The Lords of Silence

[Apothecary Vaddon]

Finished it - still don't really care for the DG or Nurgle much, but the novel was good. Vorx is a surprisingly relatable protagonist, even for me as someone who gravitates almost entirely towards the loyalists. 

 

 

Was interesting to see Jarnhamar name-dropped, and the Iron Shades too (though I only realized their connection after looking them up). 

[Sandlemad]

Absolutely fantastic book, better than any of Wraight's other (also very good) books except his WS work.

 

The narratorial voice was excellent; weary, wry, cynical. In Vorx Wraight's also put out his most endearing protagonist since Shiban; a lord of the legion who:

• doesn't hate the imperium
• is polite to his subordinates (including his butler), even bowing to the ship's captain when she inadvertently corrects him
• is gentle with his nurglings
• is understanding of his champions' desires to step over his body on the path to glory, wistfully accepting that that's just the way of things while wishing he could have been a mentor to the champion, who he quite likes
• is writing a book of biographies about everyone he's killed and is genuinely saddened by the fact that there are so many lives he only knows a little about
• is loyal to his primarch for liberating Barbarus while gently acknowledging Mortarion's many flaws
• wants to some day retire to his mansion on the Plague Planet to look after his fields and library in peace
• earnestly wants to bring Nurgle's blessing to the poor benighted citizens of the galaxy while seeing worshipers of the other chaos gods as misguided

Seriously, he's irked by his champion's brutality towards the gunnery crews because they're trying their best. I can't imagine any imperial leader doing the same.

Edited August 24, 2018 by Sandlemad

[Mellow]

Nurgle is love.

[Calas Typhon]

Im not going to lie, this is by far the best book I have read (Listened too in this case) by BL in a very very long time. Wraight really put out a solid book. 

 

As fitting as the Nurglings were, I was not a fan of them. Bar the small 'Critters' moment on the farm planet which was teetering on monster movie stuff, which was pretty fun. 

 

- The small moment in the book but biggest point for me was that this might be the most solid view we have of Typhon and Mortarion and what they want. It was always the Impression that Typhon wanted to forward the position of Nurgle, and its clear he has a lot of favour from Nurgle. However it is Typhon and not Mortarion that wants the destruction of Terra and has his sights set and not Mortarion who seems to just want to play the long game in the warp and to take on his brothers.

 

- The descriptions of the Plague Planet in how it looks, the various factions and interaction of the slave populace brought in and the beast men with the Unbroken was pretty great to finally see and hear about. The implication that many have abandoned the war to settle on the planet (and lose their sanity) was pretty fresh too. 

 

- I do not like space battles. However there was plenty of pretty cool in this book. The Emptying the garbage can to literally melt a mechanicum ship was pretty great. 

 

- The Protagonist was very likeable. His motives were very understandable, he could be related to, he was not a moustache twirling villain as has been shown of the DG in every other book with them in. He obviously cares for the Lords of Silence rather than following his own goals fully, but he is not unwilling to choke someone out who takes liberties. 

 

Not really another point, but the Choking of the once Apothecary was pretty cool. Genuinely smiled while listening to it.

 

Obviously, I am massively happy with this book. It was wholly focused on the Death Guard rather than any other sub factions, and when it was someone other than the DG, It was to either forward how the DG are not as clear cut as they seem or to fill in a gap for the story to progress. 

 

Finally a minor point is that there was an awful lot of the word ':cuss' in this which was definitely a step in the right direction. This book is definitely targeted towards an older audience I really gather. 

[Pathstrider]

Absolutely fantastic book, better than any of Wraight's other (also very good) books except his WS work.

 

The narratorial voice was excellent; weary, wry, cynical....

I agree with all of that, and the beauty of it is that none of it takes away from the fact he's still a monster responsible for the deaths of millions.

 

The fact Wraight can do both is brilliant.

Edited August 24, 2018 by Pathstrider

[b1soul]

You guys would rank this above Emperor's Legion? High praise indeed?

[Kilofix]

Now that I’ve actually started reading it, it reminds me of (dare I compare) ADB’s Night Lords. Lots of interactions with the Legion and the ship’s crew, etc. Edited August 25, 2018 by Kilofix

[Sandlemad]

You guys would rank this above Emperor's Legion? High praise indeed?

I would. That’s a fine book with a rushed third act but this is well paced, great three-dimensional characters with very different views of the world in different POVs, good battle scenes, wonderful narratorial voice (probably my favourite thing about it), a carefully thought out variant look at the appeal of Nurgle, and all the faction-specific cultural detail that the Death Guard have lacked (e.g. they privately refer to themselves as the Unbroken, in a similar way to the wolves being the Rout, but then they take different meanings from the term).

