Rate what you Read, or the fight against Necromancy

[Scribe]

I'm not concerned with others views or consensus. I feel his books are carried by his name alone.

[Kelborn]

Nonetheless, it's his view on the subject.

 

If he feels that way, it is ok to share his thoughts.

 

To each his own.

 

But still, saying it for once in a review is fine. But repeating it in several threads for multiple times shall be avoided. :)

[Roomsky]

Just chiming in to say that while I disagree with Scribe (oh boy do I), this thread does exist to encourage free trade of opinions. Praise maligned books or attack beloved ones, all are welcome here, so long as you provide some kind of review as accompaniment.

[Noserenda]

On a weird note, i did actually run into a Cult of Mithras a while back whilst doing research for something else, thuogh given the chaps i spoke to i suspect it was more of a boys club than a bull sacrificing warrior cult :D 

[aa.logan]

I’m not sure how many societies so obviously based around Ancient Greece and Rome there are right now but Olympia and Macragge are right there in the Heresy; likewise the chances of a society modelled on the Mongolian steppes popping up on the far side of the galaxy seem pretty remote- if you start picking holes with the appearance of tropes and archetypes as unbelievable when reading BL you’re going to be surrounded by a whole mess of thread before you get past chapter one.

 

Are these recurring themes and ideas so deeply ingrained in the human psyche? Is that way they have periodic revivals? Is it the presence of supremely old people like the Emperor and the perpetuals who are responsible for seeding ideas in cultures long after they die out elsewhere? Are they translations or shorthand into 21st Century English of metaphors and ideas so that we, the reader, can relate to concepts? Are they just cool ideas to put into books?

 

Who knows.

[StrangerOrders]

I’m not sure how many societies so obviously based around Ancient Greece and Rome there are right now but Olympia and Macragge are right there in the Heresy; likewise the chances of a society modelled on the Mongolian steppes popping up on the far side of the galaxy seem pretty remote- if you start picking holes with the appearance of tropes and archetypes as unbelievable when reading BL you’re going to be surrounded by a whole mess of thread before you get past chapter one.

 

Are these recurring themes and ideas so deeply ingrained in the human psyche? Is that way they have periodic revivals? Is it the presence of supremely old people like the Emperor and the perpetuals who are responsible for seeding ideas in cultures long after they die out elsewhere? Are they translations or shorthand into 21st Century English of metaphors and ideas so that we, the reader, can relate to concepts? Are they just cool ideas to put into books?

 

Who knows.

Well if we want to pick at it, Wolfsbane does have the Emp noting that at its peak Dark Age Humanity liked reviving myths for the sake of flexing their superiority.

 

Heck, Fenris was literally made to be a live-action perpetual Ragnarok. It doesn't get much more arrogant and asking for comeuppance than to turn a world into an apocalyptic myth which is paradoxically unending to flex your percieved invincibility.

 

We also know that age grants power and we know from some Perpetuals (mostly thinking of McNeill's Wolf Mother) that alot of seemingly primitive or barbaric stuff insetting is deliberately engineered to channel human proclivities and warp-resonance. That its noted to have been one of the Emp's greatest talents is also telling.

 

There is alot to infer that this stuff has an effect. Which is frankly one of the things I love about 40k being able to dance around the barrier between Sci-Fi and Fantasy, I was actually originally sold on 40k with the premise that it was 'Halo crossed with Scrapped Princess and Berserk'. 

 

 

On a weird note, i did actually run into a Cult of Mithras a while back whilst doing research for something else, thuogh given the chaps i spoke to i suspect it was more of a boys club than a bull sacrificing warrior cult

Unrelated but can you imagine what an enormous flex it would be in 40k (or even 30k) Terra to get your hands on an actual bull just to sacrifice it? That seems like the 'Cigar rolled with 10k yen notes' of 30k. 

 

Also, a question since this thread is orientated towards older books and Saturnine is very new. Is it cool to review Lion El Jonsen yet? Because I've been waiting to do that but assumed it was still too new.

Edited August 16, 2020 by StrangerOrders

[Kelborn]

Why shouldn't you review the Lion?

 

One could publish a review on the release day.

 

Either if you want to use the Lion thread, as that's not as old as others, or this one is up to you, I'd say.

[byrd9999]

Valdor, by Chris Wraight.

 

Wow. This one took me by surprise. I was expecting it to be good, but this not only totally surpassed my expectations from Chapter 1, but continued to get better throughout.

 

I was a bit skeptical of the premise of this book beforehand, and thought it might reveal too much behind-the-curtain stuff and remove some of the magic and mystery of the post-Unity pre-Great Crusade era. (for example, I NEVER want to know who the missing primarchs are or what happened to them). But, Wraight did a masterful job with this one. Random thoughts:

 

- Valdor is the titular character, but by no means the only main character.

- High Lord Kandawire was a great character and plot device, using her to uncover the mystery of what happened to the Thunder Warriors, as a point of political order and integrity.

- The existence of Amar Astarte is not only hilarious (like Arkhan Land), but the whole book goes to pains to show that the Emperor wasn't a one-man show, and that he was a talent-spotting delegator too.

- Expertly and seamlessly linked in: Blood Games, Golden Throne, Luna, Thunder Warriors, Malcador, Primarchs' creation, Primarchs' scattering, Astartes creation, High Lords function, The Palace. It must have been quite a juggling act in the planning stage, to balance the existing lore on so many elements central to this book, but, credit to the author, it's all so seamless and nothing feels hamfisted for the sake of shoehorning something in.

- Emperor remains suitably mysterious, and yet seeing the creation of the Space Marines, putting them into context as the successors of the Thunder Warriors, adds so much weight to what happens in the Heresy and the way it turns out the way it does. I've had many moments of 'Why didn't the Emperor just talk to his sons more?", and we get a rationale of sorts to that in here.

- The moments when Valdor tries to think beyond his conditioning. The sense of stoicism is so well done. He keeps circling back to the same thoughts, but then his conditioning kicks in, like an ASD-trigger, and he just goes back to the "usual obsessions" and cleans his weapon for the millionth time.

 

Chris Wraight is up there with ADB and Dan Abnett as one of the best writers writing for BL. Elegant prose, plenty of breathing room in the sentences, great word choice, believable characters and dialogue, not a wasted scene. He keeps maturing and improving.

 

10/10.

[byrd9999]

War Without End (Horus Heresy Book 33)

 

My quest to read the Heresy in order continues. "War Without End" is a suitable title for a mid-54-book series containing mainly filler and padding, with the only discernible thematic link being the inconsequential nature of a lot of these stories.

 

- I quite like Annandale, but Sermon of Exodus is one of the worst BL shorts I've read.

- I don't like a lot of McNeill, and The Devine Adoratrice is everything that grinds my gears about his style. If I were to write a pastiche of McNeill's output, it would have turned out identical to TDA.

- ADB's Howl of the Hearthworld is nice enough, but seems like filler. Lord of the Red Sands is much much better.

- Twisted by Guy Haley did in 20 pages what Vengeful Spirit struggled to do in 500.

- No one ever thought to ask James Swallow to continue the story of one of the assassins from Nemesis, but it was one of the best in the book.

- Pleasant padding from Rob Sanders, Gav Thorpe, Andy Smillie.

- Nick Kyme is underrated, imo. His 4 stories were enjoyable.

- Chris Wraight's Daemonology and Allegiance were better.

 

 

It's difficult to assess an unchronological collection of random stories, so I'll go with my gut. During my reading of this, I picked out a couple of stories from Tales of The Heresy (Blood Games and The Last Church) to read to my son, and the difference between the two collections was noticeable, in tone and length of story, and in what the stories were trying to do.

 

To compare it to music, some compilation albums can recontextualise an artist's songs and make them appear in a different light, enhancing some aspects and drawing out previously unconsidered nuance, whereas other compilations are jumbles of disparate tracks that are no better than an iPod-shuffle party. War Without End is the iPod-shuffle party of the Heresy.

 

As a whole, it felt like a 6/10.

Edited August 16, 2020 by byrd9999

[Lord_Caerolion]

I’m not sure how many societies so obviously based around Ancient Greece and Rome there are right now but Olympia and Macragge are right there in the Heresy; likewise the chances of a society modelled on the Mongolian steppes popping up on the far side of the galaxy seem pretty remote- if you start picking holes with the appearance of tropes and archetypes as unbelievable when reading BL you’re going to be surrounded by a whole mess of thread before you get past chapter one.

 

Are these recurring themes and ideas so deeply ingrained in the human psyche? Is that way they have periodic revivals? Is it the presence of supremely old people like the Emperor and the perpetuals who are responsible for seeding ideas in cultures long after they die out elsewhere? Are they translations or shorthand into 21st Century English of metaphors and ideas so that we, the reader, can relate to concepts? Are they just cool ideas to put into books?

 

Who knows.

 

Personally, I headcanon it that it works the same way Low/High Gothic does. Is Jaghatai Khan really named after one of the sons of Genghis Khan, and have the same title? No, but it gives the right impression to us.

 

That, or somebody's been beaming the contents of Wikipedia out into the void, and the signal including info on the Mongol Empire reached the planet that would be Chogoris as their settlers were first constructing their new society, and they thought these messages from the past seemed awesome. 

[mc warhammer]

i guess "khan" is as likely to survive as the word "emperor" into 30k

[Scribe]

There needs to be some suspension of disbelief for some of this to work out.

 

If we want to believe that we would have the same anything, in 30K years after the earth had become a nuclear wasteland, after being ravaged by AI driven robots, after having beings from beyond space and time rip through the planet and enslave the species...well...

 

The language that formed ours, almost completely forgotten or out of use, and thats in a period of less than 1000 years.

 

On Old English, from Wikipedia.

 

"While indicating that the establishment of dates is an arbitrary process, Albert Baugh dates Old English from 450 to 1150, a period of full inflections, a synthetic language.^[3] Perhaps around 85% of Old English words are no longer in use, but those that survived are the basic elements of Modern English vocabulary.^[3]"

[Fedor]

War Without End (Horus Heresy Book 33)

 

My quest to read the Heresy in order continues. "War Without End" is a suitable title for a mid-54-book series containing mainly filler and padding, with the only discernible thematic link being the inconsequential nature of a lot of these stories.

 

- I quite like Annandale, but Sermon of Exodus is one of the worst BL shorts I've read.

- I don't like a lot of McNeill, and The Devine Adoratrice is everything that grinds my gears about his style. If I were to write a pastiche of McNeill's output, it would have turned out identical to TDA.

- ADB's Howl of the Hearthworld is nice enough, but seems like filler. Lord of the Red Sands is much much better.

- Twisted by Guy Haley did in 20 pages what Vengeful Spirit struggled to do in 500.

- No one ever thought to ask James Swallow to continue the story of one of the assassins from Nemesis, but it was one of the best in the book.

- Pleasant padding from Rob Sanders, Gav Thorpe, Andy Smillie.

- Nick Kyme is underrated, imo. His 4 stories were enjoyable.

- Chris Wraight's Daemonology and Allegiance were better.

 

 

It's difficult to assess an unchronological collection of random stories, so I'll go with my gut. During my reading of this, I picked out a couple of stories from Tales of The Heresy (Blood Games and The Last Church) to read to my son, and the difference between the two collections was noticeable, in tone and length of story, and in what the stories were trying to do.

 

To compare it to music, some compilation albums can recontextualise an artist's songs and make them appear in a different light, enhancing some aspects and drawing out previously unconsidered nuance, whereas other compilations are jumbles of disparate tracks that are no better than an iPod-shuffle party. War Without End is the iPod-shuffle party of the Heresy.

