The King of the Spoil

Warhammer Crime

By: Jonathan D Beer

Narrated by: Gabrielle Nellis-Pain

A Warhammer Crime Novel

The death of a powerful crime lord sends the city careening into a full-blown street war, and an info-broker seeks the truth in an attempt to hold fragile gang alliances together.

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It’s a chaotic peek into the seedy underbelly of Varangantua, a sprawling world where life is cheap – and a display of how even a tyrant can be better than a power vacuum...

THE STORY

Within the vast sprawl of Varangantua lies the Spoil. It is a broken crossroads, forsaken by the Lex, abandoned by the city’s uncaring masters, where the only choice is a slow death in the manufactories, or a quick one on the street. And it is in turmoil.

Andreti Sorokin, the gangster king whose vicious rule brought order to the Spoil, is dead, slain in the most brutal fashion. Melita Voronova, skilled info-broker and reluctant agent of the imperious Valtteri cartel, is tasked with uncovering the mystery of who killed Sorokin, and preventing his fragile alliance of thugs and narco-pushers from collapsing into chaos. As street-blades clash and gang leaders turn against one another, Melita’s instincts tell her there is a larger conspiracy at work. Someone has created this crisis not merely to disrupt the Spoil, but to overturn the foundations of Varangantua itself.

©2023 Games Workshop Limited (P)2023 Games Workshop Limited

I liked it but it could've been better

Not the best Warhammer Crime novel, but worth a listen. Great voice acting performance.

I feel like the story has a good basis but it lacks somewhat in execution in tying it all together, especially towards the end.

Dive into the Hive!

The cut and thrust of life for the Imperial citizens of a hive world always makes a fascinating story and this is no exception. Melita Voronova makes a flawed, but compelling, protagonist. Can’t wait for the next installment!

A nice break from the HH and SOT books

King of the Spoil does a great job of showing the different aspects of Varangantua.

I think the pacing was fine. The only parts that didn’t really work for me were Haska’s chapters. They tended to repeat the same beats and I never really found her as interesting or sympathetic as Melita and the characters around her.

Overall, it’s a great book and I totally recommend it if you’re coming here after reading the other crime books and want to learn more about Varangantua.

Old-School 40K Storytelling

An interesting read, which offers some new perspectives on the WH40k setting. The characters are interesting, telling a story about a criminal power struggle in which nobody can really win, and a fascinating exploration of the shady politics and economics underpinning a particularly poor, under-privileged and over-exploited sector of Varangantua. It's old-school 40k, which none of the characters emerge unscathed, with not even a sliver of happy ending.

Good, but with unfortunate shortcomings.

The Good: Another solid human centric story. In this grimdark tale, the heresy is just bad people being bad to each other. No monsters, no magic, very little techo wizardry.
The Bad: I think the writer tries to push the narrative of too many characters, with too many similar sounding names through this story.
Improve: I think this is a better read with your eyeballs, than your ears.