Ufthak lands on the Ad Mech forge world of Hephesto, looking for make a name for himself. But he might do more than just that.
Da Borin’ Stuffs
Brutal Kunnin’ is a Black Library novel written by Mike Brooks. The story mainly follows that of Ufthak Blackhawk, who is taking part in a raid on the Ad Mech forge world of Hephaesto. Ufthak and his boss, Da Biggest Big Mek, have a friendly competition going on between them and notorious Freebooter, Kaptin Badrukk, to see who can nick more of da humie’s loot.
But, while Ufthak hoping to get noticed by The Biggest Big Mek, he stumbles into something that might just get the attention of Mork and Gork themselves.
“…aiming was for cowards. Any true ork just let rip, and let Gork and Mork decide what when where…”
+++02+++
Each chapter in the book is from the perspective of a different character, roughly 40% Ufthak, and another 40% from the perspective of Zaefa Varaz, Hephaesto’s Lexico Arcanus. The remaining chapters are divided between other characters which would be spoilers, which we won’t be discussing here.
<…if enacted as requested, that will cause a catastrophic magma vent.>
<I know.>
Each chapter type, as we’ll call them, has a really unique feel. Even the chapter titles themselves alternate between Orkish phrases and sayings, to simple numeric counting. The book does a really good job of spending time in each person’s head. Ufthak’s thoughts and feelings are portrayed as he experiences things he doesn’t understand and his frustrations and excitement upon each new discovery. Meanwhile, the chapters focusing on Zaefa explore how the Ad Mech communicate and add lots of minute details expanding on how the mechanized humans interact. They usually don’t speak, but rather communicate through code, which is signified with angle brackets.
<I find the lack of orbital bombardment concerning,> Zaefa said, two-thirds of a millisecond before Illutar’s next utterance.
The tone and feel of each chapter type make this book really feel like you’re getting two separate and intertwined stories.
‘Ere’s Wut I Fink
Overall, I enjoyed this book a lot. It was an enjoyable story, not a difficult read, and overall very funny. It had packed with tons of humor, not even just from the orks. But, that’s also one of my biggest gripes.
I was really hoping for this book to be more about Ufthak and his story. But there is a lot of the book that doesn’t focus on him or any of the other Orks. As the book continues other characters are introduced and they have a couple of chapters focused on them. All in all, not such a bad thing, but still it took away from what I really wanted: An Orkish story. This book didn’t feel like that. The Orks felt like a prop for Zaefa’s story, which was kinda disappointing, honestly.
“Why do dey do dat, anyway?” Mogrot asked.
“Make dere planets all shiny do ya know dey’ve got flashy stuff…den when ya go to get it, dey get all annoyed?”
Still, I can’t hold my expectations against the book and, as I said, it still was fun and enjoyable. There was a lot of intertextuality (one of my favorite literary terms), which is basically when one work relies on the knowledge of another. I don’t know anything about the Imperium stuff. I’ve been an Ork boy since I got started with Warhammer and never cared nor tried to learn about any other race. So, that added to my enjoyment of understanding Ufthak’s confusion at some new piece of Imperium tech that neither of us has seen before. But, it did also add a lot of confusion to Zaefa’s chapters when she referenced things I had never heard of before. I still don’t really know what a Forge World even is.
Overall, I’d recommend Brutal Kunnin’ to anyone looking for a light, quick read. But don’t expect the Ork-centric story the cover might suggest.
Have you read Brutal Kunnin’?
What’d you think of it?
Source: Bell of Lost Souls
