Harlan Skorus

I'm a bit sad, because I thought this was a haiku, and then I counted on my fingers and it isn't a haiku. Not at all.

Before you turn me into a servitor for my error, my word count (Hemingway online site) has it at 499? It's actually meant to be the Ravens Exultant, a renegade (but confused, but renegade) Raven Guard successor that was one of the Chapters I dreamt up in the great founding of 2014. They have a prediliction for swooping down on Imperial planets under threat about 2 years quicker than the Imperium can manage, and doing whatever it takes - military coup, for example - to make sure said planet is prepared for whatever is coming. Then they vanish before the Imperial force arrives and finds Governors ousted, rampant conscription and economical change, etc etc etc. The Governor in above story, in my head, is not a good person; the original opening paragraph that was intended to show this got cut becuase too many words.

I'll be in on this in a couple of weeks once I've finished moving house. Have a few ideas around the life and times of Lieutenant-General Lorrigan Skane, probably either to do with the Orcan expeditions (Skale makes his name, leading a rearguard of IG/Inquisition forces against some Shivan-esque Xenos known as the Ra'tonda), or the Vors Insurrection (an Imperial world goes rogue and the subsequent reclamation effort whic Skale leads the vanguard of turns into a hellish years-long cityfight, my halfway-planned lockdown project).

To finish up the trilogy of "Harlan reintroduces himself to something he never knew all that well really", I have completed a mission almost two decades in the making and finally read the followup to Execution Hour, Gordon Rennie's Shadow Point. There's a lot of good stuff in it. Leoten Semper has learnt his lesson and stays on his damn ship, for one. Things rocket along at a fairly constant pace; it feels like a good reflection of how the Gothic War would've progressed after the initial panic. There are Xenos - yes, Xenos, front and centre! - all over the damn place, which I gather is a rarity these days. It's nice to have a look at another type of society and slots nicely into the 'and now for something that isn't giant cathederal spaceships" role that the Arbites filled in Execution Hour. Unfortunately, there is also a lot I liked less. The plot feels far more rushed - there's basically two conflicts/situations, and only the second has any large story impact. So much so that it kinda feels like two seperate novellas that just happened to be stitched together. The Shadow Point itself never seems to really have an explanation, which is a thing I generally like - but only if the characters don't understand it as well so you can empathise with their ignorance. This isn't the case and it just reads like rushed writing missing an explanation for something. Overall... eesh. I'm going with Diehards only. If you want more Xenos flavour and some good snappy character moments, go ahead. If you want a coherent and impactful plot, or something to dig your teeth into and get lost, much less so.

Hey now, Rian Johnson wrote my favourite film of all time (Brick). Don't be skipping on him. Anyway, back to the short fiction! I'm waiting patiently on part 3 of the adventures of Ms. Teamkill McOgrynfriend.

It's actually based off two custom chapters from a project I started the last time (6 years or so) I was active on this board. If you want to spoil yourself, go ahead.

Thanks! I always lack a little bit of faith in my ability to write engaging dialogue so thought I'd give it a crack.

Well, seeing as I had so much fun last time, I decided to come back for another go and do a 15-year overdue re-reread of my introduction to the Black Library, Gordon Rennie's execution hour. I am surprisingly, pleasantly relieved to find it's still an enjoyable read, and it's been interesting comparing it now to what my perception of it was. I remember it being weirdly foot-focused for a book purportedly about His Divine Majesty's Imperial Navy, but actually there's a comfortable mix of familiar ground-based action and big ships doing big ship things. The focus on arbitrators is very cool, although in retrospect a bit odd as they've never been part a significant part of either the 40k or BFG tabletop games. And of course, Maxim Borusa is still an awesome character that I want to spend more time with. I like that it manages to tell a relatively (in the world of 10,000+ crew spaceships) small scale story with enough dramatic oomph to carry without having any major ramifications for the overarching narrative fluff of 40k, which is no mean feat consider it only features as a character (albeit one given not a lot of fleshing out). Also, On the flipside, I really noticed how rushed the end feels. The last fleet action in particular, which I think is meant to be tense, climactic and cathartic, but is written a bit "they were getting shot but then guns fire everyone dies". The writing is not great in some places, Rennie relies too much on some stock phrases and reuse of terms/descriptions within the same para, sometimes the same sentence, which I find jarring. Surely there was at least one person in the Gothic sector who doesn't have to refer to it as His Divine Majesty's Imperial Navy? Just one? There's a good variation of characters, but some of them end up falling flat as a result of not getting enough screentime. I remember being a much bigger part of the plot than it turns out he actually was. I' not sure if it was a repressed memory or not but I forgot the whole chaos agent subplot and still guessed pretty quickly who it was. Overall, I'd chuck it down as a To Taste. I enjoyed it, but it's not profound, and not sure how much of my enjoyment was just nostalgia. That said, couldn't put it down from start to finish so that's got to count for something, and it gives some interesting detail on areas not commonly (to my knowledge) fleshed out in the 40k universe.

Now, I have not read a black library novel back since I was a teenager and on some weird impulse ("sci-fi should have SPACESHIPS") picked up a copy of Execution Hour. That's it. That's my exposure to 40k novels. Anyway, due to my recent cruising around 40k lore, I acquired a copy of Fire Caste. Fehervahri is the name that comes up most commonly in nebulous 'best BL author/books' so I thought I'd roll with it. Overall I liked it. The setting felt unique, and Phaedra seemed very... complete? Visualisable? It was alien, but without being unimaginably so. I think in novel terms it was pretty short, and I think I'd have appreciated even more digging into the detail of the campaign; but I'm a logistics guy, and perhaps with that the book might have lost the air of mystery that permeates throughout. The characters, on the whole, were pretty cool as well; I really like that not every mystery/character motive was explained, although some felt underutilised (see spoilery bits below). Generally the intimate scale of it - combat when it happens tended to be small-scale, tanks are few are far between, and often-overlooked Sentinels are presented as a very real and scary threat - was good throughout. I agree with all of the comments that it's 40k Heart of Darkness, but only really in terms of the second act. More spoilery thoughts: In conclusion, I'd say it's a solid To taste. It has an awesome feel to it, and has a different take on the usual grim-darkness. It's not bolter/lasgun porn and doesn't always explain itself well, so if you prefer things to be more on-the-nose and detailed it's maybe not the one; if you like the weirder side of 40k, plot twists, and locations as characters, it's great.

Having added some flavour quotes, I'm declaring the Dimarian Shieldbreakers done. I will patiently await Challenge 5 to breathe some life into them.

Aw yeah I love me some Arthurian myth if something's continent-spanning I'd guess at there being more than a few hundred involved. The rest is all pretty solid, there's a few spelling/grammar bits here and there. What I really want to know now is: with this hyper-detailed backstory that is infered to be taught to every new Knight of the house, how has it shaped their character in whatever passes for the 'current' day? Do they rarely field household of knights, deploying as singular questing units? Does the Cerastus Knight exist, are there more, do they go out of the way to find more of these rare suits in deference to their liege of old? Do the people still have power or has the nobility stolen it back? Something like that.