Rate what you Read, or the fight against Necromancy

[aa.logan]

29 minutes ago, Jareddm said:

Never read any Cain books so any references there went over my head.

And it's funny you think it was too long, as I read Ashes immediately after both TEaTD V2 and Fall of Cadia so Ashes felt like it flew by in comparison.

They were minor, but nice- Jennit Sulla is a recurring character in them, the aforementioned ploin, comparisons to scrumball players and even the

 plan to flood Creed’s complex with a mix of promethium is borrowed from Caves of Ice

.
 

Fall of Cadia for me, felt like it could have been longer, and had much more story to tell. Ashes of Cadia had maybe one too many desperate last-ditch battles in my eyes, and when it looked like the objective had been achieved around a third into the story, I was just waiting for it to inevitably go wrong.

 

I know the page count allowed the characters to breathe and grow (and most of the cast were fascinating), but I’d just rather have read about them having slightly more varied adventures.

[Felix Antipodes]

It seems we have had more Cadian based stories since the fall than before it fell.  I went through an Astra Militarum binge towards years end and most of them were full of Cadians and/or transplants  (the latest Cain being the outlier) and most were good reads imho, with only Albert’s Kazrkin disappointing me.

I read Fall of Cadia and Ashes of Cadia back to back and found both enjoyable and complemented each other in some ways.  Yes, the premise of Ashes was slightly dodgy but I’ve seen and read worse from both BL and others.  The timeline troubled me as well.  Not because it seems to be set 20-40 years into the current setting, but because there seemed to be some inconsistencies at the time I read it.  Maybe because of all the Cadian Guard stuff I read around it?  Couldn’t have been too big an issue though, as I can’t recall what bugged me as I think back on it.

[DarkChaplain]

Finally making my way through the remainder of the short stories from Sons of the Emperor and while it's a bit of a mixed bag, I'm glad I finally got to read The Emperor's Architect by Guy Haley.

 

It's a tie-in to his Perturabo Primarchs novel, in all the best ways. Different perspective, revisionism, and giving us a real cynical yet realistic point of view character. A married couple of Primarch biographers, tasked by the Sigillite to record their history? A love long faded on the husband's side, over the decades of working on this with increasingly diverging opinions on the Primarchs as people, and the Imperium & Emperor who employs and made them?

 

And while the protagonist is very much taking everything in the least favorable way, to the point of predicting the "real" thoughts of their astartes babysitter in his head, it's set against the worshipful tone of his former lover, which disgusts him. An argument could be made that his disillusionment with her influences his views on the Primarchs (along with past experiences dealing with them and witnessing their inhumanities), or that his resentment for the Primarchs is what drove the couple apart - either way, there's a negative feedback loop over it all.

 

The story also takes a stab at objective histories vs subjective truths, reality and mythology, and since this is about Perturabo and the growing unrests on Olympia, the subject material lends itself to it pretty well.

 

Perturabo himself only appears in a flashback sequence that is interspersed with the ongoing investigations, and it's interesting in how he is first presented as relatively unformed, unfinished, having just "hatched" from his pod, but also gives off a callous, overly calculating impression - which makes it more than likely that this is indeed his original programming by the Emperor. However, there's a little surprise in there, in regards to his developing humanity.

 

However, even when he starts doing good, we see his nature being exploited - mayhaps without ill intent, or with second thoughts, but it's clear that even to the shepherds he first came in contact with, he was too useful not to take advantage of. We know from the tale of a character in the story - and the Perturabo novel - that Perturabo's adoptive father also exploited him over and over, so it is little surprise that at some point he'd snap and rail at the Emperor for abusing him as a tool. His martyr complex, then, ended up being the coping mechanism he at least subconsciously chose for himself.

 

But it's also clear that Perturabo tried to find value in himself, to be admired for his deeds, constantly placing himself in competition with his adoptive brother. And he was a sore loser. I think this is also part of what makes Perturabo so interesting a figure - so long as he was the very beast at things, he could probably tell himself that being used was logical, since there was no better tool for the job, for any job. But being overtaken? Maybe even failing? Later on falling behind his brothers, particularly the Lion and Guilliman, and especially Dorn?

 

His ego couldn't bear it. He was still being used by one master or another, but it was no longer because he truly excelled at nobody else could've done it in his stead - to him, it was because he was cheap and uncomplaining. That they knew he would take it stoically, do it at any cost to himself or his Legion, because saying No would have been equivalent to failing in his task, wounding his pride and resulting in having to further question his entire life and existence.

 

That's the picture I'm getting from The Emperor's Architect, on top of having read Hammer of Olympia. Perturabo is, to me, a tragic figure - despite all his obvious flaws and horrifying actions. He's another Primarch who really needed a therapist, badly.

[Roomsky]

The Emperor's Architect is definitely the highlight of that anthology, and was one of those rare Haley stories that shocked yet delighted me with the quality. I so rarely think he"s "pitch perfect" as an author, but this story is one of those times. It seems like great care was put into both both what it wanted to tell and how, and while Hammer of Olympia is already pretty great, I think this short is even better. It's everything great about the tie-in short story medium, IMO.

