'Hamilcar: The Age of Enlightenment' – David Guymer (Black Library)


It has been a bit of a struggle getting anything read this week, or last week come to think of it, but I get there in the end, eventually... ;o)

I bought 'The Age of Enlightement' as a quick 'commute read', last week, but one thing led to another (not least that I ended up doing no commuting at all so the book kind of got pushed to one side) and now it's Tuesday and I've only just finished it. Oh well...

'The Age of Enlightenment' is a short read so it's only going to be a short post tonight (also because I'm knackered and it's an 'early night' for me tonight). I'm very glad I finally got round to finishing it though.

The mighty Hamilcar Bear-eater returns to battle! When fortune brings him to the Unchained Lands, where the forces of the Free Cities wage war on the Nighthaunt hordes of Nagash, he seizes a chance for glory and joins the fight. But Hamilcar is not the only Stormcast Eternal in the battle – and the Lord-Celestant Settrus. master of a warhost of Knights of the Heldenhammer, is no friend of the Bear-eater. Yet they have common cause as they fight to stop the hordes of Death from defiling an ancient Stormvault… but what lies within may be more dangerous than all the spirits and skeletal constructs of Shyish.

It wasn't so long ago that I came across Hamilcar Bear-Eater, in the aptly titled 'Bear Eater', so when I saw that he was in 'The Age of Enlightenment', it was an easy purchase. Luckily for me, Hamilcar is all over this book, a Stormcast Eternal who will do Sigmar's bidding... just in his own way and with a liberal dose of good humoured arrogance about how great he is. And he is, when the fighting kicks off in earnest, Hamilcar is a joy to behold. Actually, Hamilcar is a joy to behold (and listen to) when he isn't fighting. 'The Age of Enlightenment' is the 'Hamilcar Show' and we've all got tickets :o)

It was a good job then, for me, that Hamilcar carried this story in the way that he did because I'll be honest, I didn't have a clue what was being held in the Stormvault. Touching sub-plot about duty to one side, I didn't get much of an idea about the weapon that was being guarded. I saw it's after effects, and maybe that was all we needed to see as they were pretty special, but not an awful lot in terms of what caused them. And maybe that's ok, sometimes less is more, I just wish I could have made it out a bit clearer (although I am the guy who totally misread a lottery scratchcard today, I think this one is very likely on me and not the book).

That's two lot of Hamilcar that I've read and both have gone down well, it might just be time for me to go and find a copy of 'Champion of the Gods' and see how he does in a full length novel...

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