Beastgrave

Warhammer Age of Sigmar

By: C L Werner

Narrated by: Barnaby Edwards

Length: 9 hrs and 24 mins

Publisher's summary

A Warhammer Age of Sigmar novel

In the untamed wilds of Ghur, darkness is rising. Rival warbands battle over the dread Beastgrave. Will Beastlord Ghroth prevail or can Branchwraith Kyra and her dryads stop his foul plans? 

Listen to it because:

The Warhammer Underworlds action is moving to a new arena. This is your chance to discover the secrets of the Beastgrave and the warbands battling over it. 

The story:

Ghur is a realm of vast wilds and savage beasts. Few are more vicious than the herdchief, Ghroth the Rootcutter. Brutal and ruthless, he leads his warherd from one massacre to the next, slaughtering all who defy him. Yet this is not enough to sate Ghroth's bloodthirsty ambition - to become the mightiest of beastlords. When a fearsome vision promises Ghroth the power he craves, he leads a small band of warriors far across the wastes to seize the relic that will make all beastkin submit to his dominion. 

But Ghroth's ambition is not unopposed. Rivals within his own warherd seek to cheat him of the prize he covets. Meanwhile, in the enchanted forest of Thornwyld, an enemy of a different kind stirs. The Branchwraith Kyra has also had a vision, an apocalyptic foretelling of the destruction Ghroth will unleash upon her home. Gathering a retinue of dryads, Kyra hastens to thwart Ghroth's hunt - either by killing him or destroying the dark relic he seeks. 

The trail will lead both beastkin and Sylvaneth across perilous wastelands. But no danger is greater than that which waits in the mountain tomb of the godbeast. It is a place of terror and legend, a place spoken of in frightened whispers. It is a place called Beastgrave. 

Written by C. L. Werner. Narrated by Barnaby Edwards.

©2019 Games Workshop Limited (P)2019 Games Workshop Limited

Another Great Novel from the Black Library!

This is another great story put out by Games Workshop with a game to let you fight for the power of Beastgrave. The narrator had some flaws. His voice influxes I felt were lacking at points(i.e. when a character was yelling there was no actual influx in the volume or pitch.). This story is not about the two main warbands (regardless of them being Beastkin and Sylvaneth) in the Starter Box for Warhammer Underworlds : Beastgrave but, rather supplies you with the background context of what is so important about Beastgrave and why the location is a location of power. I enjoyed this book and will be listening to it again soon.

Enjoyable board game story

A fun story to put in whilst building and painting miniatures before playing the underworld board game.

A swing and a Miss

I think this book suffers from good ideas executed poorly. The ending is grim but could have been better with a bit more preface. Everyone loves a labyrinth, but the foreshadowing didn't add enough to the conclusion.

The book takes a long time to work through the thoughts of the Beastmen, especially when hunting. The tediousness was compounded by the redundancy of their thought patterns. We didn't gain insight from these monologues, and it seems out of place to spend so much time narrating the thoughts of one of the more primal factions.

Excellent narration. Games Workshop finds great voices for their stories.

no risk makes only a mediocre story

so games workshop had several stories like this where the last 3 min ruin it.

Fun listen, but drags on.

Filler wasn't something I expected to encounter in this story, but there's a good amount of it just before the climax. Otherwise, fun story. Characters are very well done. Good reading.

Garbage

lots of plotholes, inconsistent rules, constant deus ex, all over story, buy something else folks.

Pointless

If you finish this book you’ll see what I mean but do yourself a favor and just skip it

Great listen

Really good story keeps you gripped all the way to the end, really well read nice voice and not to many silly voices.

An extremely fun listen.

A thoroughly enjoyable story told from three unique perspectives with an excellent performance by Barnaby Edwards. Strongly recommended.

Beast grave is great

Pretty good book, I have just got into Aos and was looking for a good listen, beast grave pretty lived up to what I was looking for, I wouldn't be rushing back to listen again in a hurry, but it's a good story and reader is perfect for the book 4 out 5

Good story overall, especially for Warhammer Fans.

