!! Really recommend it!
May 4, 2024
As a tie-in for the Ven Denst GW models, Hallowed Ground is about as good as you could reasonably expect, with the father-daughter duo caught up in a lot of bad blood out in the wilderness of Ghur.
What caught my attention first was how good Richard Strachan is at describing environments with speed and clarity. It’s a quality that runs through the entire book where everything has an economy of language; descriptive and easy to picture yet brisk and concise. Ghur’s landscape is evoked so well without the need for any flowery prose and my brain manages to grasp the image at a rate few other books allow.
Given the ease of reading and comprehension it would be easy for things to slide into being overly simplistic or give the impression that the writing lacks any flair or artistry, yet it never feels like this. What you get is a good pace, and everything is neatly structured with plot threads coming together nicely where past and present trauma intersect in just the right manner.
Characters are likewise well drawn. They pull from some obvious tropes, grizzled veteran, sarcastic wit, sultry vampire etc. but pepper their thoughts and words with enough unique detail to make their personalities engaging. There’s tension, conflicted emotions and desires, and a sense of weight to the lives they have lived.
Hallowed Ground doesn’t necessarily break any, it offers a relatively straightforward story of revenge and grim duty, but what it does do, it does really nicely. Recommended.
What caught my attention first was how good Richard Strachan is at describing environments with speed and clarity. It’s a quality that runs through the entire book where everything has an economy of language; descriptive and easy to picture yet brisk and concise. Ghur’s landscape is evoked so well without the need for any flowery prose and my brain manages to grasp the image at a rate few other books allow.
Given the ease of reading and comprehension it would be easy for things to slide into being overly simplistic or give the impression that the writing lacks any flair or artistry, yet it never feels like this. What you get is a good pace, and everything is neatly structured with plot threads coming together nicely where past and present trauma intersect in just the right manner.
Characters are likewise well drawn. They pull from some obvious tropes, grizzled veteran, sarcastic wit, sultry vampire etc. but pepper their thoughts and words with enough unique detail to make their personalities engaging. There’s tension, conflicted emotions and desires, and a sense of weight to the lives they have lived.
Hallowed Ground doesn’t necessarily break any, it offers a relatively straightforward story of revenge and grim duty, but what it does do, it does really nicely. Recommended.
February 4, 2024
A story with two sections. First section is a brilliant story of a witch-hunter chasing after her father witch-hunter through the wilderness. A brilliant story, very interesting with some good character development - I really enjoyed the friend she picked up along the way. Seeing these characters interact with the world was engaging. Thoroughly enjoyed it.
The second story is pure action. While written fairly well, it gets boring after 80-100 pages of the same on-going battle. How often the same scene can be described!? Furthermore the main 'baddie' gets introduced RIGHT AT THE END. There's very little lead-up, and I felt this really could have been handled a lot better.
Also - how can these famed 'Witch Hunters' do their job properly when half the time they seem to be knocked about only to pull out some lucky kill, right at the end of each of their battles? Very little we see comes down to 'skill' and a large amount to 'luck'.
A fairly quick read all in though at 280 pages. I'm hoping the sequel 'Temple of Silence' carries on their story without the need for much backtracking of character development.
The second story is pure action. While written fairly well, it gets boring after 80-100 pages of the same on-going battle. How often the same scene can be described!? Furthermore the main 'baddie' gets introduced RIGHT AT THE END. There's very little lead-up, and I felt this really could have been handled a lot better.
Also - how can these famed 'Witch Hunters' do their job properly when half the time they seem to be knocked about only to pull out some lucky kill, right at the end of each of their battles? Very little we see comes down to 'skill' and a large amount to 'luck'.
A fairly quick read all in though at 280 pages. I'm hoping the sequel 'Temple of Silence' carries on their story without the need for much backtracking of character development.
April 11, 2023
DNF at half point
Long story short: No action that really mattered, the characters were shallow and gave me no feelings. To much plot in 300 pages that didn’t even make any sense, which also made everything empty. The characters were weird and it felt non cohesive. How they were explained by the book, by themselves and by others didn’t correlate so it felt more like all characters were three different characters with the same name.
The only + was that it was very quick to read since the language was extremely simple (to simple) and nothing really happened so even if one zoomed out and came back everything made sense because nothing that happened really mattered in the end.
Long story short: No action that really mattered, the characters were shallow and gave me no feelings. To much plot in 300 pages that didn’t even make any sense, which also made everything empty. The characters were weird and it felt non cohesive. How they were explained by the book, by themselves and by others didn’t correlate so it felt more like all characters were three different characters with the same name.
The only + was that it was very quick to read since the language was extremely simple (to simple) and nothing really happened so even if one zoomed out and came back everything made sense because nothing that happened really mattered in the end.
