Orcs: The Omnibus Edition by Stan Nicholls

This volume collects together the three parts of Stan Nicholls' Orcs: First Blood trilogy - Bodyguard of Lightning, Legion of Thunder and Warriors of the Tempest - along with an associated short story, 'The Taking'. It is, put simply, a fantasy quest with the orcs as protagonists ('heroes' doesn't quite seem an appropriate word). Though it isn't quite as simple as that... but I'm getting ahead of myself.

We follow the fortunes of the Wolverines, a thirty-strong band of (mostly) orcs in the service of the half-human, half-nyadd Queen Jennesta. The main personalities in the band are its commanding officers: Captain Stryke; his two sergeants, Haskeer and the dwarf Jup, who are constantly at loggerheads; and below them, two corporals: the elderly healer Alfray, and Coila, the band's only female member. They, along with the other 'elder races' (almost every standard fantasy race you can think of), inhabit the land of Maras-Dantia, whose equilibrium has been disrupted by the insurgent humans. Human activity has been 'eating the magic' of the land, changing its climate and causing glaciers to advance south.

The main trilogy opens in the thick of action, with a raid by the Wolverines on the human settlement of Homefield, where they have been sent by Jennesta to retrieve a message cylinder. After successfully doing so, the cylinder is stolen by kobolds; rather than face Jennesta's wrath, the Wolverines decide to chase after the thieves. They recover the cylinder, and rescue a gremlin names Mobbs, who reveals that it contains an 'instrumentality', one of five such artefacts which, when brought together, may somehow release the elder races from human dominion. By now, Jennesta has ordered search parties to be sent out to look for the band; and the Wolverines decide to hunt for more of the instrumentalities, with a view to perhaps using them to barter with Jennesta, or trying to tap into the objects' power in some way. In due course, Jennesta declares the band outlaws, charging her orc army, her dragon riders, and three human bounty hunters, to find them. And that's as far as I am prepared to synopsise.

The Orcs trilogy is an odd mixture of the subversive and the clichéd. Subversive, of course, because we're rooting for the characters who would be considered 'bad guys' in the standard generic fantasy milieu. And Nicholls gives a pleasingly complex portrayal of 'race' in his work: it certainly isn't a straightforward case of 'orcs good, humans bad'; and even the Wolverines can be bloodthirsty (though, since they have known nothing but war, is that so surprising?). Having said that, the nature of the quest Nicholls gives the Wolverines is highly traditional, perhaps even more so than most: the instrumentalities are standard-issue 'plot coupons' for the characters to collect; and the fact that the orcs discover the location of each instrumentality through hunches and chance encounters serves to highlight the mechanical nature of the plot.

And yet, far from being a weakness, all the clichés become something of a strength. They make the quest seem more like the plot of a fantasy game rather than a novel, which is entirely appropriate: arguably, the modern figure of the orc (and the many other 'elder races' of fantasy) owes at least as much to the gaming industry as it does to Tolkien. And it is only by winning the game (which they do, though not in the way you might expect) that the orcs can break free of its rules. Furthermore, Nicholls' main point, about fantasy's 'racial' stereotypes, is rendered all the more forcefully by the generic storyline. Anything other than a tradional quest would be out of place.

Amid all this talk about the subtext of Nicholls' trilogy, we should not overlook the fact that it's also a cracking fantasy adventure. The author's action sequences are superb, and the story moves along at a nicely brisk pace (it's nice to see that there are still some fantasy trilogies being written which have relatively short volumes!). Nicholls' characterization is also generally good: Stryke is a well-drawn reluctant champion, and the constant sparring of Haskeer and Jup is particularly entertaining. That said, some characters do remain caricatures: Jennesta, for example, never really rises above the level of a stock evil sorceress, which is a disappointment when many of the other characters are more rounded. Overall, though, the trilogy is well conceived and skilfully written.

'The Taking' is a short story that prequels the main trilogy, beginning as Coilla joins the Wolverines. The story both gains and loses from being uprooted from its original context and placed alongside its parent series. It loses because much of the first half of the story, which introduces the characters and the world, is made redundant; but it gains because we understand the significance of the relationships established here (for instance, we know how important Coilla will become to the Wolverines). The story itself, in which the band attempt to recover a stolen idol, is reasonably entertaining, but suffers inevitably from comparison to the main trilogy. It seems to have been included for the sake of completeness more than anything.

It's very pleasing to see all these stories together in one volume (though you may prefer not to read them all at once). The main trilogy especially is well worth reading, far more entertaining than many other trilogies, and at only a fraction of the length. It's a worthy addition to any fantasy fan's reading list.

This review first appeared in The Alien Online.

Further links:
Stan Nicholls
Orion / Gollancz