Warboss - Mike Brooks

[Arguleon Veq]

Warboss is the latest offering in his semi - series of stories about everyone’s favorite green bezerkers of 40k. An all but irresistible WAAAGH! Is about to finish off another planet of the Imperium, when a unexpected crisis creates uncertainty as to who is Da Boss… there are several traditional contender types - mean, nasty, right out of central casting of orkiness - then there a most decided untraditional candidate.

 

A powerful warphead proposes a means of resolution to the above crisis, and everyone is… literally… off and running in an explosion of kinetic movement/motion that is a blend of the Great Race meets Fury Road.

 

As others on the board have noted , Brooks has an easy, flowing style in framing dialogue , a dab hand with Orkish humour and exposition of Ork culture/philosophy. The book unfolds in a safe predictable fashion, then wallops the reader across the head with a major twist and a callback to old 40k that almost brought a tear to my eye - and most importantly, he knocked it out of the park

 

Several quibbles, I wished Brooks had expanded on the Marxist perspective, filtered through Ork eyes, it was brilliantly set up, however didn’t really didn’t do much to advance that part of the narrative- perhaps in the future he will pick up that thread.

 

The humies were two dimensional, at best… I get that the focus was on Gang Green, so overall a minor issue.

 

Solid effort, easy to read and at times humorous- 7.5/10

[grailkeeper]

I find that he tends to have extremely long sentences. Was that the case here? Some are like paragraphs.

[DarkChaplain]

Going to quote my post from over on the Upcoming thread, because the audiobook goes the extra mile:

 

On 3/27/2023 at 9:09 AM, DarkChaplain said:

The novel in print/ebook only has chapters one to five, every chapter after that is called "Lotz". Around 20 "Lotz" chapters. The audiobook has the narrator (in-character) trying to think which chapter number it actually is - with corrections, or small arguments, etc. Really creative and something unique to the audiobook.

 

Seriously, Harry Myers is incredible here. That's also the bloke who narrated The Wraithbone Phoenix, which was also brilliantly performed.

 

[Arguleon Veq]

Regarding the long-ish sentences issue, it wasn’t something that bothered me per se, however what I noticed , Warboss read more “naturally” than Brutal Kunnin. I certainly respect that we all process/read in different fashions, but there wasn’t any major negative in Brooks writing style for me

[Urauloth]

Harry Myers is all I need to hear, I'll put this on my to-read list right now.

Edited March 28, 2023 by Urauloth

[Burni]

Thanks for the review!

 

Am just re-reading Brutal Kunnin (finished the End & the Death and needed something with smaller words ) and will definitely be picking this up!

[b1soul]

Never noticed the long sentences in his Alpharius novella, which was the one of the best in the Primarch series 

[Roomsky]

I don't feel too guilty about resurrecting this thread now the book's out in paperback.

 

This is a very interesting one for me - it's a book that should have been out years ago but it's also less to my tastes than Brutal Kunnin`. 

 

This is the first truly orky book front to back. Brutal Kunnin` gave equal pagetime to the Mechanicus POVs as it did the orks, and while there are still non-ork POVs in this story they're only here to show what the antagonists are doing. And honestly, it's about time. Every major xenos species outside of `Nids should have at least 1 novel just for them, and somehow it took til 2023 before the Orks' one became available to general audiences. So, in that regard, I think this book really needed to exist.

 

That being said, I like the half and half split of Brutal Kunnin` a lot more. IMO, Ork comedy needs a serious POV for juxtaposition, otherwise it's a Straight Man and Wise Guy routine with no Straight Man. Orks aren't funny because of the nonsense they spout IMO, they're funny because they spout nonsense while non-orks flee in abject terror. We need a heavy dose of "green monsters are coming to eat us" to balance out the "they're a bunch of wacky morons." If you agree with me, this book doesn't keep that balance - it's written well enough as with any Brooks book, it's clever and creative when it wants to be, but I don't think an devoted orkish comedy of errors is quite up my alley.

 

Again, it's great we finally have a pretty decent novel we can point to when newcomers ask "but where's the Ork book?" I just found it a bit of a case of "careful what you wish for."