 

Following on from what Kilofix said, I would put this comfortably up there in the top tier of well written CSM fiction that give you a good idea of warband dynamics and relationships. The Night Lord books, the Fabius Bile books, bits of the Black Legion books.

Edited August 24, 2018 by Sandlemad

[Fire Golem]

Not that I’ve actually started reading it, it reminds me of (dare I compare) ADB’s Night Lords. Lots of interactions with the Legion and the ship’s crew, etc.

I got a similar feel, too.

[RedFox]

Where the characters around during the Horus Heresy? Is there a lot of reference to it?

[Sandlemad]

Where the characters around during the Horus Heresy? Is there a lot of reference to it?

 

Some were but not all. The dialogue with Mortarion touches on the crusade a fair bit. There's also a nice brief reminiscence from Vorx about the moment he saw the walls coming down. Other than that, not as much as the Night Lords books for example.

[Orwell84]

 

Where the characters around during the Horus Heresy? Is there a lot of reference to it?

 

Some were but not all. The dialogue with Mortarion touches on the crusade a fair bit. There's also a nice brief reminiscence from Vorx about the moment he saw the walls coming down. Other than that, not as much as the Night Lords books for example.

 

 

There's also an alternative viewpoint from Dragan, a stripling only two thousand years old, who reflects on how he still has more real-time experience than some Heresy veterans, and nurses a contempt for all primarchs save his own. Far from rejoicing in their return to the Long War, Dragan suspects that they'll foul things up again as they did the first time. I like it when we get legion characters who aren't Heresy veterans; in some ways they have an even more interesting POV.

 

That said, Vorx as noted by Sandlemad above is shaping up as one of the best written villains to come out of BL in years. Looking forward to seeing how this book plays out.

[Sandlemad]

 

There's also an alternative viewpoint from Dragan, a stripling only two thousand years old, who reflects on how he still has more real-time experience than some Heresy veterans, and nurses a contempt for all primarchs save his own. Far from rejoicing in their return to the Long War, Dragan suspects that they'll foul things up again as they did the first time. I like it when we get legion characters who aren't Heresy veterans; in some ways they have an even more interesting POV.

 

Yeah, it was good to hear that explicitly laid out from the POV of a non-heresy veteran. Khayon says something similar in the Black Legion books but for a heavily mutated turncoat to say as much is a nice touch. Dragan even makes the point that he spent longer living in the material world (presumably as a astartes in his forgotten chapter) than the primarchs ever did before they ascended/left for the warp. He's certainly been doing this for longer than Talos and company

 

 

“And, see, so much of all the old prestige is no better than new :cuss. It doesn’t matter. Vorx was spawned ten thousand years ago on a world now rendered inert by virus bombs, and Dragan was spawned two thousand years ago on some Imperial hive cluster that is, as far as he knows, still very much in active life. What does that mean? That Vorx has eight thousand more years of experience under his sagging belt?

 

No. It does not. It means nothing. Dragan has met creatures birthed at the dawn of the Imperial Age whose voyages in the Eye have given them less subjective life experience than he has. It matters not where one comes from, nor on what world one’s cells first fused together. It only matters what one does once the choked breaths start coming.”

 

 

 

I like that the old 'noob renegades' vs 'ten millennia of experience uberveterans' fan dichotomy is complicated by stuff like this. I found it interesting how apart from a half-hearted 'thinblood' insult from Typhus, no one in Dragan's warband or the legion particularly seems to care. He'll occasionally look at some of the DG customs with the eye of someone who will never get used to them but otherwise he's Death Guard to his core.

 

There's a great diversity of opinion among the characters in this book RE: the legion, its values, the primarchs, Abaddon, the imperium.

[b1soul]

Who would typically be cobsidered more senior in the Traitor Legions?

 

Someone like Talos who was at the Siege but has only several centuries of experience (cuz Warp time shenanigans) or someone like Dragan who may have been born in M39 but has over two millenia of experience. That would be an interesting dynamic.

 

Also, it's interesting to think of Heresy veterans who have only a few decades of experience since participating in the Siege (cuz Warp shenanigans again). For these guys, the Siege was almost literally yesterday.

