Orcs, Forged for War

December 20, 2010
Sent to fetch a magical relic, Stryke, the Orc captain of the Wolverines, discovers that his band is being hunted not only by his usual enemies (humans, hostile Orc tribes, etc.) but by his queen, Jennesta, the very one who had sent him on the mission. Evading enemies, fighting in foreign territories, and acquiring additional magical relics are the only means he and his fellow orcs have of surviving. The more than 20 hours of listening (this production includes the entire Orc trilogy and a bonus short story) finds a perfect vessel in John Lee's deep, rhythmic, reverberating voice with its quirky mix of Irish and English accents. The book offers eclectic characters of different age, sexes, and species, but Lee provides distinct voices for each, shifting from description to action and from character to character flawlessly. An Orbit paperback.

November 15, 2011
Shortly before the story told in Nicholls' first series of Orcs prose novels, Captain Stryke's war band is forced into the unwelcome role of bodyguarding a goblin sorcerer, who is secretly working against the Orcs and their mistress, the dark sorceress Jennesta. Flood does the heavy lifting here, adapting a story conceived by Nicholls and providing grimy-hued, muscular artwork with scads of excitingly choreographed battles. The action sequences rival those of Frank Miller's 300 (1999) for sheer grit and epic scale, and with weapons brutally penetrating foreheads, faces, and jaws, this title makes a claim for the most impaled heads in graphic-novel history. Bloody though it is, the Orcs are portrayed as reliable and battle-hardened grunts held in a sort of racist contempt by the fantasy beings populating Nicholls' world. What gives this raucous barbarian of a book its heart is that, in the tradition of great underdogs, the Orcs might always be given the short end of the stick, but they tough it out with grim practicality, loyalty, and honor.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)