Fiefdom

Dan Abnett · Nik Vincent

Aug 2014 · Abaddon Books

About this ebook

“Gene the Hackman, top dog, him done the great Walk Around. Not for him the darkness, not for him the Time of Ice that we know today.”
Evelyn War is a Believer. She knows that in the Old Time, long before the Time of Ice, the Masters fought a war with Them, great chitinous beasts that stalked the world and rended and killed. She knows that the Masters set fierce, doglike Aux like her to watch over their great sleep and to keep Them off their Lawn. She knows that the stories are not just lessons in the ways of war. Them were real.
But in the frozen ruins of Berlin, Them have not been seen for many years. Now the Aux fight among themselves and say all that was just stories. They scorn Evelyn and mock her warnings.
But the ice is melting, and the whistling calls of Them can be heard in the tunnels of the U-Bahn once more....

Ratings and reviews

Interesting premis, but a drudge to read. The characters in this book have a vocabulary of about 100-200 words and an IQ significantly below the homosapiens average. Hence, the dialogue is mindbogglingly repetitive and devoid of content. The worldbuilding could a bit more elaborate, which is partly owed to the fact that the story is told from the IQ-and knowledge-limited perspective of the lead protagonist (half-way through the novel you'll notice that the tribe/pack probably consists of at least a few hundred people - hard to explain otherwise why it doesn't register as a mayor threat/disaster when a few go missing (or maybe that's the IQ bit..)). Anyhow, you will want to stick with it to learn how it ends.

About the author

Dan Abnett is a multiple New York Times bestselling author and an award-winning comic book writer. He has written more than forty-five novels, including two books for younger readers. In comics, he is known for his work on Guardians of the Galaxy and The New Deadwardians. A regular contributor to 2000 AD, he is the creator of series including Grey Area, Kingdom and the classic Sinister Dexter. He also writes screenplays, and has written extensively for the games industry, including the forthcoming Alien: Isolation and Shadow of Mordor. Dan is published in well over a dozen languages and has sold millions of books worldwide. He was educated at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, and lives and works in Maidstone, Kent. Dan's blog and website can be found at www.danabnett.com.