‘Anger and Ash: A Nyssa Volari Short Story’ – Gary Kloster (Black Library)


Well, Christmas is finely poised to give me a kicking and I’ve still got five days of work to get through before I’m on leave. Can your favourite blogger (well, somewhere in your top ten… ok, top fifteen) make it through to Friday evening without snapping and unloading inappropriately placed wrath on an innocent bystander. We shall see…

In the meantime, I’m starting off this week with a little Warhammer ‘short story action’, mostly because I didn’t put a book in my bag and needed something for the bus home last night. Not a bad choice as it turned out…

Can anger and mistrust be overcome in search of common ground?

60 years after being exiled to the Broken Plains, Nyssa Volari and her family aim to conquer the settlement of Gowyn. However, before they do so they must gain the allegiance of a dangerous band of nomads.

I’ll be honest, I’m not massively keen on vampires in my fantasy reading; they’re a little bit too full of themselves and don’t make for a particularly interesting challenge when the hero fights them. Just a bit too powerful then. And before anyone says anything, vampires in horror fiction are awesome (‘They Thirst’ is a glorious read and you need to read it). But anyway, where was I? Oh yes… Vampires in fantasy fiction 😊

I won’t lie then, I came to ‘Anger and Ash’ with a few preconceptions that were duly knocked out of me by Kloster’s vampires who are as arrogant as you’d expect but with an animal streak to them that makes them a little more interesting to follow. Maybe they are still a little too powerful but not only does Kloster use this against them but it but their animalistic nature makes them unpredictable as well which makes the story a lot of fun to read. I don’t know a lot of the main players in the ‘Age of Sigmar’ setting but Nyssa herself looks like shed be an interesting one to stick around for with her tendency to snap at the tiniest thing making for some great confrontational scenes.

Arrogance can help you get what you want but it can also set you up for one hell of a fall… That’s the lesson you’d think our vampires would learn but when you’re basically immortal, it’s not a lesson that you need to learn really; just be patient and your chance will come again. What that means for us though is a tale where our vampires get it wrong and everything literally goes up in flames, all that makes for a great read when Nyssa gets involved and the swords start swinging.

‘Anger and Ash’ is officially the tale that made me realise that vampires can be very cool in fantasy, especially if Gary Kloster is the one doing the writing. C.L. Werner appears to be the main ‘vampire writer’, for ‘Age of Sigmar’, but I wouldn’t mind seeing a longer work from Kloster, here’s hoping.

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