Bloody Books: CASTLE OF BLOOD – CL WERNER
CL Werner enters the Warhammer Horror imprint with a downright disturbing murder mystery. "Castle of Blood" is an Age of Sigmar set tale with skin-crawling characters, nightmare inducing traps and a deamonic threat to match the most oldhammery of the Boxtree Books days.
Eight familes are invited to gather at the town of Ravensbach to join the Count Von Koeterberg for dinner that the iron castle of Mhurgast.
Yes. That Mhurghast.
The bitter, spiteful Count reveals that he has unleashed a Deamon in the castle one who will turn every person against the other in the name of vengeance. Or so he says.
Its a slow and strange start to proceedings, and it is not until later in the book that the opener makes sense as a way to explain the Count's methods. From there we are introduced to each of the families and the relationships between them, as we step out of Gothic description and into fear-laden dialogue. The mystery as presented isn't so much one to be solved as such, but how these victims react to both the horror they face and the revelations the Count gives away from deadly hands. We learn alongside the characters how the Count's wrath was incurred, which makes the horror harder to read when the numbers start dropping.
Werner manages to create enough of a reason to trap everyone together in order to create the tension, and the Count's devious malice and deadly traps help ratchet the tension further with each chapter. Werner appears to take great delight, once all the parts are in play, to add to that tension and build pressure to see how the dynamics build and falter. Outside of the Age of Sigmar trappings, it's a tale of survival and the strength of bond between families. It's also about how weak those chains are in the face of selfish ambition.
This is a deeply disturbing read as choices become evermore desperate, with the blood and gore never reaching obscenity but the emphasis on tension and pressure creates something very different to the usual Fantasy Fare. Granted, with some words changed and some backdrop moved, this could be easily be set in The Old World, due to the bleakness and the futility of heroism recorded here.