Triumff

Praise

“The concept is clever and creative, and magic, treason, and Spanish grandees make for an entertaining read… fans of more intellectual fantasy will enjoy Abnett’s misadventures and hope for future installments.”
– Publishers Weekly

“Triumff: Her Majesty’s Hero is a witch’s brew of alternate history, hocus pocus, cracking action and cheesy gags. Reads like Blackadder crossed with Neal Stephenson. It’s a Kind of Magick – don’t miss it.”
– Stephen Baxter

“Endlessly inventive, joyously irreverent, drenched with adrenalin and wicked humour, Dan Abnett’s Triumff: Her Majesty’s Hero is a brilliant occult-comedy-historical-adventure that’s true to the best traditions of the genres it so eagerly devours.”
– Mike Carey

“I came away impressed by Dan Abnett’s vision for the setting of the story.  There isn’t anything else like it.  The world building is masterfully done and combined with the tone of the story creates a unique and enjoyable experience… Triumff is fun and loaded with excitement and great characters.  The setting for the novel is one of a kind and entertaining in all of the right ways. 4/5”
– James Atlantic

“This is what it would look like if William Shakespeare and Rowan Atkinson got together to write a novel after a night on the town with Terry Pratchett. In spite of the general silliness and fun, Dan manages to create a successfully sinister undertone from early on. As the book progresses, the plot thickens and becomes increasingly dark and sinister, the humour becoming a lighter touch and the tension drawn tighter. There is a good plot, suitably complex, well drawn characters and a dramatic climax. This is a delightful, often original and hugely entertaining read.”
– Unbound

“I wasn’t expecting Triumff: Her Majesty’s Hero to be as funny as it was and it was a more than pleasant surprise to find myself laughing as much as I was… The real fun lies in the moments where everything kicks off with lashings of hot pursuit and swordplay. This is where Abnett really lets loose and has a great time: throwing friend and foe together with great gusto and shaking the mixture up to see what happens. As far as I was concerned Abnett carried it off almost perfectly. 9 out of 10.”
– Graeme’s Fantasy Book Review

“Abnett has created a rollicking world (neo-Elizabethanpunk?) which is basically a mash-up of our own and that of the Elizabethan period. Gentlemen fight duels of honour, but may choose to employ Swiss Army swords (which have an unfortunate habit of replacing the sword blade with a potato peeler at inopportune moments during combat) in lieu of a standard rapier. Firearms are around, but still relatively primitive, whilst those versed in the Arte may employ significantly more powerful magical weapons as well. Triumff himself is a splendid hero, a colourful man of action perhaps a little too fond of the bottle but generally out to do the right thing. The book ends on a triumphant note with a promise that Sir Rupert Triumff will return for further adventures, which I find myself looking forward to immensely. ****½”
– The Wertzone

“Triumff is the sort of story that tends to get described as ‘rollicking’… It’s a good word. Rollicking, roistering, roller-coasting. You can tell that Dan had fun with this… there’s a high-spirited gusto in Triumff that I don’t think I’ve really seen from him before. The sense of fun is infectious – if you read this book in company I predict you’ll be regularly tugging your companions’s sleeves wanting to share the bit that just got you chuckling.”
– Matthew Farrer

“I hate Dan Abnett. Why? Because having proved himself the king of noir-infused miltary SF, it takes quite a talent to move easily to something completely different – and this really is a triumffant leap in style. Whilst it’s chock-full of nods-of-the-head to the finest of Culture and Art and History, it doesn’t come over as pretentious – because most of all, Triumff: Her Majesty’s Hero is a great slice of British fun. The depiction of the cityscape is a brew of heady descriptions, and written with a vast and esoteric vocabulary. And the humour is delivered with a wry smile that will have you guffawing boisterously from your armchair. What’s especially annoying, though, is that this pesky Abnett chap makes such a change of gear in writing and storytelling look so damn easy.”
– Mark Charan Newton

“[The] action scenes are plentiful and genuinely exciting in a way that adds a new dimension, which should help curtail claims that Abnett’s is a facsimile of Pratchett’s style. The tone of the book is generally light-hearted, packed with throwaway gags and some wordplays that would elicit groans from even the most seasoned reader of the Xanth series by Piers Anthony.” 4 Stars, Must Read Now!
– SciFi Now Magazine

“As Triumff drinks and brawls his way through the pages of this book, we see some truly unique fights (Public Baths, anyone?), which Abnett has always been skilled at writing… The world he has created is an interesting one, and Abnett does an excellent job of realising it on the page… There are certainly absurdist elements to the novel (something that usually turns me off), but they are never over-done or excessive, providing just the right amount of oddity to intrigue without alienating the reader who might not think ‘humour’ begins and ends with Douglas Adams’s Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Abnett’s dialogue is frequently witty, sometimes daft, with some groan-while-you-smile puns. Highly recommended.”
– Civilian Reader

“Dan Abnett – previously known for cranking out Warhammer fiction – has a fairly impeccable sense of comedic timing. From the wry footnotes to the surreal Swiss-army-sword, malapropisms and apples-on-strings, the book had me chuckling from start to finish in a way that Terry Pratchett hasn’t succeeded in doing for a decade. There’s a lot of obvious humor here, but if Abnett should be ashamed of his puns (and he should), he should also be proud of their delivery. Triumff is an unexpectedly adept contribution to the subgenre of humorous fantasy, one that should find more than a few fans.”
– Pornokitsch

“With this novel, Abnett has staked himself firmly as a successor to Pratchett. It is, in turns, adventurous, creative and inventive, and above all else, hilariously funny…”
– Stitch and Bear

“I’m not sure what to call this…dystopia? Utopia? Post-apocalyptic? Perhaps just ‘alternate history’. Whatever you please, this is Triumffs greatest…well…triumph. Creating a book that is so undefinable even the most accomplished of publicists will sit at their computer for hours trying to put it in a neat little category. It’s like a huge “fuck you” to mainstream publishing and, let me tell you, it’s way overdue.”
– Opinionated? Me?

“I’m just going to put it down to it being Bloody Weird, which given that it’s Dan Abnett writing for Angry Robot books is probably par for the course.”
– Cold Iron & Rowan Wood

“Highly recommended – for those with a well-developed sense of the ridiculous.”
– Marginalia

“Abnett’s verbal fencing is a delight. He’s one of the few writers who can go on for five pages about rain, and still have you hooked like a salmon on a crack-dosed worm. Triumff invites inevitable comparisons with Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books, thanks to its Britishness and highbrow humour… Although the gags are often cheesier, the slapstick dafter and the puns more outrageous, this novel is easily in the same league as Pratchett, or indeed of any other comic fantasy author.”
– WarpCore SF

“Triumff is a corking yarn which will make the stoniest-hearted soul giggle, wince and snort. Recommended.”
– Dark Fiction Review