War of Secrets by Phil Kelly- now available

[nagashnee]

Finished it today not impressed. While i LOVED the angle the novel went with the 4th expansion Tau fleet and its warp effects, that alas was the only real highlight to the novel. The Dark Angels are comically evil and inept, like bond level villain monologue in front of the captured person who is the only one we dont want to know the plan evil/indept. 

 

The entire 1 Tau in a ghostkill solos a marine fortress monastery complete with terminator units, pre pepared defences, librarians, command squads, captains, devastator units. But dont worry the marines eventually kill it FROM ORBIT...sigh.   Really takes the world fortress out of fortress monastery.

 

The primaries were alright, in that they confirmed everything i dont like about them as a concept, they are marines +1. Give them time in lore and they will become....marines +1 but with the characteristics of the chapters.  

 

The writing was ok, some phrases were used ALLOT. As others have said it suffered from too many subplots while having a very weak main story.

 

For me the whole fallen angle could have waited, have the fresh faced Ultramarine's in all but name have a genuine culture clash. I want to see them arrive on the rock, i want to see both the primaries perspective on these warrior monks and their secrets ( no need to have fallen in it to see how they handled the secrecy and information tier system) but also and this is where the novel real fails the perspective of the dark angels on the primaries. I want to see how the different factions of the chapter see them, how they react to the new tech, to a returned primarch....you know bring the DA into the new setting.  

 

All in all a very meh book. 

[rendingon1+]

I'm in the second chapter and can't handle primaris dialogues. They talk like teenagers, their jokes and banter is annoying + they are totally disrespectfull for the superiors (behind their backs). Feels like I'm reading about some Blood claws.

[Brother Dimetrius]

I'm in the second chapter and can't handle primaris dialogues. They talk like teenagers, their jokes and banter is annoying + they are totally disrespectfull for the superiors (behind their backs). Feels like I'm reading about some Blood claws.

 

Reading it right now, and this is also bothering me. Feels like I'm reading a rather poor young-adult novel. Which makes it all the more dissonant when it takes it pretty dark turn halfway through.

 

Nothing against Phil Kelly, but I've been looking forward to this for a while, and I'd rather had someone write it.

[rendingon1+]

Reading a little bit further - interrogation scene was a total golly gee moment. Not only Farren is extremely disrespectfull to higher ranking officers, his reports are nonsense and he lies shamelessly when asked. Also Kelly is realy cheap with showing how human primaris is and how DA are jerks (cloak thing) toward humans, especially when the former are tau sympathizers.

 

Besides how the hell primaris don't know DA command structure and equip? Farren is suprised that a chaplain holds Interrogator title and "recalls" that Nephilim is called Nephilim. This and when humans he fights yell "For the greater good" he doesn't recognize it for what it is.

 

I'm not sure I'll finish this.

[DarkChaplain]

That sounds like Phil Kelly alright. I mean, Primaris ARE basically youngsters who lack true experience. They're kitted out and got basic training but they lack the experience with command structures, true battles and the likes. They may be "Marines +1", but they're also "Marines -3" when it comes to basic competencies and overall maturity. They did not receive the years of training through Scout companies etc, and they don't even know who they just joined while knowing the other immature Primaris next to them.

 

These are NOT veterans. They're newly introduced to the Chapters in the Conquests series so far. They're new, they basically got a brief about their Primarch and general info on their parent Chapter. They haven't spent years of training there. They weren't even part of the recruitment process itself. They're told "you're green marines now because your genetic heritage was from green marines (originally black marines), have fun trying to integrate with your new family" and that's that. Guilliman hardly had the time to hold their hands there, he was traveling the galaxy dumping Primaris where needed, like on Baal.

