Welcome to this instalment of Rapid Fire, my ongoing series of quick interviews with Black Library authors talking about their new releases – or in this case, with The Legend of Sigmar, a slightly older release from the Warhammer Chronicles series. These are short and sweet interviews, with the idea being that each author will answer (more or less) the same questions – by the end of each interview I hope you will have a good idea of what the book (or audio drama) is about, what inspired it and why you might want to read or listen to it.
In this instalment I spoke to Graham McNeill about his legendary Warhammer series, The Legend of Sigmar, which is available as a single-volume omnibus in the Warhammer Chronicles series. In fact, this was the first of these old-school Warhammer series to get the new omnibus treatments! It’s available to order right now, and is a great place to start if you want to dig into the stories of the World that Was.
As usual, let’s get straight to the questions and Graham’s answers.
Track of Words: What’s the elevator pitch summary for The Legend of Sigmar?
GM: It’s the story of a how a young king named Sigmar forges an empire from the warring tribes of men, and leads them to greatness in the face of bloodthirsty orcs, the living dead, and ravenous daemons.
ToW: Without spoiling anything, who are the main characters and what do we need to know about them?
GM: The main character is, obviously, Sigmar, and he is unique in this time in that he has vision, he sees a different way of doing things. The tribes of men are disunited at this time, and none of them believe in a future where they ally and work together to hold back the darkness. But Sigmar is different, he knows that if humans are going to survive, then it’s only going to be by coming together and being greater than their foes.
He’s helped in this by Wolfgart and Pendrag, two of his oldest friends, one a firebrand warleader of wild, personal charisma, the other a warrior of cut glass and cool precision. There’s also a giant orc warlord named Urgluk Bloodfang who has his sights set on the destruction of the race of men who has something to say about their big plans for an empire.
ToW: Where and when do these stories take place?
GM: These are Time of Legends books, so they’re set long before what was the ‘contemporary’ times of the Old World – the World that Was. Sigmar’s Empire was established around two and a half thousand years before the last days of the Old World, before it was cataclysmically transformed into the Mortal Realms of Age of Sigmar.
ToW: Are there particular themes running across all of the books that readers can expect to see when reading this series?
GM: For sure. A common theme running through the trilogy is family, and how we’re all stronger when we work together than we are when we’re at odds or pulling in different directions. It’s about how the generations to come after us must be better than us, and how it’s up to us to make sure they have the tools, emotions and foundations to be better. It’s also a tale of aspirations, of fighting to be better and railing against any notion of being limited to doing things a certain way because that’s the way they’ve always been done.
ToW: Is there anything that you’d recommend readers check out before reading this series?
GM: A healthy dose of Robert E. Howard will get you in the right frame of mind, that’s for sure. Any of the books set in the Old World will prime you for how the world shook out in the wake of Sigmar’s rule without spoiling things too much. I love the works of David Gemmell, and his writing has informed my own work in ways too numerous to count. The ‘DG’ dedication at the front of Heldenhammer is to him, and the second book in the trilogy, Empire, won the David Gemmell Legend Award for Fantasy in 2010.
ToW: Why these stories? What made you want to write these in particular?
GM: I’ve always had a love of sweeping, epic fantasy in the vein of Conan (though my first introduction to the Cimmerian was actually L. Sprague de Camp’s Conan and the Spider God). When the first notion of the Time of Legends books was floated, Sigmar was the first – and to most of us – obvious choice. As a longtime Empire player, the chance to tell the story of my army’s god was pretty much a no-brainer. I’ve always had an affinity for the ‘heroic’ part of heroic fantasy too, and while I love a good anti-hero now and again, I find I’m always drawn to the kinds of stories where the heroes always try to do the right and noble thing – even if they don’t always succeed.
ToW: Can you recommend any other Warhammer novels to read after this series?
GM: I’d certainly read Mike Lee’s The Rise of Nagash trilogy, and Gav Thorpe’s The Sundering books. These are excellent windows into the prehistory of the World that Was, and are great books in their own right. Then, follow that up with a healthy dose of Chris Wraight’s The Empire Omnibus to see what became of Sigmar’s realm, as well as C.L. Werner’s Mathias Thulmann: Witch Hunter books. Or, if you want to go to the darker side, I’d check out Nathan Long’s Ulrika the Vampire collection, or the Champions of Chaos omnibus, with stories by such luminaries as Darius Hinks and Sarah Cawkwell.
ToW: What were your main influences when writing these stories?
GM: From the answers I’ve given already, it’ll come as no surprise that a healthy dose of Robert E. Howard and David Gemmell were huge influences when I was writing these novels. The Life of Sigmar by Matt Ralphs was always to hand, though more of a reference book as opposed to an influence. My main driver was to try and keep this a fantastical story that was grounded in a gritty ‘reality’, so that even when things got magical and strange, you felt that this was still a living, breathing, functional world.
ToW: How do you feel the series as a whole fits together? Did your vision for the whole thing change over the course of writing all of the books?
GM: Given that the trilogy was originally planned as a one-off book…pretty well! Once we knew there were going to be more books, I took the time to plan out where I wanted to go with them so it ended up where I wanted it to. I’d broken the story arc into three ‘phases’ of the Empire. It’s time of founding, its time of becoming what it needed to be, and it’s time of fighting to survive. I had a coda written for the end of the first book, which I planned to use as a final send-off for the characters, but which went unused. I then planned to use it at the end of the third book, but I’d laid in so many seeds and story hooks for further stories, that I left it out again. More on that later…
ToW: How does this story compare to the rest of your work? Is it a familiar style, or a departure?
GM: I think it sticks closely to my normal style, though it takes perhaps a more epic tone in its voice, as I wanted to conjure a very different time to the one we were used to reading about in Warhammer fiction. I wanted the reader to know, from page one, that they weren’t in Kansas any more, that this was not a book of frothing warrior priests, Imperial Engineers and battle wizards, that this was an older time, a more primal, dangerous time where the light of civilisation was a flickering candle flame on the verge of extinction.
ToW: Were there aspects of Sigmar’s story that you had hoped to continue and write more about?
GM: I did a few short stories and a novella that followed on from the ending of the third book, God King, all of which were quietly laying some groundwork for another trilogy. I had/have in mind three more books for Sigmar I’d like to sometime tell, so if I ever get the chance to go back to the Time of Legends, then perhaps I’ll use that coda I mentioned earlier when I get to the end of that sixth book…
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Huge thanks to Graham for taking the time to answer these questions. I hope you enjoyed the interview – if you’re anything like me, you’re probably now tempted to go back and read/re-read these classic novels!
See also: all the Graham McNeill reviews and interviews on Track of Words
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