Orcs, Forged for War

December 20, 2010
Sent to fetch a magical relic, Stryke, the Orc captain of the Wolverines, discovers that his band is being hunted not only by his usual enemies (humans, hostile Orc tribes, etc.) but by his queen, Jennesta, the very one who had sent him on the mission. Evading enemies, fighting in foreign territories, and acquiring additional magical relics are the only means he and his fellow orcs have of surviving. The more than 20 hours of listening (this production includes the entire Orc trilogy and a bonus short story) finds a perfect vessel in John Lee's deep, rhythmic, reverberating voice with its quirky mix of Irish and English accents. The book offers eclectic characters of different age, sexes, and species, but Lee provides distinct voices for each, shifting from description to action and from character to character flawlessly. An Orbit paperback.

November 15, 2011
Shortly before the story told in Nicholls' first series of Orcs prose novels, Captain Stryke's war band is forced into the unwelcome role of bodyguarding a goblin sorcerer, who is secretly working against the Orcs and their mistress, the dark sorceress Jennesta. Flood does the heavy lifting here, adapting a story conceived by Nicholls and providing grimy-hued, muscular artwork with scads of excitingly choreographed battles. The action sequences rival those of Frank Miller's 300 (1999) for sheer grit and epic scale, and with weapons brutally penetrating foreheads, faces, and jaws, this title makes a claim for the most impaled heads in graphic-novel history. Bloody though it is, the Orcs are portrayed as reliable and battle-hardened grunts held in a sort of racist contempt by the fantasy beings populating Nicholls' world. What gives this raucous barbarian of a book its heart is that, in the tradition of great underdogs, the Orcs might always be given the short end of the stick, but they tough it out with grim practicality, loyalty, and honor.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)

July 25, 2011
Spawned from author Nicholls's series of novels featuring the titular creatures, this comes as a real surprise. Coupled with Flood's deceptively simple and clear visual storytelling, the story centers on a troop of Orcs bound in serviceâor, more accurately, slaveryâto a vicious, magic-wielding queen and tasked with protecting a secret weapon under the control of a goblin sorcerer and his underlings. The Orc commander, Stryke, must lead his soldiers and maintain order in their occasionally fractious ranks while also putting up with abuse from both the queen and the goblins, whose race has long been bitter enemies with Stryke's people. Not to be confused with the variety made famous by Tolkien, the Orcs of this narrative are noble warriors from whose point of view the reader witnesses events and immediately comes to sympathize with their situation. A cracking good tale from start to finish, this is strongly recommended for those who seek a realistically violent and profane heroic fantasy.

Starred review from September 8, 2008
This shelf-bending omnibus comprises the first U.S. release of Nicholls's Orcs trilogy (Bodyguard of Lightning, Legion of Thunder and Warriors of the Tempest), originally published in the U.K. in 1999 and 2000. When a warband of orcs run afoul of their tyrannical mistress on a mission to retrieve an invaluable artifact, they set in motion a series of cataclysmic events that could free their race from long-standing persecution or obliterate them from the realm forever. Pursued by an irate sorceress, ruthless bounty hunters and two vengeance-obsessed armies, Captain Stryke and his misfit band of mercenary orcs embark on a desperate quest to find a set of ancient "instrumentalities" that could save them and their magic-filled world from destruction at the hands of human interlopers. With grand scale world building, labyrinthine plotlines, extensive backstory and pedal-to-the-metal action, Nicholls captures adventure fantasy at its very best. This edition-which also includes a short story entitled "The Taking" (a prequel to the three novels), and an in-depth author interview-will be a cult classic with quest fantasy fans on both sides of the Pond.