Ghazghkull Thraka: Prophet of the Waaagh!

[cheywood]

I quite like how comic Orks are. To me it makes sense that creatures created for and dedicated to warfare and destruction find endless amusement in a galaxy overrun by such things. However I always want some darkness mixed with it - orks should be hilarious to themselves but terrifying to others or whatever Haley says. I think that’s generally the vibe we get when orks show up in BL works these days. I’m not too concerned over whether that mix of comedy and terror is delivered via suitably orky dialogue or not.

[SkimaskMohawk]

I feel like an audiodrama with the style of the dow2 Orks or even the beast snagga trailers would be great, script depending. There's a comic element, but that doesn't make them silly.

[rookie40K]

I feel like an audiodrama with the style of the dow2 Orks or even the beast snagga trailers would be great, script depending. There's a comic element, but that doesn't make them silly.

Funny. You wrote my exact thoughts. I was also thinking about Beast Snaggas and how I liked the voice work on the orks in dow2. Humor without getting too silly. Big, vicious, scary bastards with comedy would be a good blend.

[Lord_Caerolion]

I just see it as Orks are comedic, but only to us, as utterly-removed observers. Sure, it sounds funny to us that they just crash-land ships instead of using dropships, and their vehicles are rolling scrapheaps, but the comedy disappears incredibly quickly when you’re the one they’re charging headlong at, firing bullets the size of your fist and waving axes the size of your torso, yelling so loud you swear your bones are shaking. Your Commissar yells to hold the line, then he suddenly detonates and gremlins start pouring out of the portal that just opened up in his chest cavity.

[Dumah]

Exactly.

 

The silly toddler with the magnifying glass isn't so funny to the ants he's burning...

[rookie40K]

Exactly.

 

The silly toddler with the magnifying glass isn't so funny to the ants he's burning...

Well said, and as they say here in California, hella funny.

[cheywood]

Finally finished this. Took me way too long due to entirely unrelated matters, but boy was it worth it. To my mind this is among the best debut novels to ever come out of BL. It captures the essence of the orkoid race and explains it in a manner that’s entirely believable while retaining the absurdity that defines the species. It’s horrific, hilarious, and never less than deeply compelling. As a cherry on top it presents a wonderfully pointed look at the Imperium as well. It’s the sort of incisive commentary one expects from the veterans of the setting and Crowley’s already delivering it masterfully.

[byrd9999]

Just finished this, and I agree with everything Cheywood said in the post just above this one.

 

It's probably the deepest look at Ork psychology and motivation in BL, and makes them thoroughly believable as a species, not just a joke about football hooliganism.

 

While also being laugh-out-loud funny in several places.

 

Masterful.

[Roomsky]

Ghazghkull Thraka: Prophet of the Waaagh! – Nate Crowley

 

This book is a delight!

 

I think this is just as good as Crowley’s fantastic Necron work, and it manages to be a completely different flavour than those. As others have mentioned, these orks aren’t just football hooligans, and Ghazghkull itself isn’t just an ork.

 

Crowley balances giving satisfying explanations alongside lots of ambiguity for fans to chew on – Makari probably being in Watchmojo’s “top 10 Warhammer 40,000 characters to not take at their word” makes it a sort of built-in assurance that things may not necessarily be what they seem. The metaphysics of orks (something I probably wouldn’t have uttered before reading this,) plays into it as well, with the line between fact and fiction being more of a big green smear over both sides. My personal theory is that

Makari is a conduit for Mork and Grotsnik is a conduit for Gork, with Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka being the fruit of their union, and the means by which they can actually cooperate. It’s been a while since I’ve read a Black library book that set me to actual inference and theorycrafting instead of just fixating on tiny, in-text details.

 

The cast is surprisingly strong, given the book’s length. Falx, Cassie, and Hennrikson are all great, but it’s the diversity between the orkoids that’s really Crowley’s big accomplishment here. You’d never mistake Bullets for Biter for Grotsnik, and Makari’s outline of grot psychology is intriguing. The implication that Grotsnik could have supplied his own version of this book if interrogated is a great touch.

