Good story overall, especially for Warhammer Fans.

I enjoyed this story a lot. the insight and perspective from the beastmen was very novel and something I enjoyed a lot. The narrator was enthusiastic and easy to listen to. the only issue was the slightly odd ending that felt a little shoehorned to meet the requirements of the boardgame with the same name.

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When Animal Meets Vegetable Meets Mineral

CL Werner is one of the more prolific Black Library contributors. Make of that what you will. Being vastly unfamiliar with the rest of his body of work, I feel compelled to rate this book based on its first half alone (before I listen to five more hours of this) as that experience already left me with two diverging hypotheses.

Either he phoned this one in when Games Workshop asked for a merry old tale to tie in with their newest game setting for Warhammer Underworld. A goatman follows a vision to a mountain to become alpha goatman, a haunted tree follows him because they have previous beef. As for the psychological inner workings of goat and tree and mountain, that's as deep as it'll ever get. Why pour effort into that?

That is the benevolent hypothesis. The more skeptical one is that when his drama or literature teacher told their class "Show, don't tell", Mr Werner must have missed school to lounge at his friendly local game store instead.

Therefore we get this narrative pattern: One sentence of action. One sentence of explaining the action as omniscient narrator. One sentence pontificating about social darwinism (if Beastman) or ecoterrorism (if Sylvaneth). Rinse and repeat until chapter is ended, then write exactly the same thing all over again from the other party's point of view.

"Billygoat killed the man. He knew if he didn't kill the man he'd show weakness. Weakness means death among gor. Also, Shamen are shifty. / Entwife found the dead man from the previous chapter. "This human is dead", she proclaimed. She knew that not all humans are evil. "Kill all humans", her companion shrub screeched. "No", she said, "Some of them aren't evil. Also, this one's already dead." She rubbed her fronds adverbially. "Billygoat must have known that if he didn't kill this man, he would show weakness..."

This may be easier to digest when reading it on your socially awkward boyfriend's downstairs loo, but not in an audiobook at 1.3x speed setting when it all starts to sound rather repetitive.

But it's a good enough yarn if you don't expect to be pleasantly surprised in the first place. Bellicose beastmen, overwhelmingly male, function just like their battletome said. Nature-loving Sylvaneth, overwhelmingly female, function just like their battletome said. Nothing, not even a prolific writer, is allowed to break through the cliches (let alone gender stereotypes) set up by Games Workshop. A mountain called Beastgrave lures individuals into its depths to make them fight each other, because there's a board game that needed a reason for skirmish-sized factions to fight each other. Presto, instant motivator. If you want more from your fare of fiction, you must be a snob.

Indeed I downloaded this particular title, not in the hopes of the next Pulitzer winner, but at least to gain a deeper sense of what a society of angry mutated cattle might work like. All I got was an effort more trite than the two fluff sentences on a battlescroll, and learned nothing new. Even the Carcassonne meeple have a deeper backstory than this.

Kudos to Barnaby Edwards, whose job it was to give these walking platitudes distinct voices. He delivered such insanities as the beastman shaman's inexplicable use of the word "agglomeration" with aplomb and a minimum of wincing.

And who knows? Maybe the second half will blow me away. Part of me suspects, though, that it'll just be the first half, re-narrated from the mountain's point of view.

tl;dr:
This is one for you if you always suspected your pet rock to have an evil personality.

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Good story with different maken characters

I really liked the story because it shows the reader two different perspectives from two entire different races; the Beasts of chaos and the Sylvaneth.

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Beast grave is great

Pretty good book, I have just got into Aos and was looking for a good listen, beast grave pretty lived up to what I was looking for, I wouldn't be rushing back to listen again in a hurry, but it's a good story and reader is perfect for the book 4 out 5

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absolutely fantastic!

absolutely mesmerising beginning to end! Beautifully and thoroughly enjoyed every single moment of this!

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Great listen

Really good story keeps you gripped all the way to the end, really well read nice voice and not to many silly voices.

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3 people found this helpful

An extremely fun listen.

A thoroughly enjoyable story told from three unique perspectives with an excellent performance by Barnaby Edwards. Strongly recommended.

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2 people found this helpful

LOVED IT 😍

Quite a bit of gore,story-amazing. I liked the perspective of different sides (good/bad) and the different characters. Listen to the first chapter, and you'll be hooked. I liked the ending and would love there to be a second book about the story of Kyra and Ghroth in beastgrave protecting the evil power from its seekers if there isn't one already.

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