Tales From The Ten Tailed Cat Volume 2The Ten-Tailed Cat in Talabheim known throughout the city as a gathering place for raconteurs and the tellers of tall tales. They come to the Ten-Tailed Cat for many reasons. Some to boast of their exploits, some to amuse and entertain, others to unburden their souls or pass on dire warnings…

Tales from the Ten-Tailed Cat II is the second volume of collected strips first featured in the pages of the award winning Warhammer Monthly and Inferno!, and features artwork by Nigel Dobbyn, Jon Haward, Andrew Hepworth, Clint Langley, Chris Quilliams, David Millgate, Steve Roberts, Graham Stoddart, Roman Sydor and Tiernen Trevallion. As for the writing side, you get the talents of Jaspre Bark, Jonathan Green, Iain Lowson, Mitchel Scanlon, Si Spurrier, Stu Taylor and Nik Vincent.

(Fiona Stephenson is the unfortunate lady that gets dragged in to letter everything just by the way).

Naturally, because this is a Warhammer-related book, knowledge of the franchise goes a great length in helping you pull the maximum enjoyment out of the stories, but that said, any fantasy buff should be able to follow the action without too many hassles. Unfortunately though, overall, the quality of writing on this collection of short stories is pretty inconsistent, with some great twisted tales being balanced out by some particularly cringe-worthy bad attempts at an engaging or humorous short story.

Sure the writers don’t exactly have a lot of space to play with, but unfortunately there really are only one or two gems to be found in this entire collection of sword and sorcery shorts. Of course, quite a few of the stories are from writers who were back then still at the start of their game and over time have definitely improved in leaps and bounds, so perhaps it is best to simply look at these earlier works as a wonderful view on the early, rough skills behind the typewriter of some of these guys.

On the black and white, visuals front, I’m afraid it is just as mixed a bag, with some wonderfully detailed and intriguing work being put in by British greats such as Clint Langley, David Millgate and Tiernen Trevallion and some equally shoddy and seemingly rushed work by others who I’m not even going to bother to mention.

In short, this really is a weak collection of shorts that shouldn’t hold any interest to anyone but those who religiously follow a specific creator’s career work or those who fanatically support the Warhammer universe.

I don’t know, I can’t help but feel that I wasted my money on this one to be honest… :(

Related link: http://www.blacklibrary.com/product.asp?prod=60100299040&type=Book