Blacktalon

Warhammer Age of Sigmar

By: Liane Merciel

Narrated by: Alicia Grace Turrell

Length: 12 hrs

Publisher's summary

A Neave Blacktalon Audiobook

The Blacktalons are Sigmar's chosen assassins, a hand-picked crack team of Stormcast Eternals whose lethal skills enable them to strike down even the most powerful foes with ruthless efficiency.

LISTEN TO IT BECAUSE

The discovery of a devastating, long-buried weapon threatens Sigmar himself! Legendary warrior Neave and her lethal companions, the Blacktalons, are charged with eliminating the Chaos threat and defending the Mortal Realms once again.

THE STORY

When Sigmar sends the Blacktalons on an ambiguous and troubling vision of their latest quarry, they leap faithfully into action as they have done for countless centuries – killing first and asking questions later. But this hunt is no simple task.

Neave and her companions are charged with slaying five powerful champions of Chaos. They must do so before these brutal followers of the Dark Gods can procure a long-buried, devastating weapon – one whose destructive power will be felt across all the Mortal Realms.

A weapon that could even threaten Sigmar himself.

Written by Liane Merciel. Narrated by Alicia Grace Turrell. Running time 12 hours 2 seconds (approx).

©2023 Games Workshop Limited (P)2023 Games Workshop Limited

Standard fantasy fare with a little moral complexity thrown in.

Overall not bad. Perrformance was decent and the story was enough to hold my attention and keep me interested. Without spoiling anything, the story does stray into morally gray territory, though I do enjoy a little more nuance. A decent listen.

The action and world building.

Incredibly vivid writing describing the world they travel across. The ending was very interesting and the stakes felt very real!

Whoa wee! Stay till the end

Multiple fun small adventures to keep the pacing going throughout the story. I was going to chalk it up to just being a fun read with some solid character development but then I got to the end of this book.. Great weightiness to the story that feels impactful to the setting in an interesting way and I can’t wait for the next book!

Also! That author did a good job humanizing the Stormcast and making them interesting. Even though plot armor is a thing, emotions and well placed narrative nods really added a lot of vulnerability to this squad of super folks :)

Weird Matchup

Merciel's Pathfinder books were on another level, so it's weird that this plays like a storyboard for a Blacktalon animation. The reader *really* let's you know which character is talking, it could be dialed back. Otherwise good, but Stormcast stories are getting played out with unmet potential. It's like BL has the talent but is afraid of publishing good books.

Great climax

Monster-of-the-week style setup with some fun action and a nice window into the Stormcast Eternals as people. Everything comes to a head in a pretty epic finale with some nice lore teasers for the future

Good story, non sequitur climax

The plot has the Blacktalons chasing a cold war conspiracy of Chaos cults and prophecy, the climax is hubris answered with more hubris, without irony.
I really enjoyed the action, but the author created a conspiracy that ends in scheme unrelated to prophecy in the slightest. Instead a question is posed about the morality and omnipotence of gods in a setting where the gods are neither moral nor omnipotent. Questions are posed about an all-powerful, all-knowing deity who simply does not exist in Warhammer, and worst the answers come from a literal tool of a god who is unqualified to acknowledge the question because her job is to do exactly what he supposedly did.