Ho for the orc, staple of fantasy fiction: invariably green, ugly and violent, with dubious personal hygiene and a serious image problem. Where would traditional high fantasy be without them? They seldom have names or personalities, dwarves always hate them and muscle-bound heroes carve through their ranks like they are rows of standing corn. Tolkien’s big set-piece battle scenes mostly depended on them, and numerous successors and imitators have used them ‘as is’ with little or no adaptation. After all, their heroes need something to kill in large numbers that no reader can sympathise with.

Stan Nicholls’ original Orcs trilogy turned the whole idea on its head – Orcs were born fighters, true, and green-skinned, but they were also an intelligent, articulate, fully-formed race, with females and younglings and hopes and dreams, caught up in the political machinations of other races. Weapons of Magical Destruction is the first volume of a second trilogy to feature the same characters. At the end of the first books, Stryke and his company of Wolverines escaped through a portal in to the world their race originated from and basically settled down, after having carved their way through numerous foes on a fairly standard fantasy quest – except that here, the humans, with their inexplicable religious schism, were the evil force in the land. Now, offered the chance to march again, the Wolverines say goodbye to domestic tranquility and march back through a portal to try and thwart their old boss, the sadistic sorceress Jennesta.

Having collected Jup, their original dwarf sergeant, they then head to the land where their mission lies: we’re operating  with a simplified version of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics here, and to borrow a phrase of Terry Pratchett’s, the world in question went down the wrong leg of the trousers of time a while back. Orcs here are placid and peaceful, and apart from a small resistance movement, they are being successfully oppressed by pesky humans, with the distinctly fishy Jennesta at their head. The Wolverines must free their cowed kin and slay their old boss, leading to guerrilla engagements and battles along the way.

Nicholls keeps everything rolling along nicely, and after recently having consumed Steven Erikson’s latest tome, this was a mere fantasy snackette, a sweet that you can eat between meals. There are problems: combat scenes are somewhat repetitive, and the ‘time cops’ who are monitoring all of the world-jumping behaviour, and looking to intervene, are a bit reminiscent of the fairy police from Eoin Colfer’s Artemis Fowl books, that is to say rather earnest and even more implausible than anything else in the book. Lastly, the subtle-as-an-orc’s-aftershave references to weapons of magical destruction, and their use by humans as a pretext to invade the peace-loving orcs, are intrusive and pointless. Whatever his views of the war in Iraq, Nicholls didn’t need to drag them in to this book (people have started wars on far flimisier pretexts throughout human history). Niggles aside, this is good fun and a quick read, as long as you don’t expect too much from it.

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