 

Even what information they DID receive before heading out is unlikely to be very recent. The project's been going for millennia, and in that time, the Dark Angels especially have changed drastically in their rituals, command structure and so on. They know nothing about the Inner Circle, the purpose of Interrogator Chaplains, the Ravenwing or Deathwing, besides them being the fast attack company and the heavy duty company respectively. Of course that's causing problems - that isn't new to this novel, or unexpected. If anything, the Dark Angels' inherent structure and secrecy are the most expected to cause further friction, whereas Ultramarines, for all their initial misgivings, would try to teach them more closely and integrate them effectively. Similar goes for the Blood Angels. But the Dark Angels? They can't trust them, they know they were trained and sent by a 3rd party, not inducted by themselves and possibly even still reporting back to Guilliman.

 

That is not to excuse Phil Kelly, I despise his works. At best, they read like dry battle reports, at worst you get Thunderhawk-surfing Tau and cringey mustache-twirling Ethereal Popes upset at their Commanders being good at their jobs. I hate that he got to write Farsight, and keeps doing it. But some problems with Primaris are basically conceptual and worth looking at more closely. I have no doubt that somebody more competent could be doing those aspects justice without them feeling too juvenile and uncharacteristically un-40k.

[pandion40]

Not read the book but hadn’t the Primaris spent like a century campaigning with Guilliman before being dumped on the Dark Angels, that won’t help them with fitting in but it would mean they wouldn’t be the fresh faced newbs described here. They’d be experienced warriors by this point.

 

Also since many of the initial Primaris recruits are from the Heresy era are any of them from Caliban, I know it was destroyed after the Heresy but I’m unsure when exactly Cawl gathered his recruits or whether he could get any from caliban due to who was in charge there at the time.

 

Lastly any sign the DA are making their own Primaris as they would presumably be more trustworthy having gone through the DA indoctrination process.

[Commander Dawnstar]

The Primaris in War of Secrets are mentioned as having only fought in ten-to-fifteen large scale battles before the novel's events, most of which took place in test conditions on Mars or even Terra in some rare cases. They're well trained but lacking in true battlefield experience, let alone meaningful experience fighting alongside battle-brothers of their Chapter.

 

There's no acknowledgement of where the Primaris originally hail from. They certainly have stronger ties to Mars and Terra than anywhere else, regularly invoking Pater Cawl, adding references to Mars or the Omnissiah into their benedictions, and we even see one of them exclaim "What in cog's name...!" and "Cogs above!" There's nothing in particularly to suggest they have any memory or recollection of Caliban.

 

These lads are clearly supposed to be some of the first Primaris joining the Dark Angels. The lack of familiarity the Chapter's Apothecaries have with Primaris physiology is a massive plot point, so I'm pretty certain this isn't set at a time when they're in any position to be churning out their own Primaris Marines.

[DarkChaplain]

They were part of the Indomitus Crusade, but did not participate in all of it. They were basically left with their Chapters along the way, whenever they could meet. Seeing how the Conquests series is set DURING the Indomitus Crusade, and early in it, these Primaris have seen a few decades at best, none of which was spent along with their Chapter, but among themselves, other newcomers, who'd have a very different way to treat one another since they were all new to things.

We've seen how Scouts treat one another, or freshly-inducted Marines. Pharos had some good stuff there, for example. Marines fresh from the production line are prone to be hot-headed and need to be brought in line more often than not. But these went without the support of their Chapters, and whatever time they spent with Guilliman before being dispatched to their respective Chapters only reinforced that their way of doing things would differ from their parent Chapters'. It was bound to be a culture shock merging the two. Just think of how hard it was for Torghun to adjust to being a White Scar.

 

Seeing how Cawl was still a lowly, if genius, tech-adept just before the Siege, and Guilliman had never met him or even conceived of the Primaris project, and the destruction of Caliban happened pretty close after the Siege, I highly doubt any Primaris were born on Caliban before being taken. Even if they had been, they would have been with Luther, not with the Lion.

[Enosh]

yeah i'm out after the "Tau solos a fortress monastery" part

there is drivel and then there is this...