 

As a whole, it felt like a 6/10.

 

I think the main difference between entries like Tales and Age of Darkness and most of the later collections is that the former were commissioned specifically as short story collections. A lot of the later ones were a case of trying to fulfill the "everything for mass market main numbered series eventually" statement of intent. So you get editors having a tough job trying to pack in a whole load of unrelated e-shorts, event exclusives and preludes to other works from the bloat years. Some fare better than others.

[DarkChaplain]

Especially when War Without End was *literally* a collection of 4 previously event-exclusive novella-sized anthologies, so even if those had rough thematic connections (which they rarely had, they were more about supplementing recent or upcoming novels with asides), there'd still have been four themes smashed together for the numbered release.

 

To me, who is notoriously bad at seeing anthologies through (One more story left in Maledictions, hurrah....), War Without End, Eye of Terra and what not were actually great fun.

[DukeLeto69]

@scribe mate your hatred and attacks on Abnett are getting a bit OTT and seem to crop up in multiple threads. A lot of people do not agree and the general consensus is that Saturnine is an excellent and very strong book.

Sorry to quote myself but for the record I didn

Edited August 17, 2020 by Kelborn

[mc warhammer]

 

@scribe mate your hatred and attacks on Abnett are getting a bit OTT and seem to crop up in multiple threads. A lot of people do not agree and the general consensus is that Saturnine is an excellent and very strong book.

Sorry to quote myself but for the record I didn’t even suggest @scribe shouldn’t review books by or have an opinion on Abnett. Absolutely of course everyone is entitled to their opinion and I will die on that hill to protect that right.

 

What I was doing was pointing out that once again @scribe was displaying their vehement dislike of Abnett in yet another thread which feels a bit OTT. Doesn’t mean they shouldn’t just pointing out a fact = @scribe really REALLY doesn’t like Abnett!

 

If by any chance me pointing that out did cause offence to any of my fraters then let me assure you it was not my intent. I was certainly smiling as I typed it and pretty certain over a beer F2F with @scribe they would have laughed too!

i'll just say that i agree that this is the thread for ANYONE to post negative and or positive reviews.

 

but, on your point, let's say i had a problem with author x and i spent every opportunity that author x came up in any thread to reiterate that opinion. then i go to the review thread that i NEVER post ANY reviews on and decide that my first and only review will be trashing author x AGAIN, well...

 

i could see your point there too.

[Noserenda]

Just finished Valedor by Guy Haley, its a serviceable book with some real highlights, though ill admit i downgraded it a bit in my head because the sections with Eldar wailing got a bit tiresome they really are on point so i shouldnt complain :D 

Highlights!
1. The First battle with the Bieltan warhost really felt like a game of Epic, its rare to see competent commanders in 40k actually commanding their armies so bonus points for that too!
2. The Harlequins, really well used i think, mysterious and a bit sinister, especially Veilwalker who I now realise pops up in quite a few books/places the scamp. 
3. The Great Harlequin being super casual in a Haemonculus' waiting room that unnerved even Herespax was perfect :D 
4. Ahhh Yriel is Elric! I get it now :D 
5. Almost all the Iyanden sections really add some interest and fluff for the craftworld outside of battles.
6. The Dark Eldar commander was excellent in every scene.

The final battle was a bit too chaotic perhaps but then it was a complicated plan that immediately went wrong so chaotic is about right tbh.

So yeah, far from Haleys best work but very readable! 

[Scribe]

For what it's worth, if the other thread had not been locked, I'd have left it there. ;)

[Lord_Caerolion]

While I love Valedor for being an entirely xenos-centric book, I have to deduct a few points for the Dark Eldar referring to pain etc as "dark energy", which just comes off a bit too moustache-twirling cartoon villainy for my liking.