August 2, 2022
Strachan has become one of the best authors from the new crop that BL has now signed to their publishing house and this is no exception. The book does take a while to find itself and the opening third is a bit jarring with its pacing. However, when it does get to Strachan's evocative world building and scene setting it finds it’s sweet spot. Also, considering the final third is primarily action, which is my personal least interesting part of AOS stories, I found this the most engaging and entertaining action of the novels I’ve read so far.
June 30, 2024
With the new edition of Age of Sigmar coming up, I’ve been binging AoS lore to get caught up on the story. This novel is engaging right away and has some solid character building and explains why the main characters act the way they do. Personally, I’ve found that the Callis and Toll novels are a bit better Witch Hunter stories. Although there are moments of them exercising witch hunter authority, it seems like Galen and Daralia Ven Denst are more just vigilante type characters, rather than truly representing the Order of Azyr.
Enjoyable read all things considered.
Enjoyable read all things considered.
December 12, 2023
I enjoy Strachan’s books so much.
The first half of the book really reminded me of Stephen King’s gunslinger books with spaghetti Westerns. I kinda would have been happy with that until the story matured. And the climax? It starts about 2/3 in!
He makes things FUN and, for me, that’s a necessary contrast compared to the grimdark of 40K. I want want want to read about ultimately good people ultimately triumphing.
The first half of the book really reminded me of Stephen King’s gunslinger books with spaghetti Westerns. I kinda would have been happy with that until the story matured. And the climax? It starts about 2/3 in!
He makes things FUN and, for me, that’s a necessary contrast compared to the grimdark of 40K. I want want want to read about ultimately good people ultimately triumphing.
May 25, 2022
I'll be honest, Age of Sigmar largely doesn't interest me...I'm more of an "oldhammer" guy when it comes to Warhammer Fantasy but I really enjoyed this book. Not too short, not too long, and moving at a decent pace...this could have been a dull slog in another author's hands. I liked the characters, the action, and the horror. I hope we get another book with these two.
July 21, 2024
3.5 rounded up for the vampires
I love me some vampires. This was shaping up to be a strong four star during the first 1/2-2/3. I loved the travel log parts and the horror elements throughout. It was feeling like a mix between The Witcher and Dresden Files, but the ending felt very long and drawn out. Still a decent book overall and I had a lot of fun reading it.
I love me some vampires. This was shaping up to be a strong four star during the first 1/2-2/3. I loved the travel log parts and the horror elements throughout. It was feeling like a mix between The Witcher and Dresden Files, but the ending felt very long and drawn out. Still a decent book overall and I had a lot of fun reading it.
April 12, 2022
Another excellent AoS entry by Richard Strachan. Anytime I read his Age of Sigmar stories I feel like it matches up perfectly with how I see the Mortal Realms and this story was no different. Would love to see the ven Densts again and will read any story Richard puts out!
June 28, 2023
A disappointment from Strachan, considering his usual fair is pretty good. The first third was great, but it never really paid off what I thought was very strong set-up. The moment the story pivots to its secondary objective it's characters become hollow, and the action generic.
September 17, 2024
My first Warhammer book, pretty decent adventure into the world, some intense page turner sections. I would love to see some drawings of the locations, and characters, they seem quite interesting in my imagination!
September 29, 2025
Maybe 2.5 in reality. The story didn't grab me, it felt like a 'midday movie' for Black Library. I felt no real connection to the primary protagonists, it was as if we were just 'going through the motions'.
April 4, 2022
Much too good for genre fare. Easily the best age of sigmar book so far.
April 8, 2022
Excellent character driven fantasy horror. One of the strongest offerings from Age of Sigmar. Could have easily been a Warhammer Horror offering
May 20, 2022
An excellent story, full of character and world building. A very enjoyable and different take on the normal fare of AoS stories, with intriguing characters.
July 26, 2022
Really good solid narrative with consistent characters accompanying a good plot.
June 13, 2023
Good
This book has sum rely good bits to it gets off to a very good start but I do fell that sum parts could have been better especially towards the end
This book has sum rely good bits to it gets off to a very good start but I do fell that sum parts could have been better especially towards the end
August 27, 2024
I loved this book! Fun read, the twists were enjoyable, and the plot was great.
September 3, 2025
A fantastic Warhammer horror entry, and a great romp to boot!
July 24, 2025
Meh. This is a good example of the problem all warhammer series have. Be it 40K or Fantasy. Too many different writers are writing too many books non -stop .
Many of these 'side quests' series are just entertaining ,some surprisingly good but there's a lot of very mediocre stuff . Like this one .
Many of these 'side quests' series are just entertaining ,some surprisingly good but there's a lot of very mediocre stuff . Like this one .
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews