The Chronicles of Malus Darkblade: Volume Two

Before diving into how wonderful this book is, I'll begin by listing the contents.  The book starts off with a foreword by Dan Abnett, then hits the core of the omnibus with the novels Warpsword and Lord of Ruin. This is followed up by an afterward by Mike Lee, and then a reprint of the graphic story DarkBlade, written by Dan Abnett and illustrated by Kev Hopgood, which was the basis for the entire series.  Each novel in the Chronicles of Malus Darkblade series is based off of one of the episodes from the story.

You can see my thoughts on each of the novels in their individual reviews:

Warpsword


Lord of Ruin

DarkBlade by Dan Abnett: The original story is rather spare.  Told in a series of very brief encounters, we get to see Malus Darkblade attacking each of the final "champions" on his path to getting each artifact.  While this leads to a very action-packed few pages, it is almost entirely devoid of characteriztion.  Abnett & Lee worked from a very bare frame to create such vastly scoped and well thought out novels.  The graphic story isn't great, but it is a nice historical piece of a sort, showing the beginnings of the saga.

All in all, The Chronicles of Malus Darkblade: Volume Two was a wonderful fantasy saga.  The omnibus, despite its great size, reads rather quickly, in part because it is so hard to put down the story.  I have rarely had as much fun reading a fantasy as I did with this one.  If you are a fan of fantasy, Warhammer, Dan Abnett, Mike Lee, Black Library in general, or anything similar, check this book out!

9/10