[byrd9999]

Scions of the Emperor - Horus Heresy Primarchs series

 

Hit and miss. 8 short stories, each about 18 pages long. Having read the whole thing in a couple of days, my main impression is that 18 pages isn't much space to do a lot with, so I don't totally blame the authors for stories that feel inconsequential. However, I can blame authors for stories that are downright bad...

 

Canticle - David Guymer. Dull and messy. A young Ferrus Manus eats metal (because Iron Hands), has far too many fights for an 18-page story, "chews thoughtfully on a cyborg zombie hand" for nutrition (oh dear), and then comes to a totally unsatisfying unresolved close.

 

The Verdict of the Scythe - David Annandale. A wasted chance to show Mortarion during a Crusade compliance. Morty doesn't like psykers so kills everyone. No real characterisation here.

 

A Game of Opposites - Guy Haley. Weak and predictable. Moustache-twirling Iron Warriors (a total shame because Perturabo's Primarchs book was ace) get fooled and schooled by Jaghatai.

 

Better Angels - Ian St. Martin. Sedate and enjoyable story about Blood Angels creating art during and post-Crusade.

 

The Conqueror's Truth - Gav Thorpe. Great fun. A Night Lords compliance action from p-o-v of a remembrancer. Great characterisation here, Gav on top form.

 

The Sinew of War - Darius Hinks. The worst of the lot. An unlikeable Guilliman takes over after his father Konor is murdered. Full of tell-don't-show moments. Guilliman's tactical genius comes down to assembling his men, then telling them to take cover while he goes and kills everyone. Repeatedly. Guilliman doesn't kill his father's killer and gets praised for his restraint (despite murdering many people only minutes before). Guilliman complains how he has to tone down his genius so he doesn't arouse resentment, and then tells us that it took him "years" to understand why humans need street lighting at night (because they can't see in the dark like he can). A significant moment in Guilliman's life is dealt with so glibly. Dire on many levels.

 

The Chamber at the End of Memory - James Swallow. Surprisingly good. Yet another Dorn-fortifying-the-Palace story, but with added Malcador and Lost Primarchs goodness. Well written.

 

First Legion - Chris Wraight. The best of the lot. This is why were here, right? A glimpse of the Randgan Xenocides. And what a tantalising glimpse. It mostly takes a back seat to some good characterisation of the Lion, and introduces (or does it...?) Alpharius of the XX Legion.

 

 

The Primarchs shorts are a good way for authors to tackle different legions, but they really need more than 18 pages to do it. The successful stories picked one thing and did it well. The less successful ones tended to try to cram too much into the pages.

 

4/8 stories were worth it, so it seems aesthetically pleasing to give it a slightly disappointing 5/10.

[Xisor]

There needs to be some suspension of disbelief for some of this to work out.

 

If we want to believe that we would have the same anything, in 30K years after the earth had become a nuclear wasteland, after being ravaged by AI driven robots, after having beings from beyond space and time rip through the planet and enslave the species...well...

 

 

I'm happy with things like Khan and Jarl surviving, they're backfitted proxies more than literal things. At least in most cases. Gothic isn't literally pig Latin, but it's analogous to how Latin's been used down the years: a trade language, an invoked better days language, a spooky language for cod magic, an esoteric language for "real names" for things.

 

But Fenris was particularly egregious, because its wholesale *everything*. Not a proxy analogous thing, but as if they've wholly tapped into or revived bits of old Norse culture and myth, Frankenstein style.

 

It grinds in a way that Macragge's romanesque styles don't - mainly because Guilliman isn't Guilliman Caesar, and Macragge isn't Roma, etc. It's in the nose, maybe, but it's more visual aesthetic than Marneus Calgar running about being entrenched in every trope and stereotype of Rome going.

 

---

 

Contrast that to Captain Japan in The Outcast Dead, and you're right back in Fenris. To keep on topic...

