The Ambassador Cover

By: Graham McNeill
Published by: Black Library £5.99
Reviewed by: Ronnie Hardy

I tend to be pretty forgiving when it comes to whether or not I like or dislike a book. If the book holds my interest with good characters and a decent story I will enjoy reading it and possibly read it again later. I’ve done this many times with books that I deemed mediocre or even just decent by my standards. This book in my opinion doesn’t even live up to a mediocre or decent standard. After I finished reading this book the only reason I wanted more to the story was that I felt like it wasn’t finished.

The bright spots to this book I would have to say would be the characters. Graham did a fantastic job developing some stand out characters. I loved their personalities and there weaknesses, and at the beginning of the book it was shaping out to be a very good book. It was well written and everything was making sense, but somewhere in the middle the book seemed to lose its focus. There were whole plotlines that at the end of the book weren’t even close to being resolved. I even got online and looked to see if this book was the start of a series, and what I read was just an indication of more to come.

The cover of the book said that Kasper was trying to re-forge the alliance between the Kislev and the Empire before the threat of Chaos was unleashed on the land. While there was some court intrigue and Kasper did work to restore the Ambassadorship to its former glory, the book was more about capturing one madman murderer known as the Butcherman. There was only one fight with the forces of Chaos and that was after they had captured the murderer. There was just so much of this book that didn’t make sense.

After I finished reading the book I felt unfulfilled, much like when you pick up the start of a series and get to the end of the first book and then find out you have to wait a year for the author to finish writing the second book. I would actually purchase a second book if this story was expanded into a series but if it stays like it is I would recommend finding something else to read.