Book Reviews

Victory was secured on EBay when I managed to buy The Inquisitor Sketchbook and The Face of Battle: The Colour Art of David Gallagher for under a tenner for the pair. Being on holiday the past couple of days it was waiting patiently for me on my return. Knowing nothing about said books I had a quick look on Amazon to see if anybody had posted a review and to see what they are. Yes, I won the two books without knowing anything more than the titles, impulse buying at its worst! So Amazon told me that both books were printed in 2001 so they are now nearly ten years old and most definitely out of print and they are 63 pages long. They are priced at The Face of Battle: The Colour Art of David Gallagher £17.00 and The Inquisitor Sketchbook £55.00, which means they are either collectable or somebody is being extra hopeful.



I was more interested in The Inquisitor Sketchbook when I made the purchase as the author is John Blanche, so of course I looked at The Face of Battle: The Colour Art of David Gallagher first. Split into two sections W40K and WFB it is mostly a retrospective of Codex and Army Book covers from second and sixth edition respectively. Back in the day both sets used somewhat cartoonish covers, I presume when they were targeting a less mature market. I know it can be said that GW is still targeting the teenage market but at least they give the pretence of a more mature gamer.

They also included several third edition W40K Codex covers portraying the more mature style that has been continued since then. Box art from both gaming systems show the change from old to new, whilst we can now expect photographs of the models contained in the boxes this artwork is some of the last of its type we will see.

Called The Face of Battle I was expecting more action scenes, painting or illustrations, more conflict than I was being given. So all in all I was quite disappointed with the book, I am sure that when they were choosing his artwork they could have given all the book covers a miss. I would give the book a rating of 2 on 5 as there was a lack of original artwork, although it was obvious from the title alone that it was a compilation of previous artwork, duh.




Moving swiftly along to the prize of my EBay win; The Inquisitor Sketchbook, this is everything I could have hoped for and more. I do have the rulebook for Inquisitor however I did not notice many repeat pictures as the book is full of artwork that could best be described as work in progress ideas. I am not criticising the pictures, far from it – they are inspirational ideas for building and converting Inquisitors, their henchmen and even the occasional (Deathwatch) Space Marine.  As an owner of the Collected Horus Heresy his sketches have been inspirational even if I have yet to make my figures look Blanchesque.  Even today I am still refering to his two page article in the Chaos Codex 2.0 on converting Chaos Space Marines.

I cannot recommend this book enough, well not £55.00 enough but you get the idea. Definitely a 5 on 5 book and I am going to have to keep my eye out for more material from Mr Blanche.