 

Speaking of the interrogation format, it’s great. This is basically Skarsnik: 40k (to the point where I’d almost call it too similar,) and it succeeds for the same reason. There’s built-in character moments that reliably break up action scenes, and it allows characters to theorize about events just as the audience might be. Keeps unnecessary details from dragging things out, too.

 

If I had to criticize, I have a few items. I love the book as someone who knows all about Ghazghkull (and who has listened to Saga of the Beast,) but this probably isn’t the finest entry point for someone looking to get into Orks. It certainly still works: everything is given some degree of explanation (often very cleverly,) but without prior reading you probably won’t get why Yarrick was Ghaz’s arch-frenemy, or why the Ragnar stuff occurred at all. Good thing we have Brutal Kunnin` as an easy access point that’s also good.

 

Loathe as I am to address the pronoun stuff again – there’s a consistency issue here. While “they” is the most commonly used one for orks, it’s not consistent, even accounting Henriksson’s request for Ghaz to be referred to as “he.” Makari/Biter cycles through he, they, and it more than once and it’s kind of distracting. I probably wouldn’t have even noticed had the characters not addressed what they were referring to Ghazghkull as. Odd choices all round.

 

I also would have liked Biter to play a more explicit role in the story’s ending. Him just peacing out wasn’t especially satisfying.

 

Broken record time, but it’s books like this, Talon of Horus, and Head of the Hydra that I point to as what “lore bible” books should be. Yes, it covers numerous events in the fluff from a new perspective and helps make disparate events more cohesive, and yes, it reveals all sorts of goodies about characters and factions people have been guessing at for years. But atop that the pacing and structure are very solid, and all the characters are memorable for their own traits, not for what fluff concepts they represent. It succeeds as a story and as a sort of expanded-codex. And boy does it succeed!

 

Five and Four outta Ten, Deez Gitz Better Read Dis!

[Interrogators note: 9/10, Must Read]

[DarkChaplain]

 

This is basically Skarsnik: 40k

 

I haven't gotten very far into it yet, but that's exactly how I've felt about the Ghaz chapters so far. Really makes me want to go back and re-read Skarsnik, too.

[rookie40K]

 

 

Ghazghkull was fantastic, so I’ll definitely have to check out Skarsnik.

 

 

This is basically Skarsnik: 40k

I haven't gotten very far into it yet, but that's exactly how I've felt about the Ghaz chapters so far. Really makes me want to go back and re-read Skarsnik, too.

[byrd9999]

Ghazghkull Thraka: Prophet of the Waaagh! – Nate Crowley

 

 

I also would have liked Biter to play a more explicit role in the story’s ending. Him just peacing out wasn’t especially satisfying.

 

 

Excellent review, Roomsky. I agree with everything you said.

 

As for the Spoiler:

 

I agree with this too. Biter is my favourite character, due to The Enemy of My Enemy, and I was delighted to see him so centrally in this. But his exit left too much of a mystery. I guess it was left open deliberately so it can be filled at a later date, but it did a disservice to this particular book.

[DarkChaplain]

Finished this one. I have to say that I greatly enjoyed it... but wish it was significantly longer. Seeing that a lot had to be cut to maintain the commissioned word count, as per Nate's posts on reddit, I can't help but wish that BL had bumped this up from its chosen format.

 

Some nitpicks:

 

At one point, Ragnar is referred to as Hendriksen's "former Chapter Master" by Falx, which may either be an oversight/error, or a deliberate attempt at making Falx look less well-informed than she usually tries to appear. Later, Ragnar is mentioned as a Wolf Lord by Hendriksen himself.

