‘The Hunt’ – David Annandale (Black Library)


Just a quick one today as while every other place of business seems to be winding down for Christmas, my place seems to ramping up… Actually, I don’t mind it as it keeps me busy, especially now we’re looking at working from home again, at least for the short term. And just as I was getting used to being back in the office… 😉 Oh well, let’s see where it takes us this time!

So, not a lot of time for the bigger reads then (I’m hoping to have a go at a couple this weekend, fingers crossed) but there’s always a vein of shorter reads on Amazon, waiting to be tapped, so I thought I’d have a little browse during my lunch break. The Warhammer Horror line hasn’t let me down yet (and I’m just about over the whole ‘isn’t regular Warhammer horror anyway?’ phase that I got myself stuck in) and neither has David Annandale so a mixture of the two sounded like just the trick for a little lunchtime reading. And that’s just what I did with ‘The Hunt’ and…

For many long years through the Age of Chaos, the lands of Ghyran suffered under the yoke of the servants of Nurgle. Disease wracked the lands, and life became an unending cycle of horror and misery. Then came light, in the form of the Stormcast Eternals, Sigmar's celestial heroes. Yet light cannot destroy darkness, as Bered Davan has learned. A witch hunter, he is no stranger to the vile things that lurk in the Mortal Realms, but as he hunts the source of a contagion, he will be tested as never before…

‘The Hunt’ is all of twenty six pages long and as such, it’s difficult to say too much about it without giving away the ending and I wouldn’t want to do that… The ending is a good one, expertly built up and executed at just the right moment. And just when you think you’ve got a handle on it, there’s still time for one final twist, and I think it was the best one. You’ll finish it and wonder just whom was hunting what…?

I’m still fairly new to the Mortal Realms and so it was good to see another part of it, especially with how the darker environs of Everyth weigh on the plot and make it all murky and oppressive. I always say this but stories like this just make me want to read more of the Mortal Realms; ‘The Hunt’ in particular is well contained in itself but offers those glimpses of a wider world that make me want to read further. Well played ‘The Hunt’, well played…

I really want to see all these stories collected into a physical book but in the meantime, ‘The Hunt’ is a tale that makes me glad I have a Kindle to read it on. If you have a Kindle, and enjoy some horror in your fantasy, you should definitely give ‘The Hunt’ a go.

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