drunkrobot's review
3.0
Does pretty much as it says on the cover, offering a potential source of ideas on how a race like the standard tolkienesque dwarves popular in fantasy may operate both socially and militarily. A good resource for someone looking to create a fantasy story or a pen-and-paper campaign involving the little guys, who might want to give them a fresh(er) twist and need a strong baseline to work from. It provokes interesting thoughts on how biological constants of fantasy races might inform their military planning. Dwarves here, for example, have very low fertility and might take decades to fully replenish their numbers after a disastrous battle, so dwarven generals try to focus on keeping campaigns short and casualties low. This way of thinking about how a race can have their attitudes formed logically by their particular 'facts of life', without it degenerating into them being genetically programmed to act different to each other in a way reminiscent of racist pseudoscientific theories of phrenology, has much merit.
I only give it three stars because it is such a specific kind of book, those looking for something like it are going to find it near-perfect, though I think it could easily have done with some maps for the battle described, and maybe illustrations of the war wagon laagers and the underground galleries in the strategy and tactics section.
I only give it three stars because it is such a specific kind of book, those looking for something like it are going to find it near-perfect, though I think it could easily have done with some maps for the battle described, and maybe illustrations of the war wagon laagers and the underground galleries in the strategy and tactics section.
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