‘Callis & Toll’ – David Annandale (Black Library)

 

Page Count: 293 Pages

Now here’s a book that I would have read sooner (a lot sooner) but thanks to Amazon, I thought it was ‘ebook only’ and, apart from Warhammer/Conan short stories, I’m very much a paperback person. Sometimes hardbacks as well ;o)
Then a month or so ago, I was browsing Wayland Games and came across ‘Callis & Toll’, along with a couple of other books, in paperback. I don’t need telling twice, One order later and I had my own copy to add to the teetering TBR towers in my living room. It has taken me a little while to get round to reading ‘Callis & Toll’ (plus a little longer to actually read it) but I got there in the end and here we are, lets have a quick chat about it.

Cinderfall district, Hammerhal Aqsha. The Twin-Tailed City belches fire day and night, smoke chokes the skies, and ash lines the streets like so much filthy snow. Life is brutal in Cinderfall – crime is rife, and death is cheap. But even here, the ritualistic murder of a supremely powerful ganglord is out of the ordinary.

Dispatched by the Order of Azyr, witch hunter Hanniver Toll arrives in Cinderfall to investigate. Is this the work of a rival gang, or is something much darker afoot?

Together with Armand Callis, warrior and confidante, they plunge into Cinderfall’s dirty underbelly, to solve a mystery at the heart of which lies an evil that will take all their courage and cunning to overcome.

The whole point of ‘detective noir’ is that the detective in question often has to start from scratch and muddle through to a conclusion as best they can, totally bewildered by the number of random strangers who suddenly turn up and try to kill them; all against a ‘looming cityscape’ backdrop. Annandale absolutely nails the cityscape, Cinderfall is dark and shadowy, with enough character that it feels like an extra companion to Callis and Toll’s exploits. And that’s the way it should be, ‘Callis & Toll’ is overflowing with a brooding atmosphere that really puts the story in context and makes you feel that the threat is constant.

Where things fell down for me, a little bit, is that it took a little too long for the pieces to fall into place and for our duo to finally figure out what they were up against. I mean, they were up against it so fair play to them for getting there in the end; there’s a lot of build up though for a finale that’s relatively short and sweet in comparison (although it is awesome, like the ‘Age of Sigmar’ version of ‘Lethal Weapon’). The pacing felt off to me but maybe that’s me and ‘detective noir’, I certainly never read anything more than Raymond Chandler, so maybe...

It works though and that’s the main thing. Callis and Toll make for an intriguing partnership, enough so that I’m a little disappointed that their adventures didn’t go further than another book and a short story. They’ve clearly worked together in the past but there is still tension between Callis’ empathy, for regular citizens, and Toll’s sense of duty and the lengths he will go to in order to uphold Sigmars rule. And when those pieces fall into place, it makes perfect sense and isn’t contrived at all, something that I’m a little too particular about.

If that wasn’t enough, I got a little first hand experience of a faction that I hadn’t come across before, that’s always a good thing to explore.

Despite itself, at times, ‘Callis & Toll’ is an engaging tale that reinforces the Mortal Realms as a great place to visit but not somewhere you’d want to live. If you do find yourself in Cinderfall, stick to the ale, leave the wine alone...