[Pathstrider]

I'm not sure you could say typically, but my thinking is that the death guard values being an "original" more due to it retaining cohesion as a legion. For most warbands I'd say it'd be a lesser issue and depends more on who has the favour of the gods

 

What I found interesting was that the book implies that barbaras born members of the legion are now aren't a clear majority any more.

Edited August 26, 2018 by Pathstrider

[Kilofix]

Just starting on it and realized it was Dragan from the novel Endurance.

[bluntblade]

Who would typically be cobsidered more senior in the Traitor Legions?

 

Someone like Talos who was at the Siege but has only several centuries of experience (cuz Warp time shenanigans) or someone like Dragan who may have been born in M39 but has over two millenia of experience. That would be an interesting dynamic.

 

Also, it's interesting to think of Heresy veterans who have only a few decades of experience since participating in the Siege (cuz Warp shenanigans again). For these guys, the Siege was almost literally yesterday.

Presumably this is why Chaos factions work more on a basis of "what have you done for me lately?"

[b1soul]

Or I suppose..."what have you not done against me lately"

[Kilofix]

Question and an observation:

 

What did Slert shoot Marchad’s APC with on Najan? I’m assuming the Nurglings were just hitchhikers from the environment?

 

 

It seems like Vorx is much more laid back, and indulgent, and not beyond self exposition, compared to most of the other post-change Death Guard that I’ve come to know. I suppose that is indeed in character with Nurgle. And also in character with a few other portrayals of DG like the one from Vox Dominus. But the majority of DG in other books (Nurgle’s Gift, Dead Men, Pandorax, Gaunt’s Ghosts, even the revered Echos) are still of the scary, personalityless, inexorably advancing kind. This isn’t necessarily a conflict. Just an observation

Edited August 29, 2018 by Kilofix

[b1soul]

Umm...did Mort just semi-confirm the return of the loyalist primarchs:

 

‘There are things I have seen, snatches of dreams that I never thought would be waked from. My brothers are stirring. You hear this? My brothers. Magnus revives his tedious old blood feud, but it will not end there. The few surviving loyal sons will be found again. ’ Mortarion chuckles. ‘Abaddon can do what he wishes. I no longer care for Terra – I was there, and damaged it so deeply it will never recover. My business now is, you might say, within the family.’

Vorx hears the words no longer care for Terra, but does not take them in. That must have been some mistake, some lack of understanding on his part, but it is rare for Mortarion to speak loosely, despite all the vagaries and part-prophecy that always litter his utterances.

‘I have seen this,’ Mortarion says, cracking a half-smile that makes the puckered skin above his rebreather flex awkwardly. ‘I believe I am the first to do so. Guilliman will revive. The numbers tell me this, and I have travelled far within the Garden to confirm it.

 

There are groves that hiss his name in the wind. I look into pools and see his face ­staring at me. Guilliman! Stiff, dreary Guilliman. I’d have preferred another one. The Lion, perhaps, whom I always quite admired. But one will do, even the dull one.’

 

I'm not sure whether the first and second bold portions contradict each other...

[DarkChaplain]

Mortarion knows they're still kicking. He's doing pretty hardcore witchcraft these days, anyway. Not like we don't at the very least have a statement from Russ that he'll be back anyway, or that the Lion is still alive but comatose... Mortarion doesn't make a timeframe for anything, though, and only has hard confirmation about Guilliman right then, ahead of time.

[bluntblade]

That last bit... Wraight venting a little, perhaps?

[helterskelter]

Few surviving loyal sons imply more are dead dead.

Dorn/jags/corax are ones that went without word so maybe they're all off the table even with Thorpes novel with corax.

Sang is definitely gone

Lion was in universe and asleep so

Vulkan is perpetual and gave a returning prophecy

Russ gave a returning prophecy

Rob is alive and kicking.

So at most 4/8 but at least Lion and Vulkan by that hint. Need this book.

[Morovir]

Ferrus is also definitely dead, his body dismembered and his skull given by Guilliman to the Iron Hands to get them to accept the Codex.

[Calas Typhon]

The moments leading to and including Mortarion were probably the more interesting parts of the book for me.

 

- The Deathshroud now speak and interact with other Legionaries, some even knowing their names now.

- In the future Mortarion believes or sees that Abaddon has split the galaxy unbeknown to our lead. Although obvious it could potentially mean that Abaddon has split things up to pre GC levels.

- Mortarion can sit down

- The Mortarion's Heart incident was entirely pointless because he does not care about Terra or the Imperium to a real extent and cares more for meetings with his Loyalist Brothers 

- Magnus and his sons really are not liked by the Death Guard and get a very special kind of hate in this book.