[Plaguecaster]

Wait hang on the Tau is named Kais? And is a pretty emotionless as well as deranged individual who views himself as a weapon and just focuses on killing stuff??

That sounds exactly like the Tau From the old PS2 fire warrior game / novel by Simon Spurrier as there was a Tau with the exact same name and who acts in that exact same manner and killed a great deal of enemies both chaos and Imperial all by himself becoming unhinged from being mainupulated by a daemon

To be fair I generally don't care about Dark angels but the spoilers about the Tau sound interesting enough that I may actually pick it up now just to read it

[Commander Dawnstar]

That's been a point of ambiguity since the character was first introduced back in Fourth of Fifth Edition. Kais is a very common T'au honorific - the T'au Commander in Dark Crusade was called Kais and Farsight has it in his name for example - and we've been told so little about the Monat Supreme over the years that we've only really been able to guess at his origin. The novelisation of Fire Warrior mentions the Damocles Gulf Crusade having taken place 200 years in the past, however, so ultimately it seems very unlikely that La'Kais and Monat-Kais are the same character when the latter is supposed to have trained under Puretide before the Crusade.

[rendingon1+]

Couldn't finish it. This novel is just dumb.

[b1soul]

Asking for that in relation to a novel that was supposed to highlight how the Dark Angels deal with the new Primaris dudes suddenly showing up on their doorstep, not knowing jack all about their traditions, history and tragedy is pretty silly, though.

I think you misunderstand...I'm not asking for that.

 

I agree that the subject matter of War of Secrets lends itself to the secrecy theme (though I think Kelly's execution, like that of most other DA authours, is too clumsy...not deft enough, if you will).

 

What I'm imploring BL to do is...please start introducing more 40K DA novels that focus on other aspects of the DA, other than secrecy. How about a novel series with little or nothing to do with the Fallen? That would be great. Some novels could still focus on the secrecy theme...of course it need not be dropped altogether, but I would hope that the job falls upon a sufficiently skilled authour capable of handling it with a deft hand.

 

So far, I think the problem is two-fold:

1. The secrecy theme has been over-represented

2. The secrecy theme has not been handled in a deft, compelling way...rather, it's been rather heavy-handed and juvenile almost

[Manchu warlord]

For those who have read it, how is the writing quality of Phil Kelly? 

[b1soul]

I would describe him as not much better than Gav Thorpe, so if you like Thorpe's prose, you might like his

[DarkChaplain]

I'd describe Kelly as much, much worse than Thorpe. Gav has a particular flavor and his dialogue is satisfying, whereas with Kelly, you're happy when he writes battlereport-style-dry.

[b1soul]

Gav is very bland to me. Kelly is somewhat less bland, but not in a good way

 

...to each his own

[pandion40]

 

Asking for that in relation to a novel that was supposed to highlight how the Dark Angels deal with the new Primaris dudes suddenly showing up on their doorstep, not knowing jack all about their traditions, history and tragedy is pretty silly, though.

I think you misunderstand...I'm not asking for that.

I agree that the subject matter of War of Secrets lends itself to the secrecy theme (though I think Kelly's execution, like that of most other DA authours, is too clumsy...not deft enough, if you will).

What I'm imploring BL to do is...please start introducing more 40K DA novels that focus on other aspects of the DA, other than secrecy. How about a novel series with little or nothing to do with the Fallen? That would be great. Some novels could still focus on the secrecy theme...of course it need not be dropped altogether, but I would hope that the job falls upon a sufficiently skilled authour capable of handling it with a deft hand.

