Comic Book – 130 pages – my copy read whilst staying at the Channon residence, October 2011
- 2 nods out of 5 -
For those readers who have been with the Worm since Day One (now, now; don’t be shy – raise a glass to many a pompous book review over the past two years), then you may have read the review on the novel based on Blood Bowl in 2009. And just what is Blood Bowl? A quick recap for other readers of this blog in recent months: Blood Bowl is a dice-game produced by the Games Workshop, in which the player is a coach of a football team with the aim of scoring touch-downs, and perhaps more importantly: killing the entire opposition. Sound like your cup of tea? Well, read on…
Matt Forbeck was hounded in the previous review of his debut novel (simply titled Blood Bowl). The Worm gave the book a meagre 1 nod out of 5, thus entering the sin-bin of reading and winning that book-reading season’s Shredder Award for Crime’s Against Literature. Poor Mr Forbeck, the Worm hears you muttering. But his latest dabbling in a graphical representation of the unique fictional universe strikes an immediate nod with the reader. Blood, guts, grass and grime: all of these things are brought to life on the page by the efforts of the artist, the wonderfully named: Lads Helloven. The reader is able to feel involved in the progress of the Bad Bay Hackers team as they set off to win the Blood Bowl Championship.
But the spanner in the works? (For there is always a spanner in the works, dear reader): Matt Forbeck himself. The plot is tired and predictable, the dialogue is terrible and clichéd. This is the fifth or sixth story containing the Hackers, and this team always seems to win, becoming the James Bond of fantasy football teams. Each turn of the page brings the inevitable result; with the reader turning ever closer to a sadist in wishing the demise of the book’s “hero”, Dunk Hoffnung.
The formula has gone wrong somewhere. Here we have an interesting idea about psychotic sporting players who chainsaw one another to death, and yet the writer appears settled to make the reader pay for this interest in terms of a stale plot and pointless padding. What if we were to see a different team, away from Mr Hoffnung and the fortunate Bad Bay Hackers: of the Orcs, of the Dwarves, of Elves, of Vampires, and, well, the reader gets the point. A different side to shake up the action.
As the Worm expressed in the earlier review on Forbeck’s novel, he will return for more. A glutton for punishment: oh no! But rather a dedicated fan of the game of Blood Bowl. Yes, he will be back – hoping Mr Forbeck has got his act together in order to produce a real work of interest.
Read my review of Matt Forbeck’s initial novel right here:
http://4eyedbookworm.blogspot.com/2009/07/blood-guts-blood-bowl-by-matt-forbeck.html
Buy Killer Contract here:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Killer-Contract-Blood-Matt-Forbeck/dp/1934506346
