Do you love swash-buckling adventure? Do you love the idea of steam punk sky-pirate dwarves? Do you love roguish but lovable lead characters? If so, then you should read The Arkanaut’s Oath by Guy Haley. If you have already read The Arkanaut’s Oath and want more, read The Arkanaut’s Oath again. Then, if you still want more flying dwarves in your life, read The Ghosts of Barak Minoz by Guy Haley. Like any good follow up, it does everything the original did, but just not quite as well. And that’s exactly what it is, a good follow up, not a great one, but a good book nonetheless. The fact is, Arkanaut’s Oath just set the bar way too high for its sequel to reach.
But Ghosts is still a good book.
After Evtorr, one of Drekki’s old shipmates who went overboard to his presumed death in a previous adventure, shows up alive and well (albeit absolutely raving mad) in an Ulgu prison cell, Drekki deduces (somewhat inexplicably) that he must have fallen into the legendary Dead Air – an ever-shifting portion of sky that appears and disappears throughout the realms.
Flynt has been interested in the Dead Air ever since an old sky port, Barak-Minoz, disappeared some years ago. Flynt is convinced that the port was taken by the Dead Air, but his crew are adamant that this is just baseless legend. Drekki then points out that Barak Minoz would be full of unimaginable treasure and wealth, to which they would have exclusive salvage rights. Suddenly his crew become ardent believers and agree to set-sail for another near certain-death adventure.
Drekki’s crew is as characterful as the preceding book, with different members of the crew getting their turn in the spotlight this time. Urdi’s redemption arc is an ongoing theme, following his actions in the previous book, and its good to see him get a bit more depth added to his character.
Hrunki, the matriarchal weapons expert, is probably one of the more prominent characters in the story this time around, and she earns her place in the narrative as an interesting and grounding character. Umherth (basically Sleepy from Snowwhite and the Seven Dwarfs) also gets a little more page-time than he did in the previous book. However, Kedren the dispossessed runesmith (Grumpy) and Otherek (Doc) the aether-khemist don’t receive much in the way of an arc this time, although they are important additions to any scenes they are part of – especially if there is any fighting going on. Gord the ogor, likewise, is around but much less prominent in this book than the last.
Boko (Bashful) the engineer and his crush, Khenna, introduce a bit of romance to the story, in the form of a very well-worn will-they-won’t-they story line, but it’s nowhere near as engaging as the will-they-won’t-they of Drekki and Aisling in the first book (which is almost completely absent from this book).
You do get a bit of a further glimpse of Drekki’s personal life and history in this book, but it’s a fleeting glimpse, tells us very little about him and is not followed up properly. Perhaps this will be expanded upon in the next Drekki Flynt book. There will be a third Flynt book, or at least Guy Haley seems pretty confident of that, as he spends so much time in this one setting it up (maybe a bit too much time).
Ultimately, I don’t feel like I know Drekki Flynt any better after reading this book. In fact, if anything, I feel like he’s lost a lot of his swagger. He’s gone from being that complex, loveable rogue type character to just being a nice guy; philanthropic and heroic, with very little edge to him.
A couple of new characters are introduced also. Uzki is a street-wise urchin trope that sneaks his way into Drekki’s crew, and into the novel. By the end of the adventure, Uzki manages to convince Drekki that he has earned his place on the crew, however, he hasn’t fully convinced me that he has earned his place in the novel. Drake, Ramarius, is interesting to have around for a few chapters, and offers an interesting insight into dragon psychology in the AOS universe.
I can’t say I was particularly impressed with the villain of the story, who is basically just a guy with bad intentions – and that’s about all you’re going to get for character development. Like many villains of convenience, his plan doesn’t really make a huge amount of sense, and he even inexplicably jeopardizes it at one point simply for plot convenience reasons (he concocts a plan to trap someone in a room where a big secret is being held – when there are countless other rooms he could use.)
As for the story’s other threats, in the first book we’re given storm-riding Tzeentch daemons and airborne (and not-so-airborne) pirate grots – very visual, interesting and funny. This book gives us instead some over-grown cave trolls, a brief tussle with some Khanite Shadowstalkers and a relatively unremarkable crowd of nighthaunt. I love books that broaden my understanding of the factions the heroes come up against, but I’m none the wiser about these enemy factions after reading this book than I would have been if I’d have just looked at the box art in a Warhammer shop. They’re certainly nowhere near as imaginative as the take on Gitz and Tzeentch that we see in Arkanaut’s Oath.
I also didn’t feel the book had a huge amount to say. The themes about progress, environmentalism, honour and greed that we see cropping up in the first book just weren’t really present in this one. There was some suggestion of conspiracy and corruption at the heart of Kharadron society, which could be interesting to read more about during the inevitable sequel, but that was all just in order to set up the next book, and didn’t really do anything for this particular story.
This book is basically just a big old adventure romp; a bit of harmless fun. It’s certainly not a patch on its predecessor, but that doesn’t make it bad. It’s following on from what is, in my opinion, one of the best AOS novels there is, so it was always going to have a hard time living up to my expectations. I’d still recommend giving it a read though.
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