CL Werner’s Castle of Blood, his first full Warhammer Horror novel, is a dark and often disturbing Age of Sigmar murder mystery packed full of despicable characters, ingeniously lethal traps and a hideous daemonic threat. In the town of Ravensbach, eight families receive invitations to join the Count von Koeterberg for dinner at the ominous iron castle of Mhurghast, each wondering why they have been invited. Once gathered together, the bitter old Count reveals his motivation, setting loose an ancient daemon whose terrifying presence turns the families against each other and even themselves in the name of long-desired revenge.
It all starts a little slowly and strangely, essentially revealing the Count’s method of revenge straight away before starting to introduce the families and their parent-child (or husband-wife in one case) dynamics. Once the action moves to the sinister halls of Mhurghast, however, and Werner’s descriptive prose gives way a little to dialogue as the characters bounce off each other, it becomes clear that the mystery isn’t going to be so much about what’s happening or even why but how the characters will react, and what the Count’s grim revelations will do to them. To say much about the characters risks spoilers, but suffice to say three of the families provide the main point of view characters. Even as we learn about more of the families, their dynamics and what they did to incur the Count’s wrath, they start falling one by one in a ‘dwindling party’ sort of pass-the-parcel murder mystery horror.
Any good murder mystery needs a reason for the characters to be trapped together, which Werner cleverly justifies through both the Count’s devious malice and a series of deadly traps which have greater significance to the characters than they appear at first glance. Thus constrained, Werner takes great delight in digging into the dynamics between the characters as the pressure mounts, the body count rises and the likelihood of survival rapidly dwindles. Strip away the blood and the threat of daemonic possession and it becomes a story about grudges, ambition, the lengths people will go to survive and the strength – or otherwise – of bonds between parents and children. As you might expect, these don’t necessarily turn out to be exemplars of familial strength.
This is horror which isn’t exactly scary, but more disturbing. There’s blood and gore aplenty, albeit never to an obscene level, with the emphasis more on tension, desperation and a fair number of pretty unpleasant choices being made as characters are forced to decide between survival (temporarily, at least) for themselves or for others. It’s clearly a Warhammer story, not just because of featuring aelves and duardin but due to the tone and feel of the characters and locations, but it’s the sort of story which could just as easily be set in a dark corner of the Empire as the Realm of Chamon – Age of Sigmar elements like Stormcast and the different realms are hinted at as a backdrop, but it’s much more tightly focused on these particular characters and just feels fundamentally Warhammer. If you enjoy a bleak, bloody tale of vengeance, desperation and futile heroism then chances are you’ll find plenty to enjoy here.
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Click this link to buy Castle of Blood (or click here to order the audiobook).