War of Secrets by Phil Kelly- now available

[Felix Antipodes]

Finally finished this  .  An easy enough read as long as you are strip-mining it for lore (as I was) rather than looking for high literature.

 

Good Stuff

It appears to be set early in the Ultima Crusade period, as the Primaris seconded to the DA are experienced but not overly so.  It helps justify (in my eyes) why the DA are such bastards and suspicious of them being Guilliman spies.

The hints at the Primaris training system and style were also welcome.  Any new background details are good at this point.  Hunting rogue servitors on Mars?  No wonder so many got killed in the initial stages of the Crusade.

It would appear that Primaris don’t go through the same type of deep psychological conditioning and mind scrubbing that Astartes do, which would explain why they have so much trouble fitting into their new Chapters.

The newly created Circle Primaris – was it just these four inducted or was the entire Primaris detachment done off camera?

The look at the Angels of Absolution (AoA), their homeworld and the snippets of info given were probably the highlight for me.  Still not sure if Master Castellan Moddren is their Chapter Master equivalent or just the guy left minding the store while the rest of the Chapter was out and about, but that’s a minor quibble.

Expanding on the Chalnath Expanse setting from Codex: T’au Empire was also good, although I couldn’t work out where they were in that timeline.  Before the T’au find out they are still alive I think.

Not So Good Stuff

The speech pattern(s) of the Primaris.  I will give Kelly the benefit of the doubt and assume he was trying to hit a style closer to 30K than 40K to differentiate the characters and show they are from a fundamentally different era.  As another Frater pointed out, they came across as whiney teenagers instead and missed both marks.  The lack of respect for rank was also jarring and nothing I’ve read in any other Primaris storylines.

Talking of never seen before, the love for Terra, but especially Mars, was also jarring.  Pater Cawl?  Really?  The peak of the Mars geneto-military machine?  Thought they belonged to the Emperor.

Worse by far was the moustache-twirling portrayal of the Dark Angels hierarchy and even the rank-and-file.  I just flat out believe that even Inner Circle DA would act like these did.  Pacts with Xenos against one of the other Unforgiven?  Totally lost it there for me.

While I understand Kelly was trying to foreshadow and/or set-up later plot lines he overused the role of the Primaris Belisarian Furnace implant.  It quickly became a bit of a party trick.

Suddenly all’s forgiven between Farren and the DA hierarchy once they say ‘We like you, forget about your best mate we just assassinated’.  Doesn’t ring true unless Farren is planning some sort of revenge in a possible sequel.

 

 

Conclusion

Not the best read, but okay if you focus on the story not the style.  While there were parts of this where I found it hard to maintain my focus (the literary equivalent of checking the clock continually) I would still read the follow up that Kelly has obviously planned for i.e. the DA vs AoA bunfight hinted at.  Will it finally split the tightly bound Unforgiven if (when?) word of this gets out?

[Azoriel]

 

Worse by far was the moustache-twirling portrayal of the Dark Angels hierarchy and even the rank-and-file.  I just flat out believe that even Inner Circle DA would act like these did.  Pacts with Xenos against one of the other Unforgiven?  Totally lost it there for me.

 

 

I think this part often gets overlooked by a lot of people.  

 

The infamously mistrustful and xenophobic "secret legion" makes a deal with alient outsiders to take care of elements within the secret legion?  To avoid doing it themselves?

 

 

No doubt it's because it would be completely out of character for the Dark Angels to conduct an internal purge!  Who could imagine the Dark Angels ever getting their own hands dirty by doing violence on friendly forces? 

 

Let alone astartes of the same gene seed!

 

 

Clearly, they would need some outside party to act on their behalf.  Because, you know, it would arouse too much suspicion if an "accident" or mishap were to befall friendly forces with Dark Angels nearby - that never happens.  

 

And it's not like anything like that happened in the novel itself to a certain primaris astartes.