'The Reavers and the Dead' – Charles Davidson


'The Reavers and the Dead' is taken from the Games Workshop (way back before there was even a Black Library...) collection 'Ignorant Armies'.

I'm going to warn you in advance that this coming week is going to be a bit of a patchwork affair on the blog. Work is kicking off in a way that it hasn't done for a while and I've got an exam to study for on Friday. And has anyone noticed just how hot it is...? ;o) My reading plans have gone right out of the window this week; they're more or less 'get to Friday night and see what you're able to pick up...' I'm falling back on the familiar refuge of short stories then, at least for today, and I thought I'd pay a visit to 'Ignorant Armies', a collection that I haven't picked up for ages. I've read 'Geheimnisnacht' already and next up was 'The Reavers and the Dead', a title that promised an awful lot. Did it deliver though...? Not really.

As Ragnar One-Eye's reavers descend upon a nameless coastal village, the men take arms while their women take their children and run. But where is Helmut Kerzer? He is underground and engaged in dark activities that may have called down the reavers in the first place...

'The Reavers and the Dead' isn't a bad tale in itself, just very workmanlike. Things happen and Davidson's words paint a fairly detailed picture of events but there is a lack of excitement or energy to really get you invested in what is happening. Which is... Not a great deal actually. A wayward boy with a gift for petty necromancy is lured into following a dark path but it's all a little too straightforward to make for a compelling read. More of a read where you say to yourself, 'oh, that just happened' and then you go and pick another book up without thinking too much about what you just read. Even the 'revenge' scenes at the end kind of just happened and then it was done.

'The Reavers and the Dead' feels like an opportunity that was missed (I mean, necromancer vs pirates had the potential to be anything that it wanted to be but not here...) A more engaging villain could have made all the difference but whatever Helmut Kerzer went on to become in the future, he wasn't nearly enough to carry this short story and neither was the rest of it if I'm being honest. Oh well, onto the next one :o)

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