Search the Community

Surprised nobody is talking about the new Crime novel yet. I'm on chapter 9, so about a quarter through, and enjoying this new Baggit & Clodde adventure a great deal. They're still delightfully chaotic. A highlight for me is that the book really goes to town with the fact that, yes, the Imperium is bloody racist. It's not just those xenos, or blatant mutants, but also abhumans who are on the receiving end of the stick. They're tolerated, but treated like garbage, indoctrinated into believing their uncleanliness is a sin and that the standard humans are basically saintly figures who "forgive" them for it, even as they brand them for punishment and enslave them by way of labor camps. The first chapter alone drives the point of this ideology home wonderfully - and it's also part of a core plotpoint, because this attitude backfires heavily on the humes. Baggit & Clodde meanwhile are in a labor camp on the outset, hiding from the consequences of their previous screw up. It serves well to highlight this human-abhuman dynamic from the ground, while also allowing for some of the expected hilarity. And frankly, Alec is nailing the dialogue in the book. It's gritty but entertaining, sometimes it's even deliberately sloppy, as we're not working with high-minded academics but simple gutter trash with their own dialects. It's very atmospheric, and puts to rest what worries I had when Baggit & Clodde went from audio drama performances to prose. Can't wait to see where this'll end up, because damn I'm having genuine fun. More than I've had with a BL novel in a long while.