 

---

 

The Outcast Dead: 2/10, self-plagiarised tripe marginally redeemed by a fun-ish cast of characters, mainly riffing on what worked well in Battle for the Abyss. Captain Japan is particularly egregious in my dislike.

Edited August 19, 2020 by Xisor

[Fedor]

I loved Canticle. Great little piece of atmospheric worldbuilding for Medusa.

 

Swallow's story was the best thing he's done in a long time.

[aa.logan]

 

 

Scions of the Emperor is great.

 

I really enjoyed the full-on moustache twirling of the Iron Warriors in A Game Of Opposites; given that it’s so short, I’m not sure predictability is an issue either- it’s a nice character portrait, that further explains the under-appreciation of the Khan- even ‘experts’ in his approach are wrong when faced with it.

 

The Guilliman short was maybe my overall favourite, so it’s obviously horses for courses, though we both enjoyed Ian St Martin and Gav’s entries so there is some commonality.

[Sothalor]

Cadia Stands – Justin D. Hill

 

 

This is an interesting one for me. I never had any intentions of reading Cadia Stands; it’s been out for several years, and reception has been, as far as I can tell, mixed to mostly negative. Nonetheless, it came in a digital bundle along with a bunch of other titles, and so I read it.

 

And honestly, I’m glad I did. Right away, let’s make it clear; I think this book deserves much of its negative reputation. However, many of the reasons why are also what made it fascinating to me from the perspective of analyzing its shortcomings. Upon reflection, I realized that this book also tickled some of my personal buttons, and so in some senses I was predisposed to looking favorably at it. But yes, overall, Cadia Stands offers more as material for dissection than as a good read on its own.

 

Perhaps the first thing I’d say about Cadia Stands is that’s tie-in fiction to an extreme degree – to its detriment. For those unaware, Cadia Stands is a companion piece to Fall of Cadia, the first part of The Gathering Storm, which closed out 40k’s 7^th edition. I’d followed 40k’s developing metaplot to have a rough idea of the broad basics (Abaddon’s 13^th Black Crusade, the invasion of Cadia, Celestine, Cawl, Blackstone Pylons, and Cadia going kaput). I have never, however, managed to get my hands on Fall of Cadia itself to have a read-through. If you have no idea about the events of Fall of Cadia, this book is going to be a rough time, because it explains NONE of those events and provides practically no context. This one doesn't just expect you to have basic familiarity with the setting, it seems to practically demand you have in-depth knowledge of one particular set of events and timeline.

 

See, I’d gone into Cadia Stands expecting a novelization of Fall of Cadia, a long-form prose retread of the metaplot events a la Plague War. This isn’t it at all. Cadia Stands is like everything on Cadia except what was happening in Fall of Cadia.

 

Stands... Fall... Thing... Not-thing... Huh.

 

Maybe there was something in the name that I should have taken note of.

 

As I was saying. Cadia Stands doesn’t feature any of the big players from Fall of Cadia (as far as I’m aware). Abaddon never appears. Creed makes an appearance in two chapters. There’s no Cawl, no Black Templars, and Celestine doesn’t make an appearance – not in person, at least. No showing of big events like the assassination of Cadia’s governor, nor the breaking of the Pylons or the planet.

 

Reading Cadia Stands on its own feels like sitting down for a meal at a steakhouse and getting just some side dishes, or like watching every other episode in a series. It’s like there’s half of a plot here.

 

Instead we follow a bunch of random Cadians on the ground. And by a bunch, I mean a bunch. There’s a veritable blizzard of names that gets hurled at the reader.

 

That’s one of the things notable about Cadia Stands; it’s quite an unconventional novel in its structure. Rather than following a primary protagonist through a main-line narrative arc, this book devotes a great deal of its word count to presenting snippets of the war on Cadia. There are time skips, perspective jumps, completely unrelated people doing things in different parts of the planet, and much of it is from a macro, almost grand historical narrative perspective, more akin to codex entries than typical Black Library novels. Many characters show up for just a scene or two, with no development or arc. And characters almost feels like too strong a term - they're names. We really don't get to know many of them. Furthermore the structure is flawed because almost none of the characters involved have any agency – they’re all just swept along by things happening out of their control, and it’s hard not to be reminded that the meat of what’s happening is in Fall of Cadia, not here.

