He also wrote Dies Irae Trilogy, Daedealus Mission (6 novels), Asgard trilogy - Then he focus on the Warhammer 5 novels and in between wrote David Lydard trilogy, Genesys trilogy, Emortality 6 novels among other novels. Even now he is publishing novels. I have a lot of his novels having enjoy Hooded Swan a great deal. There are others in the pipeline to read (not counting the ones he wrote for BL - before it was BL)
Apart from that, one of the most interesting things he writes about is that he usually uses biology and sociology stuff on his novels. So it's fairly easy to differentiate his writing or his works comparing with newer BL writing which normally are more , what we call TIE-IN and not as much as novel. It's not they are not good but usually newer novels maintain the status quo of the world. In early BL novels (and this one is BEFORE-BL) they had more freedom - that's my opinion. I won't say that this novel has any lore but if you would change some names this could be their own fantasy series because there are almost no connection to Warhammer Fantasy.
The novel is set in the Border Lands in one of the dozens small states. This particular state, Khypris, is invaded by the Zani with regularity and so they maintain dozen of outposts in the top border. Unfortunately nothing much is said about the Zeni, they sure look like some Germanic tribe that from time to time invaded the roman empire. In this case, they say they invaded due, first good fertile lands for their beasts and then as a test to change from youth to manhood.
In this novel we follow Hamis as initially went on a quest to avenge his dead brother and meeting a magician and two of his apprentices. In their quest to alert Khypris they meet a lot of challenges and there is even a great battle. Sincerely this was not performed very well and instead this Zani, which where a lot more than the defending Khypris were easily thwarted. In the end there is even the battle against a evil plague lord but as I said before, this was way before there was a lot of a lore and to me it was a bit anti-climatic.
This story (which encompasses 90% of the book) is within another story. The story is told by the "bard" Orfeu as he is trading it for safe passage and horses.
As other Brian books there are lot of sociology debates and entire pages where philosophy is debated. This is no exception. I enjoy it, more than the first BUT it's not a excellent book in any regards. It doesn't stand out and I believe it doesn't even try to stand out. It's a tie-in novel BUT to be honest, if you want to read about life in the Borderlands, then read this. As I said before, apart from small references, probably for most people, it can easily read without any knowledge of Warhammer (not Sigmar).
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