Reception
A warning: if you don't wish to become addicted to the most impressive new fantasy sequence in many a moon, you should avoid Bodyguard of Lightning.
Barry Forshaw, Genre Hotline/LineOne Science Fiction ZoneThe trilogy, first printed in the United Kingdom by Victor Gollancz Ltd, has become international bestseller, with over one million copies sold. The first two volumes were nominated for the 2000 British Fantasy Award (Best Novel category). The success of the novel has begun as crazy in Germany. In the UK, sales have been respectable but not spectacular.
I’ve had a lot of criticism from some people for daring to write about orcs at all. There are Tolkien fans who think I must be ripping him off, or trying to add something to his work. —Stan Nicholls ... a neat idea and Stan Nicholls pulls it off with great panache ... enough weird sex to keep the tabloids outraged for weeks. You'll never feel the same about Lord of the Rings. —Jon Courtenay Grimwood, SFX magazine Again, Nicholls brilliantly re-invents the Orcs, underdogs of fantasy fiction, and creates a dazzling panoply of wit, invention and violence. The humour is perfectly judged, and it's refreshing to encounter a fantasy writer clearly in possession of a fierce intelligence. —Barry Forshaw, Genre Hotline/LineOne Science Fiction Zone The first two books in the Orcs series proved that although Nicholls' gimmick is an original one, there's more to the desperate Maras-Dantia greenskins than just a cool reversal of fantasy stereotypes. ... The action doesn't let up as Stryke and his weathered warband approach the end of their mission... Nicholls' talent has imbued traditionally brutal characters with a gruff nobility and the end of this novel is a fittingly bitter and convincing coda to this highly original saga. —Waterstone's OnlineRead more about this topic: Orcs: First Blood
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“But in the reception of metaphysical formula, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall—the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)
“Aesthetic emotion puts man in a state favorable to the reception of erotic emotion.... Art is the accomplice of love. Take love away and there is no longer art.”
—Rémy De Gourmont (1858–1915)