Orcs - The Omnibus Edition - by Stan Nicholls

The Omnibus Edition of Orcs by Stan Nicholls comprises the trilogy of Bodyguard of Lightning, Legion of Thunder and Warriors of the Tempest plus a short prequel story called The Taking.

Basically this is a story told from the Orcs point of view and we get to follow Stryke and his warband the Wolverines on a mission to recover a group of ancient artefacts and to hopefully restore the land from the destruction being caused by the influx of humans.

While it does amount to over 700 pages long, it'll never rank alongside The Lord Of The Rings trilogy but it is an amusing and fairly light read that gives a different view of what we normally expect of Orcs and their kind. The mission stretches over all three books and is fairly well interspersed with humour and lots of blow by blow fight scenes (a wee bit too detailed and long-winded I thought).

The arch baddy, Queen Jenesta, gets her jollies and magical powers by ripping out and eating the hearts of her victims while on the point of orgasm but, while the opening chapter got a bit steamy, the sexuality sort of fizzes out after that (pity). Besides Orcs aren't into sex, they like to fight and it's what they were bred to do.

Not bad if you fancy a light fantasy read but I found the overlong fight scenes starting to wear a bit.

Genre: Fantasy
ISBN: 0-575-07487-6
My Rating: 5/10