Sunday 10 March 2013

Brian Craig: Old School Warhammer Author's Pawns of Chaos

The original cover to Brian Craig's novel. Not quite as bad as most of the truly appalling covers that the Black Library put out in the late '90s, early '00s.
Just a quick update today... 

Those of you who frequent my other blog, Realm of Chaos 80s, will know that I am a fan of the old school Warhammer Books novels from the late '80s. Last year, I wrote an article detailing the fantasy ones here

One of my favourite authors from that early range was Brian Craig, who of course wrote the superb Orfeo trilogy (Zaragoz, Plague Daemon and Strom Warriors) as well as a number of highly regarded short stories.

Much of the fiction is required reading for Oldhammer enthusiasts, though I have yet to chronicle the Rogue Trader era novels that were published, mostly written by Ian Watson. The big difference between Warhammer Books and the Black Library is quality of writing. To be fair, very few of the authors now writing for BL are 'proper authors' while many of the voices from the early Warhammer book range were, and still, respected writers; Ian Watson, Kim Newman and Brain Stableford to name but a few.

Now Brian Stableford is also Brian Craig.

I wonder if you knew that?

Anyway, in the late 90s he wrote a 40k novel that, well, didn't go down too well with early BL fans. Too much plot, character development and layers of metaphorical meaning and not enough 'kill, maim, slaughter' I suspect. He also produced a new fantasy volume called the Wine of Dreams. 

But I digress. 

The Black Library have made the 40k novel, the Pawns of Chaos, available as an expensive eBook. If you are after something different from the usual BL hackery and fancy something with an old school whiff, you will probably find yourself enjoying this one. 

The new eBook cover.
http://www.blacklibrary.com/all-products/pawns-of-chaos-ebook.html