Orcs: First Blood
Orcs (Orcs: First Blood, #1-3)
by Stan Nicholls
Combining the international best–selling trilogy—Bodyguard of Lightning, Legion of Thunder, and Warriors of Tempest—plus a new short story previously available only in a small–press anthology, Orcs: The Omnibus Edition presents the entire story of Stryke and his band of Orcs.
Orcs: First Blood is a series of books written by Stan Nicholls. The books focus on the conflicts between a group of orcs and humans, but through the unconventional view of the orcs.
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I have been hunting for a book where orcs are the central characters for a long time. I’ve read Warcraft: Lord of the Clans by Christie Golden which revolves around Thrall’s journey from birth, to slavery as a gladiator and finally his path on the journey to becoming Warchief of the orcish Horde. However, that book isn’t exactly what I was looking for as it portray orcs in a very human and noble manner. The kind of orcs I was looking for are evil, barbaric and brutal. I’ve also tried scouring the Warhammer universe books for it. If there were books from a Dark Elves’ or Vampires’ point of view in the Warhammer universe, they would surely be one from orc’s perspective right? How naive I was.
I had almost given up hope until I chance across Orcs: First Blood (Omnibus Edition) by Stan Nicholls. This Omnibus Edition is a collection of three books being ‘Bodyguard of Lightning’, ‘Legion of Thunder’ and ‘Warriors of the Tempest’. The marketing spiel behind the book reads:
“There is fear and hatred in your eyes. To you I am a monster, a skulker in the shadows, a fiend to scare your children with. A creature to be hunted down and slaughtered like a beast in the fields.
It is time you pay heed to the beast in yourself. I have your fear. But I have your respect. Hear my story. Feel the flow of my blood and be thankful. Thankful that it was me, not you, who bore the sword. Thankful to the orcs; born to fight, destined to win peace for all.
This book will change the way you feel about orcs forever“
After finally finishing 700 odd pages and feeling extremely glad I had managed to grind through it (and that in itself is never a good sign). I had to wonder if whoever wrote the above actually read the damn book. In all honesty, the only thing that forced me to plough through this was because I had paid for the damned book with my hard earned money. I felt cheated because I was mislead by the kick ass spiel written above which has totally nothing to do with the contents of the book and especially more-so because of the endorsements by respectable authors such as David Gemmell and Tad Williams:
“Excellent fantasy with a twist” – SFX
“Subverts traditional fantasy tropes by centering on the much-maligned orcs. It is quick, fast, dirty, very funny and often surreal” – The Guardian
“Weirdly charming, fast moving and freaky. Buy now or beg for mercy later” – Tad Williams
“Wall to wall action … gritty, fast paced” – David Gemmell
The series starts off with a raid on a human settlement by a small warband of orcs who called themselves the Wolverines. The Wolverines are an elite band of orcs lead by Captain Stryke. They were ordered by the tyrannical and evil Queen Jennesta to retrieve a mysterious cylinder from the humans. They hacked and butchered their way through the settlement and ends up seizing the mysterious cylinder and a stash of hallucination inducing drugs.
*Warning: Next TWO paragraphs contains SPOILERS*
Although the battle scenes in the opening scenes were really well described and engaging, it quickly falls apart after that. The Wolverines, having fought well in the battle, decided to reward themselves by getting high on drugs. They awoke very late the next day and panicked as they were late in returning the cylinder to Queen Jennesta. However, on their way back, they were ambushed by kobolds and lost the cylinder in the process. Knowing their lives were forfeit they desperately attempt to retrieve the cylinder. After retrieving it, they know they were too late in returning the cylinder and decided to opened the cylinder.
In the cylinder, they discovered a mysterious artifact known as an Instrumentality, which is one piece of a set of five. Then begins the cliché quest for the remaining pieces. The remaining 650 odd pages or so were dedicated to endless pages of battles scenes after battle scenes where the Wolverines emerged almost unscathed through overwhelming odds. The whole structure of the books is similar to standard role-playing games fare where you collect X number of items, bring them together and something magical happens. While collecting X items, hordes and hordes of enemies are thrown at you and to ensure you survive, the Dungeon Master railroad you into a miraculous escape. At the end when all hope seems exhausted, a magical powerful character reveals himself, explains everything and gets the heroes out of harms way. Plot ends deus ex machina style.
*End SPOILERS*
When I picked up this book, I was expected a groundbreaking alternative psychological perspective of a misunderstood evil race. Disappointingly, not only has the plot contained every cliché known to man (i.e. find-artifact-before-evil-ruler-gets-hold-of-it failed me), the writing itself is horrendous. Stan’s style of writing consists of very modern style lingo (e.g. dildo, AWOL…). It is just plain poorly worded and banal.
The characters were also shallow and weak. The characters are boring. There are little to no character development. The leader of the warband, Stryke (it makes me cringe every time I see that lame modernistic name) never shows any motivations for doing anything except for just going with the flow.
I was expecting an introduction to the culture, psychology and way of life that has never been portrayed before by this evil warlike race. I was expecting to have an insight into how an orcish warband might function and how these seemingly antagonistic race interact with each other. Instead I get a standard, very democratic and peaceful military unit that votes on every major decision. Survival of the fittest should be what orcs are about. The biggest and baddest orc should be the one calling the shots. It would have been just as easy to replace every ‘orc’ word for ‘human’ and you can’t tell the difference. The orcs don’t seem to have any culture or personality other than a generic fantasy warrior. Stan really did came up with an innovative idea, but he completely and utterly botched it.
The villain of this book is also very clichéd and one-dimensional. Queen Jennesta is a cookie-cutter evil ruler. She is hauntingly beautiful yet completely irrational and evil. Every scene she appears in, she seems to be killing of her own men in order to demonstrate that she is merciless and evil. She also have sex with prisoners (and sometimes with a unicorn horn dildo… go figure) and kills them at the moment of sexual climax.
While there are numerous fantasy races being sprinkled everywhere, Stan never really fleshes them out to any depths. Even the orcs themselves were hardly described.
This book is a big disappointment and a huge let down. I would not recommend this book to anyone at all. Do you self a favour and stay the hell away from this piece of junk.
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