I enjoyed this story a lot. the insight and perspective from the beastmen was very novel and something I enjoyed a lot. The narrator was enthusiastic and easy to listen to. the only issue was the slightly odd ending that felt a little shoehorned to meet the requirements of the boardgame with the same name.

When Animal Meets Vegetable Meets Mineral

CL Werner is one of the more prolific Black Library contributors. Make of that what you will. Being vastly unfamiliar with the rest of his body of work, I feel compelled to rate this book based on its first half alone (before I listen to five more hours of this) as that experience already left me with two diverging hypotheses.

Either he phoned this one in when Games Workshop asked for a merry old tale to tie in with their newest game setting for Warhammer Underworld. A goatman follows a vision to a mountain to become alpha goatman, a haunted tree follows him because they have previous beef. As for the psychological inner workings of goat and tree and mountain, that's as deep as it'll ever get. Why pour effort into that?

That is the benevolent hypothesis. The more skeptical one is that when his drama or literature teacher told their class "Show, don't tell", Mr Werner must have missed school to lounge at his friendly local game store instead.

Therefore we get this narrative pattern: One sentence of action. One sentence of explaining the action as omniscient narrator. One sentence pontificating about social darwinism (if Beastman) or ecoterrorism (if Sylvaneth). Rinse and repeat until chapter is ended, then write exactly the same thing all over again from the other party's point of view.

"Billygoat killed the man. He knew if he didn't kill the man he'd show weakness. Weakness means death among gor. Also, Shamen are shifty. / Entwife found the dead man from the previous chapter. "This human is dead", she proclaimed. She knew that not all humans are evil. "Kill all humans", her companion shrub screeched. "No", she said, "Some of them aren't evil. Also, this one's already dead." She rubbed her fronds adverbially. "Billygoat must have known that if he didn't kill this man, he would show weakness..."

This may be easier to digest when reading it on your socially awkward boyfriend's downstairs loo, but not in an audiobook at 1.3x speed setting when it all starts to sound rather repetitive.

But it's a good enough yarn if you don't expect to be pleasantly surprised in the first place. Bellicose beastmen, overwhelmingly male, function just like their battletome said. Nature-loving Sylvaneth, overwhelmingly female, function just like their battletome said. Nothing, not even a prolific writer, is allowed to break through the cliches (let alone gender stereotypes) set up by Games Workshop. A mountain called Beastgrave lures individuals into its depths to make them fight each other, because there's a board game that needed a reason for skirmish-sized factions to fight each other. Presto, instant motivator. If you want more from your fare of fiction, you must be a snob.

Indeed I downloaded this particular title, not in the hopes of the next Pulitzer winner, but at least to gain a deeper sense of what a society of angry mutated cattle might work like. All I got was an effort more trite than the two fluff sentences on a battlescroll, and learned nothing new. Even the Carcassonne meeple have a deeper backstory than this.

Kudos to Barnaby Edwards, whose job it was to give these walking platitudes distinct voices. He delivered such insanities as the beastman shaman's inexplicable use of the word "agglomeration" with aplomb and a minimum of wincing.

And who knows? Maybe the second half will blow me away. Part of me suspects, though, that it'll just be the first half, re-narrated from the mountain's point of view.

tl;dr:
This is one for you if you always suspected your pet rock to have an evil personality.

absolutely fantastic!

absolutely mesmerising beginning to end! Beautifully and thoroughly enjoyed every single moment of this!

LOVED IT 😍

Quite a bit of gore,story-amazing. I liked the perspective of different sides (good/bad) and the different characters. Listen to the first chapter, and you'll be hooked. I liked the ending and would love there to be a second book about the story of Kyra and Ghroth in beastgrave protecting the evil power from its seekers if there isn't one already.

Good story with different maken characters

I really liked the story because it shows the reader two different perspectives from two entire different races; the Beasts of chaos and the Sylvaneth.