After a long time of abstinence from writing, Brian Craig decided to start again writing stories which take place in Games Workshop's grim World of Warhammer. And it seems that the author of novels like Zaragoz and Plague Demon has not forgotten how to create thrilling adventures. The protagonist of Craigs latest novel, "The Wine of Dreams", is the young Reiklander wine-mer-chant Reinmar Weiland. The monotonous live of our young hero changes rapidely as one day a stranger enters the Wine-shop of Reinmar's father and starts to ask questions about some mysterious wine made from dark grapes. Even more disturbingly, the stranger also claims to be a long lost cousin of Reinmar. Curious about this strange dark wine, Reinmar starts to ask questions about it, but everybody he asks claims to know nothing about it. But somehow the young wine-merchant knows that his family is more involved in the trading of the mysterious wine, which is supposed to bring beautiful dreams and to lengthen one's life-span, than his father admits. When the Imperial Witch Hunter von Spurtzheim, accompanied by a huge force of mercenaries, appears in Reinmars home town Eilhart and also starts to ask questions about the mysterious wine, Reinmar decides to make his own investigations. He attracts the attention of the Witch Hunter, who gives him the opportunity to search for the source of the dark wine, which is supposed to grow somewhere in the foothills of the grey mountains. Together with the merc-enary Vadaecker and a couple of his father's servants, young Reinmar starts his search for the mysterious dark grapes.

On their search the party comes to a small village where an upset mob of peasants wildly attacks a group of gipsies. As one of the gipsies, a young beautiful girl, is seriously wounded by a thrown stone, Reinmar and his companions throw themselves between the quarrelling groups to save the gipsies. The young wine-merchant decides to take care of the wounded girl and takes her with them on their further journey. Soon, Reinmar realizes that the injured gipsy-girl stands under the influence of some unknown power, known to the gipsies as 'the Call'. In a feverish trance she leaves the party, aimlessly wandering through the forests followed by Reinmar and Vadaecker. The girl leds them to a hidden valley with a peaceful monastery dedicated to Morr, lord of dreams and death. But obviously the monks have turned away from Morr long ago to follow a darker lord of pleasure... In the cellars beneath the mo-nastery the adventurers discover a horrible secret: the source of the mysterious dark wine. When the monks discover the two intruders and attack them, Reinmar destroys their stock of the undiluted dark liquid, which seems to be the major ingredient of the dark wine, not without taking a small phial of the essence for himself. Eventually they both manage to escape from the valley and return to the town Eilhart to report their discovery to the Witch Hunter. But by stealing the phial, Reinmar has doomed Eilhart: a large force of Beastmen and Mutants attacks the Town. With great casualties the defenders under the command of the Witch Hun-ter von Spurtzheim, who looses his live in the attempt to save Eilhart, manage to fight back the Forces of evil . During the confusion of the battle Reinmar's girlfriend is kidnapped by his mysterious cousin who wants the stolen phial of dark wine in exchange for her live. In the showdown the true role of the Weiland family is revealed and Reinmar manages to rescue his girl-friend.

Wine of Dreams is a thrilling story with a couple of very good ideas for Roleplaying adventures, but at some time in the middle of the book it becomes boring. Until the battle for the town Eilhart, the story creates an almost cthuluesque atmosphere, capturing the reader with the plot. But as soon as the description of the battle starts, the story is nothing more than mere description of battle scenes. It seems that Games Workshop forces its authors to in-clude large battle scenes in all of their stories. To be honest, describing battles isn't Brian Craigs strength, the Gotrek & Felix-stories by William King are far better in that respect . Furthermore the end of the story is rather unsatisfactory as too many questions remain unanswered. "The Wine of Dreams" could be a masterpiece of a dark fantasy novel, with a thrilling and exciting story and many good ideas to create adventures around it but the
disappointing second part destroys much of the atmosphere created in the first part of the book. All in all, Wine of dreams is worth reading as long as you ignore the battle scenes and enjoy the dark fantasy atmosphere created during the first 150 pages of the novel. (nc)