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Gilead's Blood is the Dan Abnett (with Nik Vincent) Warhammer Fantasy novel about the high elf Gilead te Tuin, a doomed last-of-his-line swordsman wandering the Old World on a personal vendetta. The character had appeared in the long-running Warhammer magazine Inferno!, and the novel collects and expands those stories.
Abnett is doing Michael Moorcock-style brooding-fantasy here, in a less ironic register than the Gaunt's Ghosts series. Gilead is humorless and competent and deeply alone, and Abnett resists the temptation to soften him. The setting (the woods of Sylvania, the half-empty Old World towns) is rendered with care. The action is well-staged.
Three stars. Recommended to Warhammer Fantasy readers and to fans of brooding-hero sword-and-sorcery. Not the entry point for Abnett.
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