Fantastic performance in a dark AoS tale

Surprisingly dark portrayal of the skaven and some interesting lore for the stormcast in a brilliantly performed novel. A perfect introduction to the mortal realms leaving me eager for more.

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Outstanding Narration - Story not so much

Let me start by saying that I’m very familiar with the grimdark settings of WH40K, AoS and the Old World and have read & listened to many stories across each of these settings. I know how they often go.

Blood. Pain. Pain, pain, pain and more pain. And some more blood. Every chapter of Skaventide, every character seems to be full of it. So much constant pain that in the end, it ceases to have any real meaning or effect. I started to roll my eyes every time I heard it after halfway through the story. Every character seems to be an emotional mess, never experiencing any level of stability. Crushingly sad one moment, filled with rage the next - Kloster’s cast are like a cluster of manic depressives.

The beginning is excellent, as is the ending. Without spoiling the plot, there are some really good ideas here and the Skaven characters are well portrayed. I like the ominous portents of their coming and how they are shown to be creatures of horror rather than comedy. But there is an awful lot of “filler” here, with vast swathes of the middle part of the story of seemingly no real importance at all. I found myself often drifting while listening, realising I’d missed something, then realising that it largely didn’t matter; most likely just another pain-filled introspective and some more “Hope is a lie” repetition.

The narration by Richard Reed is the best aspect of this audiobook. His Skaven voices are outstanding and make great listening - more so than his other characters - and this alone makes it worth listening to.

There’s a good story underneath all of this, but it takes some “painful” digging to get to.

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Great listen with an awesome build up. leading to an epic ending, or is it.

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enjoyed

Nice lore update for the new stormcast units. as stormcast player I enjoyed it. made me hate skaven more too :)

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The overall story the skaven are terrifying

It was very good the story was well done

However it did show sevora as powerless at times

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Great way to introduce the new edition

A good story overall with engaging characters that help bring more character to the stormcast

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Grimdark AoS

And that’s as it should be but I find I struggle with the melancholic writing of this author, having just read Lazarus the style and tone are very similar, It would be nice to have the occasional brief introduction of humour to alleviate the gloom
Richard Reeds narration is as alway clear, precise with perfect pronunciation

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A good story but the previous ones was better

The story is good but the previous books which was released alongside the second and third edition of the game was better. This one felt mostly as an advertisement for the Skaventide box and how many stories are we going to hear about young people rising from the slums to become a hero? Sure there were times that I couldn’t stop listening but at the same time it could have been so much better.

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An okay introduction

I think there's a lot of cool things in this novel but it's offset by a lot of the characters and dialogue unfortunately. Here's my likes and dislikes!:

Likes:
- The environment of the halt is really cool and has a nice mystery to it that's very AoS
- The scenes where the skaven appear are fantastic, very eery and I was hooked at this part
- the side characters are all really cool especially the Lord Veritant and Peace the Gryph-Crow with his mimicry of human speech
- Some absolutely rad and horrific descriptions of skaven monsters and magic
- Was really cool to get more insight into the Memorians and what their relationships with the Stormcast they are partnered with are like
- Richard Reed is always a joy to listen to!

Dislikes:
- The main POV character was insufferable to me for a lot of the book, you kind of come to understand it if you know AoS lore pretty well but it doesn't really help in this case
- The hallowed knights don't feel like hallowed knights, there's no chants of 'Only the Faithful!' or anything that really makes them representative of my favourite Stormhost, they just feel like generic stormcasts
- Dialogue felt like a bit of a broken record at times, expect to hear 'hope is a lie' and 'hope when hope is dying' a lot.
- Skaven are a bit too much on the serious side, especially for a race that is so comically evil
- Some parts of the story feel like drawn out misery for the sake of drawn out misery
- Lack of proper Skaven PoVs

Overall the plot line does keep you engaged and I managed to get through it but some of my dislikes came close to stopping me, it does do a good job of setting up the bleak picture for the new Edition of Age of sigmar though!

Whilst this book might not have been my cup of tea at times I'm always on the look out for more AoS stuff to listen to and look forward to diving into Gary Kloster's other novels!

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Nothing special

I’ve listened to a fair few AOS books and some of them are great, most are pretty average and for me this falls into the latter.
Most of the characters are uninspired, and the pays offs are pretty underwhelming. The Skaven are far more horrific than they are funny which isn’t a bad thing in itself, but the story didn’t carry for me.

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