Grimblades

Empire Army #4

by Nick Kyme

Left to defend the Reikland alone from orcs and goblins, Prince Wilhelm and the Grimblades engage in a desperate war across the empire while Emperor Dieter IV flees to the sancturay of Altdorf.

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, 40k

416 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Nick Kyme (b. 1977) writes mostly for Black Library. His credits include the popular Salamanders series and several audio dramas.

Reviews

[Celien Muylaert · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was an 'okay' read. I restarted reading this book three times because you really need your focus and everytime I putted it away, I did not really feel the urge to continue reading as it started to feel like a task. The first 80-ish pages felt more like an prologue with a dump of names an political issues. After this we get to know more about the soldiers background and their campaign (but not enough background to feel a connection with the characters). Nick Kyme is great at writing combat but at the end it feels like some issues are rather fixed in a few lines of text and this in comparison with such a long prologue... Like a lot of warhammer books that takes place during war, we get epic build-ups and final combat scenes only to conclude that they did not really change much to the situation they started in. A 5 pages epilogue doesn't fix that and I find myself sitting there with this book and think "This is what I got after staring this story a third time?.

[Luke Nyland · Rating 4 out of 5]

Up until halfway through this book, i thought i was going to give it a 3-star rating. There were a LOT of characters, and I found myself drifting a bit.

Then, past the midway point, this turned into a great story! The central characters had a lot more background information applied to them, and Nick Kyme's prowess as an author of epic battle scenes was able to be put to better use.

A good book but, in my opinion at least, the first half should be treated as a prelude.

[Sean Helms · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay, so what I liked about this book was the grittiness of the regular dog-faced soldiers and how they endured on campaign. Good stuff there.
It took quite a while for the story to get going; pretty much half of the book.
The political entanglements were simply annoying. Either the author should have committed to that part of the story or just left out. Too many loose ends that were suddenly explained away in the short epilogue, as if the author remembered those issues after the fact and stuck an unsatisfying resolution to explain it all away. What really happened to the worthless Emperor Dieter anyway? Ran away...okay...and then what? I hate to be left hanging.

[Logan Howard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Grimblades starts off rather slow and is dragged down by the assault of names of people and places. There is a lot of exposition and relationship building in the first half. The second half is where the story begins to pick up. The conflict in the story is well constructed with several layers and realistic resolutions. The main group of characters, the Grimblades seem more like side characters to the story. Though they do relieve good relationship building and when one of them dies it is not meaningless. The deaths affect the story and how characters view each other and the mission. Plot armor is not handed out like candy like so many stories do.

[Lars Panzerbjrn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very enjoyable read. It starts off a bit slow, but picks up about a quarter of the way in.

No spoilers, but one of the characters has a plot/plan which seems kinda dumb, but otherwise a great book. It was also really nice to read an Empire book set in the past.

[Charlie Harris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Decent Warhammer fiction. Quick read and I like Kyme as an author. Enjoyed his stuff on the Salamanders from the Horus Heresy. I had this book on my shelf with a tag that says it was bought at Borders in 2010. I don’t think I read it at the time. Was certainly much easier to enjoy after recently playing an Empire campaign in Total War Warhammer III. Made visualizing the action much easier.

Small gripes with the fast ending and relatively subdued final battle scene versus the excellent descriptions of the bridge battle and the siege relief at Averheim.

[Premysl Fiala · Rating 3 out of 5]

Little confusing on the beginning with the number of names and plots... But as story goes, some of them "go away". Overall, the story was good and well written, the battles displayed in very good fashion. But whole book felt "heavy".

[Weylin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Epic military battles with orcs, goblins, and other monsters! I had a lot of fun reading this book.