Tamas's Reviews > The Daemon's Curse

It's been many years, but I still vividly remember how much I liked this book (and the series). It's probably not much better written than the other mass produced Warhammer slop I was reading at the time, but it's more entertaining due to being different. The novelty was strongest for the first entry in the series, so it was also the one I enjoyed the most.

The thing that sets Malus Darkblade's (yes, very corny name) adventures apart is that he's an anti-hero. He's narcissistic, petty, spiteful, unhinged and an all-around-asshole, but has enough charm and redeeming qualities that the audience still ends up rooting for him. We get the fantasy trope of the hero's journey, but none of the usual world saving. Malus should have been called 'Negative Sum Game' instead of 'Darkblade', for his rise from shunned underdog to overlordship comes at an increasingly heavy price, leaving him and everyone else around him progressively worse off at every step of the way. Indeed, if he is doing anything good, it's by feeding dark elf society to the furnace of his ambitions.