So far, I think the problem is two-fold:

1. The secrecy theme has been over-represented

2. The secrecy theme has not been handled in a deft, compelling way...rather, it's been rather heavy-handed and juvenile almost

I understand where your coming from, I’m a Blood Angel fan and for a long time our fiction came in two varieties, it focused on the flaws or it gave us red ultramarines. We’ve finally started getting the fiction we need though, Dante, Devastation of Baal and the Mephiston novel all contain plenty of references to the flaws, but they also explore other aspects of the Blood Angels that have been ignored for years

 

There are differences in how you can handle the Dark Angels and Blood Angels though, the BA Flaws need to be entwined in every story to some extent, especially the Thirst as the BA feel it constantly but it doesn’t need to be the focus, with the Dark Angels you’re even more free as you could have the secrecy aspect in the background or you can tell a convincing DA story without even mentioning that aspect of them.

 

On an unrelated matter I want the lion to wake up soon, but I kind of want him to be angry with the way his sons have behaved during their hunt for the fallen, since he went to sleep before the hunt for the fallen began he didn’t sanction their borderline traitorous behaviour. Unless I missed something in the lore as I’m not a DA fan.

[b1soul]

@pandion40

 

"with the Dark Angels you’re even more free as you could have the secrecy aspect in the background or you can tell a convincing DA story without even mentioning that aspect of them"

 

Yes, agreed. It's the same as writing a WS story which acknowledges the WS affinity for speed without focusing on it. Certainly, a story could focus on it...for example, a tale exploring the contrast between the WS and the Imperial Fists...but I would hope that a lot of stories explore other aspects of the WS, or at least explore the speed theme intelligently, rather than doing it in a childish manner, like having jetbike scene after jetbike scene.

[Marshal Loss]

Phil Kelly has done it again.

[Commander Dawnstar]

There's an interview with Phil Kelly about the novel on Warhammer Community today.

 

For those of you who are curious, the last line of the novel is:

 

‘Welcome, at last,’ said Interrogator-Chaplain Zaeroph, ‘to the Dark Angels.’

[Guest Triszin]

There's an interview with Phil Kelly about the novel on Warhammer Community today.

 

For those of you who are curious, the last line of the novel is:

 

‘Welcome, at last,’ said Interrogator-Chaplain Zaeroph, ‘to the Dark Angels.’

is this in reference to the primaris?

[Commander Dawnstar]

Mhm.

 

The Primaris squad we follow through the novel are ultimately inducted into a new 'Circle Primaris' after earning the trust of their superiors:

 

‘Yet we cannot elevate you to the brotherhood of huntsmen,’ said Dothrael. ‘Not without the consent of Supreme Grand Master Azrael himself. Instead,’ at this, he pulled out a golden aspergillum and flicked blessed oil at their feet, ‘you will be incepted into a new brotherhood entirely, until the Chapter’s elders can decide on the ultimate fate of your kind. But you have proven too useful an asset to waste.’

 

The hairs on Farren’s neck stood up at the Librarian’s choice of words. For a moment, he thought of his friend Moricani, and the manner of his death. But he said nothing. He had a feeling that within the brotherhood of the Dark Angels, keeping silent would prove the most useful skill of all.

 

‘You will pursue leads that we cannot,’ said the Chaplain. ‘Not only within the Ultima Founding and the works of the Primarch Guilliman, but also the Martian priesthood. You will put the agendas of the Chapter, as stated by your superiors, before all other concerns. All that which you witness from this point on belongs to the Chapter, and the Chapter alone. Do you understand, aspirant brothers?’

 

‘Aye,’ they said as one.

 

‘Then welcome to your new lives.’

[Cpt_Reaper]

So it seems that, at the end of the day, this novel is going to add more fuel to the raging inferno of a dumpster fire that is...

 

"DoRk AnGlEs ArE HeReTiCs" which I simply cannot stand.

 

Am I wrong? Please let me be wrong.

[DarkChaplain]

They're not heretics. They don't go against the Emperor. They're merely selfish jackasses who put their own shameful past before what they perceive as relatively minor battles. They don't like to cooperate, but they won't openly betray the Imperium, even if they may leave it hanging if more pressing concerns arise. But it's not like that's something exclusive to them...