Konrad - A Warhammer Novel Review
Another tale from the earliest days of Warhammer fiction, young Konrad's bizarre, lopsided adventures in the Old World have glimpses of brilliance.
Konrad by David Ferring
Published in 1989
Games Workshop Books was the first Warhammer-focused publisher, launching a decade before its successor, Black Library. While short-lived, these initial novels were edited by David Pringle, one of the co-founders of prominent speculative fiction magazine Interzone. With Pringle’s involvement, GW Books brought a few prominent genre fiction writers on board, most writing under pen names. While still a far cry from great literature, these authors followed a less commercial track than the later Black Library material, producing much stranger and more varied stories.
Konrad might not hit the same highs as its contemporary Drachenfels, but they both offer a more unique vision of the Old World. David S. Garnett, whose career intersected with major Warhammer inspiration Michael Moorcock, wrote the book under the pen name “David Ferring.”
The first installment of a trilogy, Konrad charts the journey of its titular hero, a mistreated orphan who may one day become a great hero of the Old World – if the strange events surrounding his life don’t kill him first.
The book feels closer to a standard fantasy story or even a fairy tale, leaning heavily into well-worn tropes: a despised orphan with mysterious, possibly noble, and potentially even mythic origins; a capricious, sorcerous lover who, like Morgan Le Fay, might prove to be an enemy; a hardened mercenary mentor with an evil twin. When Warhammer elements enter the picture, they can become intrusive and even oppressive – about two-thirds through its short page-count, Konrad derails into one of the most egregious background dumps I’ve seen in a published novel.
The reliance on tropes and top-heavy approach to Warhammer’s setting undermine some of the book, but even that works in places. The book's best moments play into the intersection of well-known archetypes and early “Oldhammer” weirdness, making for something truly memorable. When the book nails that flow, it has a mythic and surreal quality absent from most Warhammer fiction.
While some of that sense of confusion comes from Konrad’s limited knowledge of the wider world, the more interesting elements defy explanation altogether: strange weapons that hint at symbolic or arcane power and a wandering bronze knight that’s more a portent of doom than a physical adversary.
Most notable is the boy’s ability to glimpse into the future through his otherwise blind left eye – a power he has little understanding or control over. It’s a strong hook and makes for some interesting imagery, but like most of the novel’s surreal elements, it often gets lost in the shuffle. In any case, Konrad’s strange happenings don’t fall into the thoroughly explained and codified forms of magic that Warhammer would eventually develop, and it reads all the better for it.
While the book doesn’t emphasize its stranger qualities as much as it should, one thing that rarely misses is its interpretation of Chaos. The strongest element of this book – and really this entire era of Warhammer fiction – Garnett offers a vision of these mutated adversaries that isn’t bound to a standardized miniature range and four neatly defined deities.
In Konrad’s Empire, its citizens constantly fear Beastmen potentially lurking around every patch of forest. Instead of easily-dispatched stock raiders, they live up to the promise of being a nightmare come to life.
It’s the aspect of the setting the author has the best grasp of, and he populates this tale with mutants that are equal parts absurd and horrific. The prose leverages textures and imagery for some true gross-out moments.
Unsurprisingly, Konrad hits its peak with a set piece that fully indulges in the everchanging nature of Chaos, which sees the young hero forced to pose as one of the horrific mutants invading his village. That also means the book hits its high point about halfway through.
Even so, it’s better that Konrad doesn’t overplay its hand with the Chaotic adversaries, despite coming very close with its overarching themes. Narration scattered throughout the book introduces a setting-shaking notion that Sigmar, founder and later patron god of the Empire, was part of a supernatural cycle. And Konrad is poised to succeed him in that role. This first installment leaves most of that unexplored, and it's something Warhammer Fantasy would ignore later. That didn’t stop similar concepts from cropping up in future works, most notably Valten in Storm of Chaos being declared Sigmar’s apparent reincarnation.
On top of all these daring creative choices, Konrad might be the strangest Warhammer book I’ve read in terms of prose and structure. The first half drifts through the protagonist’s early life, anchored around his budding relationship with Elyssa, the local noble’s daughter. To capture his perspective as a deprived boy who’s never left his village, Garnett opts for simplistic, almost childlike prose. Combined with the book’s reliance on stock fantasy tropes, it makes the book feel like a young readers’ book at points, which crashes into the depictions of grotesque violence and the older Konrad’s romantic adventures.
The second half reads closer to the standard Warhammer book, but it’s an awkward transition. It’s made rougher by how the novel starts skipping around the protagonist’s new life as a mercenary – the first half better captures the passage of time, where the second half will list events and occasionally break them up with vignettes. While it doesn’t abandon the surreal qualities entirely, the book starts to lose them until the very end. Konrad’s confusion about his world's mundane and fantastic aspects also disappears around this point. Garnett’s characters have enough nuance and emotional quirks to maintain interest, but the protagonist doesn’t have much to replace that “fish out of water” quality.
Konrad is a short novel, ending on a cliffhanger for the next installment. While not my favorite Warhammer novel and uneven in places, it’s different enough from the standard fare to be worth a read.
Konrad received a number of reprints over the years and secondhand copies typically go from 10 to 20 USD. It was also collected with the rest of the series in an omnibus edition, The Konrad Saga, but it never received an ebook release.
Another fantastic review. I definitely am interested in reading this prose.