I’ve been meaning to review this little beauty for a while, so, straight to business.
Iron Company was Chris Wraight’s first Black Library novel and yet somehow managed to tick almost all the boxes for Warhammer fantasy writing. As my first review for Boomtron made clear, this isn’t something to be taken for granted.
Iron Company is not, at its heart, a new story. It tells the tale of a once famous Empire engineer, the son of famous Empire engineer who has fallen from grace and is given what appears to be a last chance for redemption. The fallen hero searching for salvation isn’t new, but it turns out that doesn’t bother me at all, as long as the tale is told well and has within it an original variation on the theme. Wraight provides all this and more.
The primary focus of the story is that of Magnus Ironblood, a once respected master engineer who is offered the opportunity to command an Empire gun line in battle against a surprising foe. The Margravine of a neighbouring province has taken over and fortified a former Dwarf mine, Morgramgar which falls within the state of Hochland, and refuses all contact with the nobility of the state. The elector count decides that this cannot go unchallenged and decides to meet her forces in battle, but how to get her and her forces out of the impregnable Dwarf fortress?
Enter Magnus Ironblood, who is recruited from a slum town while drowning his sorrows. It’s at this early stage of the story that I got my first taste of the quality prose that seems to be this author’s signature. Wraight paints such a vivid picture that even at this opening scene, a sense of the adventure to come starts to be felt and then steadily builds as Ironblood gathers together the command group that will mold Hochland’s ragtag gunnery troops into soldiers worthy of an Empire gunline.
The supporting cast of characters add a great deal to the story, and the different perspectives added welcome depth to Ironblood’s quest, from Silvio the foppish but gifted Tilean engineer to Thorgad the hard-as-nails Dwarf with a mission of his own. Wraight doesn’t just weave his tale from point of view of our heroes; he also shows us the darker side of the story by taking us behind the walls of Morgramgar to the Margravine’s army leaders. While the army general is every inch the born warrior, it’s the master engineer who takes centre stage as the antagonist, for reasons that I won’t give away here. As a character, he’s actually quite comical, sort of more-evil-than-thou in a hand rubbing muahaha-ing into the shadows kind of way, and yet he conveys a very real sense of menace that I felt was built upon his tenuous grasp of sanity.
The story takes us from Magnus’s recruitment to his training of the Hochland gunline to the journey to Morgramgar and the sinister happenings on the road that set the stage for later revelations. There are plenty edge of seat moments, and Wraight builds the tension nicely as the story progresses and really made me feel the hardships of the road to battle and the spectre of worse hardship to come.
The setpiece battle is a tale wonderfully told from a number of perspectives as the story rushes to its conclusion, and the twists and turns at this stage really leave you with no idea where the battle is going until the last pages. I have to say that the revelation of the nature of the Margravine is really a bolt from the blue that I would never have seen coming, and the way he got me to ponder her nature while she remained a sinister presence in the background was masterful. My only criticism of the story was that the finish was a little too neat and tidy, by which I mean it was a happy ending–too happy for the Warhammer world. While a good story will finish on a hopeful note, this was too riding-into-the-sunset, living happily ever after for my taste. In Warhammer writing there needs to be an edge to even the high points to keep in mind the grim nature of life in the Warhammer Fantasy world.
I’ve fast become a big fan of Wraight’s writing, and this, his first Black Library novel, is a very worthy addition to the Empire army collection. It is a vividly told tale that I found thoroughly entertaining and that was, frankly, damn good fun to read. I love his descriptive prose, and I feel sure that he will very soon be joining the ranks of the fans’ favourite writers.