“Tales of the Old World”, edited by Marc Gascoigne and Christian Dunn

768 pages, The Black Library, ISBN-13: 978-1844164523

Tales of the Old World, edited by Marc Gascoigne and Christian Dunn, is a collection of thirty-six short stories set in Games Workshops’ Fantasy Warhammer setting. While I really dig the Warhammer 40K universe, the original Warhammer thing just doesn’t move me as much. It could be that I’m still enamored of the old D&D franchise from eons back (I still remember the old starter set my brother Rob bought for my brother Tom ages ago…now THAT’S fantasy wargaming, damint!). Perhaps it is also because my expectations of Black Library fantasy publications are not great: the stories vary widely in quality, ranging from badly written hack’n’slash cliché stuff, to some nice tales of mystery, horror, and adventure. The purpose of these stories is to expand the background and nuance of the Warhammer world, but they are also to entertain and, as far as I’m concerned, they’ve mostly succeeded. For that, and for the fact it’s set in a fantasy world many of us have come to know and love, Tales of the Old World on the whole is worth reading. That being said, this collection really contains only two top-tier stories – “Who Mourns a Necromancer” and “Totentanz” – both of which have to them far more philosophical depth than one could expect in a Black Library publication or, indeed, in many highbrow books we see nowadays, dealing as they do with the way life and death interact and in unique manners that leaves the reader with a lot of food for thought (“Totentanz” in particular begins as a humorous satire of fantasy clichés but ends like a black comedy, leaving the reader depressed and bewildered). You should read these two stories, even if you have no interest in the rest of the collection.