 

I wasn't a fan of the Hendriksen psychic vision chapter, personally. I see why the perspective was chosen, and that it added a degree of gravitas that the scene would've lacked with the usual narrative voice, but the perspective isn't one I particularly enjoy at the best of times.

 

And damn, I do wish the Golgotha part hadn't been basically skipped by Makari. It does refer to Chains of Golgotha in a roundabout way, of course - but that novella (an excellent one!) is firmly presenting the Yarrick perspective of his captivity, and I feel that Ghaz's perspective of Old Bale-Eye during his captivity, the way he kept pursuing him, and their arrangement to meet again at Armageddon - as well as Ghaz' decision to literally reassemble the and organize an exit vehicle for the Commissar, would have been hugely interesting to read about, and have Makari comment on. Maybe even some cackles about how Yarrick looked shocked when Ghaz spoke to him in perfect High Gothic or something.

 

There was also no mention of the Black Templars and Yarrick chasing Thraka after the Third War for Armageddon. The Tyranid section was talked about in passing, but otherwise it jumped to Ragnar.

 

...which is to say: goddamn, I wish this had been longer. Like, a full novel. I'm sure Nate would've been able to hit all of these aspects out of the park, given room to do so.

 

And if this can be considered a failing at all, it is one of BL as a publisher, who keeps pushing half-length short novels far too obsessively, rather than letting a story like this take whatever space it needs to be told to reach its full potential. And it kinda sucks seeing so many books lately coming out at these lengths - and it's almost always those with the biggest potential and relatively little in the way of overt army-based action setpieces.

[theSpirea]

Finished it recently as well and agree with most of what's been already said about it here. I greatly enjoyed Nate's Necron novella and two novels but this one was even better. Along with Kingmaker, both strong contenders for BL novel of 2022.

 

I also agree the novel would benefit from extra 10-20K words but it still is a full length novel. I'm glad BL is not trying to follow the modern ridiculous trend of Fantasy/Sci-Fi novels being 200K words long (over 600 pages approx). I'm looking at you Sanderson, Gwynne, etc where 50% of the book is a filler and doesn't add anything to the story/world building and they have to stretch a simple story to a trilogy of almost 2K pages total. I'd take Ghaz's 70K words novel over that.

 

Here's hoping for a sequel, or at this point, anything Nate is going to put out is an instant buy for me.

[DarkChaplain]

I'll fight you tooth and nail about John Gwynne. The man is a fantastic author and I would have devoured another 200 pages of the Bloodsworn or the Faithful and the Fallen without taking a break.

 

...on the other hand, I agree on Sanderson. Doesn't help that a lot of his character development feels very much like running in circles, especially in Stormlight.

 

But the standard at BL used to be ~400 pages in a trade paperback, not 600 (or even 1000+ for Sanderson). Now it's barely 250, and with novels like Ghaz, that difference is very noticeable for all the things that doesn't fit anymore. The Warhammer Horror imprint has more than a few novels that needed that room to fully grow into themselves, I'd argue.

[DukeLeto69]

These “short novels” are, I think, almost exclusively released in hardback.

 

I reckon the bean counters have worked out that the profit margin on a short hardback at £12:99 is better than a big hardback at £20:00.

 

The authors will like it as well as while their %royalty will be the same, the higher price of a hardback will mean their rate per word is higher (more money less work - in theory).

[DarkChaplain]

Now if only the print run wasn't so pathetically low, you're out of luck pretty quickly. At least paperbacks would remain in circulation for a bit longer.

[theSpirea]

It'd say the print run with these books is a bit higher than your usual BL hardbacks. The reason I think is because you can buy them in regular bookstores (regular BL hardbacks you often can't). And maybe also because there's no paperback edition published later on (if they are going to follow the Primarch/Horror/HH Characters hardbacks pattern).

 

I don't know about the profit for authors and all that but I'm a big fan if I can get the book in a regular bookstore and don't have to buy it directly from GW for a full price or rely on GW retailers/FLGS who later might not even receive enough copies.