David Guymer’s second contribution to the End Times short stories is Gotrek & Felix : Rememberers, a micro-short originally published in the Black Library Weekender III programme. Set in between the events of Kinslayer and Slayer, it sees Gotrek accompanied by past and present Rememberers as the three of them fight their way through Kurgan marauders on the way to reunite Felix with his wife in Altdorf.
In the first of his short story contributions to the End Times series, David Guymer steps away from Gotrek and Felix to pick up a thread from the Glottkin background book, in Marienburg’s Stand. Before they could march on Altdorf the brothers Glott needed to fight their way through the independent city state of Marienburg, whose powerful fleet and strong sea defences were bolstered by unexpected allies. Here we see how that engagement plays out, as the vampire Mundvard the Cruel emerges from the shadows to fight for the city alongside its human defenders.
The longest-running series of Warhammer novels by far, the Gotrek and Felix series reaches novel number sixteen with David Guymer’s Kinslayer, book one of The Doom of Gotrek Gurnisson. Returning to the ‘nounslayer’ style books and set a year after Nathan Long’s Zombieslayer, we see Felix dragged from a quiet life in Altdorf by the appearance of the vampire Ulrika to help rescue the wizard Max Schreiber, who has been kidnapped by the Troll King and imprisoned in the enemy-held city of Praag. With his loyalties torn between helping Max and being with his frail wife Kat, and still struggling to deal with his feelings for Ulrika, Felix finds himself back in his old life of adventuring once again, and soon reunites with more familiar faces than just Ulrika.
Fans of Black Library’s Warhammer novels may be familiar with the four-way contest for Karak Eight Peaks, as previously handled in Skarsnik (by Guy Haley, concerning the titular goblin boss) and Headtaker (David Guymer). Following on from his previous novel taking on the insane skaven warlord Queek Headtaker, David Guymer now gives us a novella-length story showing things from the dwarf viewpoint. It’s their city that’s being contested after all, so it’s about time we got their point of view.
For the fourteenth novel in the much-loved Gotrek and Felix saga, David Guymer sends the doom-seeking dwarf slayer and his human rememberer to Mordheim, the City of the Damned. Unlike the ‘Nounslayer’ books (the first 12 novels, from Trollslayer to Zombieslayer) this one doesn’t follow on chronologically, so it’s not clear exactly at what point in their careers we’re seeing them, and none of the cast of old friends that pop up throughout the other novels make an appearance (other than a brief mention for one).