City of the Damned

Gotrek and Felix, Book 14

By: David Guymer

Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble

Length: 12 hrs and 56 mins

Publisher's summary

A Gotrek & Felix Audiobook

Five centuries ago, a great city of the Empire was destroyed by a comet and became a haunted nightmare called the City of the Damned. Though it is long gone, its legacy remains, and through dark magic, Gotrek and Felix are about to experience the horrors it holds.

LISTEN TO IT BECAUSE

It's a gripping tale featuring events and supernatural elements that will haunt the Slayer and his companion in the future, even as they explore the past.

THE STORY

Long have the City of the Damned's fallen towers remained undisturbed by the people of Ostermark, but now an ancient evil stirs in the depths, gathering its strength once more.

Gotrek and Felix are swept up in the crusade of Baron Gratz von Kuber to cleanse the city, and as the ruins are torn from the passage of time itself, the Slayer's doom appears to be approaching more quickly than either of them would like.

©2024 Games Workshop Limited (P)2024 Games Workshop Limited

A blur of a city

The opening and first half of the book is great. I got a little spun around towards the end with how familiar everything became. Also Gotrek misidentifying a beast was a head scratcher but he does have one eye. Keeble is incredible !

Narration as usual, is amazing

Overall I enjoyed the story, The story takes awhile to come together and the confusion on the readers part is supposed to happen.

Not recommended. Too bleak, stopped caring.

As a long time fan of the Gotrek and Felix series, this is the first one I wasn't able to finish.

The problem is that Gotrek and Felix work best when the two have other characters to bounce off of, like Ulrika, Max, Snorri, Malakai, Kat, and Thanqol, (just to name a few). Interesting and fun cast that, while some aren't the most deep, they still provide that little bit of personality that balances out the two adventurers (who, because of reasons, have to remain rather static in their characterization).

And this is what hurts City of the Damned the most: There is not a single likable character.

Every single person the duo run into, save for a sad-sack deserter is a HORRIBLE PERSON (and the deserter is just a pathetic wretch). I get that the point is to emphasize how GRIMDARK the Warhammer world is, particularly Mordheim, but in order for that grimness to have any kind of impact, there has to be a reason for the reader to care and empathize with the figures in the setting.

But Guymer spends whole paragraphs detailing what terrible, awful people inhabit the regions of Ostmark. They're all vicious, religious zealots, sadistic assholes, and oh yeah, some of them are rapists.

The only reason I could possibly see wanting to continue the story is the hope that some of them (especially the leader of the Crusaders, cripes) might get their comeuppance, and I can't say if they did or not, because I still had FIVE HOURS of the damn thing left to go before I stopped listening. It was just too much of a slog.

The only praise I can offer is that Keeble is still giving a good performance, and I love his take on Gotrek.

Confusing blur

First book I’ve listened to by this author. There is good and bad but ultimately it boiled down to: interesting characters were the highlight, and I liked the setting / locale, but the written delivery kind of ruined these positives.

I personally found it hard to follow many of the faster paced beats in the story compared to how other authors write them. Confusing and disjointed when presenting perspective of one of the villains. Poor use of similes or analogies when describing events that have me scratching my head because it doesn’t make sense or is just a bad comparison.

A good encapsulator of these issues is the scene of Rudi, Nils and Martin. I could barely tell who was doing what with the way it was described once things kick off, and “scattering blood to the walls like holy water” except this isn’t in a church, the blood isn’t from a priest, so the comparison just feels picked at random? And one line like this wouldn’t be a big deal but it keeps coming up and distracting me from the overall narrative.

I see this author has written many of the later books in this series and am hoping there is a marked improvement in quality in later entries. If not I may have to switch to reading just so I can better grasp the vaguer passages.

The audio performance is great, same as all the past books.

Endtimes of the good times

Been enjoying Gotrek and Felix for decades. John Keeble is a phenomenal voice actor. But this is now at least the 4th writer of these characters. Plot threads left unfinished, entire story archs seemingly forgotten. This book in particular was very repetitive, a 4 hour Gotrek and Felix story drawn out over thrice that amount of time. I’m only sticking around to see the story to the end at this point. I would turn back at elf slayer if I could.

Voice actor is great, poor story

Keebel continues to do a great job at voice acting. However the story for me was just not that good. Unless you really love the world or Mordhime it just falls flat. Nothing really grabs you like in previous stories, and it’s hard to picture the world. Also a lot of the magic and themes are just confusing. I would give this one a skip.

The only good thing about this installment is the narrator.

I did not enjoy this installment of the series. It was extremely convoluted, and did not seem to flow very well. There were tons of characters whose names and voices were very similar, making it hard to distinguish, who was who. Moreover, it did not grab my attention and I had to take two breaks because I was simply bored out of my mind.

Also, I have no idea where this story takes place in the events of the book. There's no clear definition. I believe it may happen between vampire slayer and giant slayer.

Mr. Keeble's narration is literally the only reason I chose to finish this book. I love this series, but this installment is horrible in my opinion.