Dave's Reviews > Bodyguard of Lightning

I'm generally not a fan of your epic style fantasy books. Often times it's the same story over and over again, and usually that story is "Lord of the Rings". So I was happy to discover that "Bodyguard of Lightning", the first book in Stan Nicholl's "Orcs" series, was not your typical fantasy story.

The whole idea of this book is that you follow things from ther perpspective of a war band of orcs, the powerfully built warrior race that generally serve as villainous grunts in most fantasy novels. Here things are much more complex. In the beginning of the book the tiular orcs are in the service of your typical evil magic user style villain, but they're not happy about it. They kill and steal from humans but you like them anyway.

Then as things start to progress the band of Orc soldiers discover that the conflict they've been drafted into makes no sense and they go rogue. Basically they're roaming free in a world that fears and hates them. Everyone is out to get them and trying to find a spot where they fit in.

This leads to them undertaking a quest which leads to some fun, action style set pieces and the cliffhanger ending of the novel.

I found "Bodyguard of Lightning" to be a pretty quick and fun read. Here's hoping the second book in the series is just as enjoyable