After appearing in various audio dramas and short stories, Hamilcar Bear-Eater – mightiest of Sigmar’s Stormcast Eternals (and modest, as ever) – gets his own novel in David Guymer’s Hamilcar: Champion of the Gods. Taking place in the Realm of Ghur, this sees the Astral Templars’ Lord Castellant boldly set out to drive the forces of Chaos from the region surrounding the ancient fortress known as the Seven Words. He soon realises that the real threat is actually from the skaven, and is forced to pit his strength – and his wits – against Ikrit, a worryingly powerful warlock engineer with designs on Sigmar’s secrets.
With a brash, charismatic, immodest, snigger-inducing first person perspective, Hamilcar is a breath of fresh air amongst the dry, serious voices that a lot of Stormcast are written with – think Ciaphas Cain without the cowardice. It’s tremendous fun seeing the Mortal Realms from his perspective, especially when other Stormcast are involved – Hamilcar isn’t a man to keep his thoughts to himself, and his opinions on his fellow Stormcast are worth the entry price alone! It’s not just about the humour though, as Hamilcar is capable of surprising insight, honesty and, at times, genuine emotion, and has a way of relating to ordinary mortals which goes beyond what you’d expect from a Stormcast.
This is very much a classic fantasy adventure story packed full of action, danger and heroism, which takes Hamilcar at the peak of his powers and then strips everything away from him, before building him back up again. To say more would spoil things, but suffice to say it’s cleverly plotted and structured, and while it perhaps starts off a touch slowly, once it kicks into gear it’s nothing less than a joy to read. Along the way Guymer explores more of Ghur and some of its unusual inhabitants, and makes the skaven antagonists feel like genuinely dangerous, threatening enemies. This is the man who wrote the excellent Headtaker, after all, and while Ikrit doesn’t have the manic unpredictability of Queek he does have both an interesting agenda and a realistic chance of achieving his goal.
Having written a few short stories to get into the swing of Hamilcar’s character, Guymer has really nailed it with this novel, which manages to be a pacy, action-packed adventure that also digs beneath the surface of Age of Sigmar to tackle some intriguing topics. Stormcast stories can occasionally lack a little in the way of stakes, but this delves into the issues of past-life memories and the reforging process for Stormcast in a fresh and unusual way which hammers home the personal implications in a way we haven’t seen before. Humour isn’t often a touchstone of Black Library fiction but with this character Guymer has incorporated it seamlessly in a way that elevates a good story into something quite special, and should be at the top of every Age of Sigmar fan’s to-read list.
Check out the main Age of Sigmar reviews page on Track of Words.