 

The whole thing reminded me of a military history campaign monograph. The writing style is expository, lots of “tell, don’t show” to fit it all within one not particularly long book. But oddly, it works for me. There’s a sort of cinematic montage quality to it, a madcap big picture slice of life of an apocalyptic planetary war.

 

Where the writing falls apart for me is in the ‘close-up’ action scenes. There’s something about the prose and paragraph construction that makes it difficult to picture a scene, to place it out in terms of who is where doing what, of being able to mentally picture where elements are in relation to each other. Because of this many of the ’descriptive’ battle scenes are hard to follow and almost nonsensical on the first read.

 

For example, early on one of the protagonists is caught in an IED explosion inside a building. Her squadmates rush in and dig her out of the rubble and debris – all of this is within a narrow, confined area. She’s explaining what happened. Then the next sentence is, ‘The [enemy cultist] had a round-barreled autogun.’ Um, excuse me what? Where did this guy come from? He can’t possibly be in their midst, yet he’s close enough for her to pick out details of his firearm. So where is he in relation to our character and her squad?  Things like this plague the longform, intimate POV scenes.

 

Compound this with the macro plot structure issues and you’ve got one strange-feeling novel.  It’s like a lot of key information is missing. It sort of reminds me of doing thesis work for my history degree. Primary accounts form fragmented and incomplete pictures of what happened, you need to do your best to fill in the blanks and extrapolate what happened. Not what I was expecting from a casual BL read, I must admit.

 

So we’ve got a book that’s deeply flawed in terms of structure and narrative cohesion, underdeveloped characters (a lot of word space is devoted to characters and arcs that go nowhere), and action scenes that are hampered by technical construction.

 

Despite all that, Cadia Stands kind of won me over. I get the feeling that many of the structural problems were the result of studio mandate, almost as if Hill weren’t allowed to cover certain events or characters, to leave them to The Gathering Storm sourcebooks. Nevertheless there’s a… I guess I’d call it a heart to the book, an earnestness that manages to transcend many of its individual shortcomings. I compared it to a military history book, and I personally think that works in its favor here. It’s definitely not for everyone though, and I would totally understand if somebody who’d come looking for a tight character-driven piece abandoned this one.

 

For me, while this was weaker than some of the standouts that Black Library has released, I find myself willing to overlook many of its flaws – indeed some of them are even kind of charming to me.

 

 

Objectively, call this 5/10. Subjectively, if you enjoy analyzing and thinking about the craft of writing and the perils/potentials of tie-in fiction or ergodic reading I'd give it a 6, maybe 6.5.

Edited August 22, 2020 by Brother Lunkhead
spoiler

[Xisor]

Five out of ten for a book that won you over? 

 

For my part, it's a solid 7/10 - I found Cadia Stands a really entertaining book. Interesting cast of characters exploring the unthinkable (yet also massively prepared for) happening. The predictable, unwinnable disaster actually happening.

 

I thought it was fascinating, and brilliantly done. And though I really liked Hill's Creed shorts, I thought the novel was much better off for not cleaving closely to any of the Gathering Storm big plot. (Mainly because TGS wasn't very good; the decent parts mainly came in the form of 'cast of characters walk somewhere' sections. The rest? [such as the Phalanx bit] Unsatisfyingly poor.)

 

Cadia Stands on the otherhand? An actual, credible and interesting story done well.

 

Really enjoyed it, all told, and was impressed that a relatively new author to BL managed to really nail the feel of Cadia and the guard. 

 

As said, a very solid 7/10. Been quite keen to read more of Justin's for a while - Terminus: Overkill and Cadian Honour are well looked forward to, for me!