One of the characters, Gimmol the gremlin, could have actually held my interest as a reader, if he had only exhibited his “really cool ability” earlier in the novel – but he spent the first half of the book hiding the fact that he was a sorcerer from his teammates, and coincidentally, the reader. The collapse of his great spell, at what was supposed to be the culmination of all his work—combined, now, with his failure even to fully punish those responsible—had apparently sucked the heart from the Dark Lord. From a negative standpoint, The Goblin Corps suffers from many of the same issues found in The Conqueror’s Shadow and The Warlord’s Legacy including shallow characterization, unexplored themes, and straightforward plotting.

Damit machte er sein Hobby zum Beruf, denn Marmell bekam sein erstes Dungeons and Dragons – Set im Alter von 9 Jahren geschenkt und verfasste später häufig selbst Kampagnen. As a result, I was on the fence regarding the author’s new novel, The Goblin Corps, before I eventually decided to give the book a chance. Joe Abercrombie perked things up for me with his Blade book series primarily because of the wonderful dark humour but then he went all YA.At the same time, The Goblin Corps offers a couple of improvements that makes the book even more rewarding and fun to read than The Conqueror’s Shadow. No, the Charnel King still has a few tricks up his putrid and tattered sleeves, and the only thing that can defeat him now…May just be the inhuman soldiers on whom he's pinned his last hopes. And apparently, the orc had high school biology courses, telling a pack of naga that he planned on kicking their “cloaca” all over the swamp. Marmell wisely allows us to get to know each member of the team before they are placed together as a – somewhat dysfunctional – unit and this pays off enormously as personality clashes and differing outlooks create comedic tension later in the narrative.

Over a ton of orc dashed through the trees, sending small (and not so small) animals scurrying out of their path. Centuries of plotting from the heart of the Iron Keep, deep within the dark lands of Kirol Syrreth – all for naught. Marmell schickt sie von A nach B, ich folgte ihnen von Scharmützel zu Scharmützel und erlebte sie in mal mehr, mal weniger spektakulären Kämpfen, ohne mit inhaltlichen Fortschritten belohnt zu werden The Iron Keep of the lich-king and his wife’s city state of Castle Eldritch are truly creepy locales, detailed with great flair for the reader’s enjoyment.

So while none of the goblins ever emerged as anything but drab, two-dimensional caricatures of monsters-turned-player-characters, King Morthûl really stands out out in my mind at the end of the book - and he was centerstage in the novel only a tiny fraction of the time. If you ever wished that Brandon Sanderson or David Eddings could be a tad bitter more realistic in content, or Scott Lynch and Joe Abercrombie a tad bit funnier then you will love the way that Marmell has struck a wonderful balance between the two.

Some fantasy novels are considered dark fantasy, and deal with shades of gray issues, with edgy characters and Byronic heroes, flawed by their personal tragedies and tortured by inner demons. Other authors, less famous than The Bard have pulled it off in modern fantasy – Moorcock’s Elric of Melnibonea was an utterly evil character, yet memorable and even sympathetic in his own way. It’s a long-standing tradition in the genre, pre-dating even Tolkien and Lewis, hailing back to epic tales of Beowulf and the tales of the Greek heroes: the forces of good fight to defeat the forces of evil. Well, of course, we all figure, hey, human caravan this far out, and Dororam's got all the armies tied down until spring, it's gotta be a merchant, right?Cræosh is an embittered orc put in charge of a Demon Squad — a war-band of goblins in the service of Morthûl, and who are inexplicably the most inept-seeming group of warriors ever tasked with taking care of the dark lord’s business. There’s also the inconsistent PoV switching, which is usually the result of Marmell attempting to cram as many gags as he can into one scene. Centuries of plotting from the heart of the Iron Keep, deep within the dark lands of Kirol Syrreth—all for naught. And when placed before a substantially more vivid backdrop of a fantasy world setting and its “NPCs”, the goblins in demon squad feel like mere cardboard cutouts.