David Guymer is slowly building up a collection of Age of Sigmar short stories featuring Hamilcar Bear-Eater, Lord-Castellant of the Astral Templars, of which Gods’ Gift is the third. It’s a typically garrulous tale, told in Hamilcar’s brash, immodest first person voice as he and his men hunt unusual prey in the Realm of Ghur. Something has been terrorising the local human population of the Gorwoods, but in the process of hunting it down Hamilcar receives an unusual, unexpected vision that leads him closer to the beast he hunts…and to something that might trouble even the mighty Hamilcar.
Guymer has hit upon a unique voice in Hamilcar, a character who’s entertainingly different from the usual dour, heroic Stormcast we’ve mostly seen so far. The bold first person perspective, the ridiculous, self-referential boasts…it’s almost too much, but look beyond the posturing and there’s enough depth to Hamilcar to just about ground it all. Plot-wise this seems to loosely follow on from The Hardest Word, with a fairly straightforward narrative that allows Guymer to focus on Hamilcar and his surroundings rather than an overly complex story. It feels like a definite precursor to a bigger story – fun in its own right, but setting us up for more to come.
