Assault on the Mandrake Bastion is the first part of The Black Rift of Klaxus saga and is written by Josh Reynolds. It is what Black Library is calling a "Quick Read," there version of a short story. It's about 30 digital pages (depending on the orientation and set-up of your e-reader of choice).
So, how is it? Let's find out. Spoilers below the jump!
Assault on the Mandrake Bastion follows the Adamantine Warriors Warrior-Chamber of the Hammers of Sigmar Stormhost as they assault the Gorechosen of Khorne's Bloodbound in Aqshy. Is that a lot of titles for you? Then strap in for this tale!
Where as the Gates of Azyr kept with all the units and characters from the box set, this Quick Read seems to want to throw out every upcoming unit type (buy now!) for both the Eternals and the Bloodbound. Decimators, Judicators, Knight-Heraldor, Exalted Deathbringer, Skullreaper, Slaughterpriest, etc. etc. While each one gets enough of a description to explain what it is, it really comes at you hard and fast over the short read.
Orius Adamantine, Lord-Celestant of the Adamantine Warriors takes the lead role of the Eternals side of the tale. Though other members of his Chamber Command are named and given some basic characterization, Orius is certainly the main character. Once again, we see an Eternal have flashes back to a previous life, not only as a mortal before his transformation, but of previous battles before his current one. I was wrong with my assumption on how the eternal life of the Eternals worked from my reading of Gates of Azyr. If an Eternal is killed in battle, he returns to Azyr as a bolt of lightning to be reforged anew. He loses some of his memories and "self" in the process, but lives to fight again. Once again Orius, like Vandus before him, orginally came from Aqshy before he was transformed and is once again leading a Warrior-Chamber here. Between the rebirth process after each death taking away some of their soul and Sigmar's need to put the Eternals into battle on the Realm which they are native to, I feel like Sigmar is a bit of an asshole. Doing whatever it takes to drive back Chaos seems to come at the cost of those that fight for him and he doesn't seem to care. That grimness that GW loves is coming through here.
The story, for the most part, is a giant battle with plenty of product placement. As I mentioned above, every type of Eternal and Bloodbound is in this fight, even those not released yet. It seems as though they really wanted to name drop the upcoming models in this Quick Read, and I'm sure Reynolds had his hands tied on that one. The battle itself is well defined, but standard Eternal fare, already at this point. They are awesome, the Bloodbound are relentless and attack en masse, but are little threat. There is a little dialogue to give some character to our protagonists, but it's not much. The first two thirds of the story just move along without much depth.
However, a small section near the back half of the story adds a lot to depth that was missing in the opening fight. The story shifts to Anhur, leader of the Gorechosen as he enter the Sulphur Citadel, a palace in the remains of Uryx, the fallen capital crater city of Klaxus, in which the series is going to take place. Here we gain a lot of depth of both the Realm before Chaos invaded and the Gorechosen themselves. Anhur has flashbacks to his time in Klaxus, as a leader of a rebellion against the Priest-Kings that ruled the lands. We get insight into the whispers he hears in his head as a Lord, how they see images of their God Khorne in the moonlight. This is the best written section of the book, as there is no fighting and we can gain more insight into the characters themselves. Anhur was fighting for a just cause before Khorne invaded and before he gave himself over to him, the followers of Khorne aren't just mindless barbarians, they can talk and scheme and have memroies. This is good stuff.
We also get a small look at what the "Black Rift" is, eight razor thin disks of obsidian bound in bronze that are deeply magical. They spin in the air and have odd effects in the throne room in which they are kept, causing weird smells, having half formed things crawl out of boiling blood, I feel as though it may connect to Khorne's Chaos Realm directly.
The last part of the story shifts back to the titular assault on Madrake Bastion, the only thing separating the Adamantine Warriors from entry into Uryx. We once again devolve into a large fight scene but with a few more redeeming moments than the first. This time we see it from the point of view of Kratus the Silent, the Knight-Azyros of the Auxiliary Command. Kratus has chosen to no longer speak as an Eternal, though in his past life he was a bard, traveling area to area singing proudly before Chaos came. Very cool character, with more depth than the other Eternals introduced so far. The other great part of this section is the reason this fort is called the Madrake Bastion as the bloodreavers that main it, poke and prod two huge mandrake plants on the battlements. They in turn awaken and scream in pain, so loudly that the Prosecutors with Kratus bleed from their ears and eyes and fall to the ground to be hacked apart by the bloodreavers, whom have had their ears removed and the holes fleshed over to not hear the augmented mandrakes. Apparently a hold over from the Priest-Kings, it once again shows that the Bloodbound can employ strategy. Eventually Kratus, with the help of the rest of the arriving Warrior-Chamber take the Bastion and the story ends.
All in all this was an okay story. The first two thirds which covered the battle up the canyon was shallow and thin, but once it pulled away from that battle and got into the heads of the Bloodbound away from fighting, it picked up immensely. And the final fight, with the cool Mandrake set piece and more interesting character to follow showed how a battle can be written better. I feel like the first half suffered from corporate decisions to name drop as many units as possible and when Josh Reynolds could pull away from that and write more about the characters, it improved. A harmless read and not very deep, I'm still interested in seeing where the story goes, especially if it strays away from just one fight after the other.
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