Tamurkhan Review - Narrative and Fluff

Alan Bligh looks every inch the fantasy writer. In this interview he talks a little about working on Tamurkhan, and while it's not exactly packed with revelations it does highlight some of the key aspects of narrative and fluff that characterise the book.

There is a huge amount of background material here, with almost half of the book consisting of what might be called the 'saga' of Tamurkhan and his assault on the lands of men. The story here serves a purpose and is reasonably entertaining even if it would make for an extremely bog-standard novella. However, what the saga lacks in character development or story arch is certainly made up for by an abundance of atmosphere and rich description. I really enjoyed getting a taste for the seldom visited realms beyond the fringes of the Empire, particularly the north and the mountain domains of the ogre kingdoms. The interspersing of non-narrative descriptions - covering, for example, the tribes of the north - alongside more storied vignettes helps break-up the saga narrative while adding to the 'found artefact' flavour of the book (although the fancy type-script used for these latter parts is difficult to read in places).

Of course, this wouldn't be a GW publication without a healthy dose of typos and a few other errors, which I find really annoying: if I didn't want to like this hobby so much, this kind of sloppy attention to detail would ruin it for me. How hard is it to employ a copy editor or even carefully check your own work? 

These bugbears aside, the fluff here is great, and the fact that the campaign is set within a decade of 'current' time in the Warhammer world means that it provides ample source material for fluffy gamers like me. With a further book focusing entirely on monsters on the horizon I'm practically bursting at the seams with excitement. I might even offer to copy edit it for them.