[wecanhaveallthree]

Quote

Perturabo's fear of failure and need to be the best

 

I think the absolute best take on this was in Hammer of Olympia where he pops down to that room full of his Legion's strategists and is like 'ok here's my plan, now ruin it'. All these different people with all these different ways of doing things and he trusts them not only to understand his calculations but destroy them and ultimately improve on them. That was the best portrayal of the Iron Warriors, to me, the absolute best and what we see in books like Spear of Ultramar or Iron Within. The Iron Warriors are some of the most damnably effective warriors in the Imperium because of how Perturabo challenged them (with no little hint of sink-or-swim). They rise to impossible expectations, fight tooth and nail in impossible situations, because they want to win. I love that scene in Spear where the Ultramarine is demanding 'why' of the Iron Warrior, and the guy just laughs at him. It wasn't for some objective, it wasn't in service to some grand strategy: they were told to delay Guilliman and never expected to succeed but they do. 

 

They could have been heroes. They nearly were. Just look at Dantioch. 

[Roomsky]

Just finished up the Witchbringer audiobook and I gotta say, it was a pretty impressive yarn. I can't usually find 40k books (outside the Crime and Horror labels) where it feels like the action is purely in service of the plot, much less Guardsmen books. Witchbringer, though, feels like an honest to goodness story for its own sake, before shilling any units or padding itself with fightan. Every action beat was to punch up a development with the main characters, not just to provide a "how'll they get out of THIS one?" scenario. The characterization itself was also surprisingly in-depth, and the premise of a Guard officer returning to her regiment now as a Psyker without formal authority is very unique. Everyone also felt real, and like they had depth even if said depth never has cause to surface in this story; always a sign of good character writing.

 

I'll admit some of this did roll off of me a little, but I'm not sure if that's on the book or if I've just been too tired lately. I will say some of the revelations towards the end felt due to poor communication, and not the "The Imperium is callous and dismissive so it sows the seeds of its own doom" kind, more the "I'm not sure why you opted to make this a secret in the first place" kind.

 

Still though, very promising, I hope Fischer gets the opportunity to write more for BL. It would be a shame if the late audiobook stifled some of the attention it would have received otherwise.

[darkhorse0607]

Caphias Cain- Caves of Ice (audio)

 

I'm slowly working through some Imperial Guard stuff as I've neglected them over the last few years. I've struggled to get into The First and Only so I've recently done For the Emperor and now this, I've enjoyed them both so much that I've already got The Traitors Hand ready to go in audible

 

Narrators: Stephen Perring, Penelope Rawlins, and Emma Gregory

 

Upfront about the narration. Some narrators you get just sell the story here, and the team in the Caphias Cain books do it for me. Stephen Perring is Cain for me (as well as nailing it for Jurgen IMO), his voice matches so well and the supporting narrators for returning characters like Vail also are really solid.

 

Overall this was another enjoyable entry. I hear the complaints that each book has a repetitive structure (i.e. Cain somehow gets himself into a situation, he says he wants nothing to do with it and then somehow does something heroic, and then the book ends), and while I do have some nitpicks (i.e. I get it, Jurgen smells, I don't need to hear it over and over) I'm ok with it. Not every novel needs to be the most groundbreaking or introspective and sometimes it's nice to just have something fun on.

 

While I enjoyed For the Emperor more just because I'm hungry for quality Tau stories as Phil Kelly's stuff doesn't really do it for me, Caves of Ice is good. As always with my writeups, I'll do a brief synopsis, brief spoilers, and then more gushing afterward

 

Synopsis: Cain and the 597th are sent to Simia Orichalcae to protect a promethium refinery from an ork invasion. It's a pretty straightforward concept and while there is a turn in the story which I'll discuss in the spoiler section, the overall defense of the refinery and the actions of the 597th are much more of a sidenote here than they were in For the Emperor, and much of the story revolves around a sidequest that Cain is on with various squads of Valhallans and Jurgen. If you're looking for story with big action setpieces against the Orks, this really isn't it

 

Spoiler

More in depth: After arriving on planet, the 597th prepare to defend against the Orks. The leaders of the facility are entrenched in political fighting (mechanicum says they're in charge, administratum does the same, etc), so the Imperial Guard take control. The leader of the miners reports that multiple miners have gone missing which has fallen on deaf ears by the local leaders, and concerned with the possibility of a secret tunnel into the facility, Cain takes a squad into the tunnels to investigate. They encounter an Ambull nest (neat inclusion IMO) and while they're thrown off because they shouldn't be on that world, they proceed to move through the tunnels eliminating them as they go.

 

After a while, they run across a Necron structure which serves as an entrance to a tomb complex, this suitably freaks Cain out, as he has prior experience (off-screen) fighting them. Eventually, they run across the entrance to the tunnels that leads to the Ork encampment/staging grounds, to which they have a small skirmish, and then the Necrons start to engage the Orks. The Necrons here on display are much more of the old style of portrayal where they were silent death robots with a horror element (all of the different units on show here do that, but you get some extra horror from Flayed Ones and Pariahs), rather than the current portrayal in things like The Infinite and the Divine and that was nice to revisit.

 

Long story short, they make their way back to the refinery to initiate the evacuation of the planet as there is a Necron warp portal that is bringing more Necrons to the planet, on top of the "hundreds of thousands" of Necrons in stasis. The plan is to call Vail and the Imperial to bomb the planet after evacuating. There is a small nod to Aliens in which Cain almost flat-out says "we need to take off and bomb the planet from orbit, it's the only way to be sure."

 

They end up going back in with a squad of Stormtroopers to try and destroy the portal before evacuating, and thanks to some Flayed Ones and Pariahs (nice to see them again), the Stormtroopers are wiped out, Cain says "well they had the bombs and now they're vaporized" so he and Jurgen return to the command center. Eventually, the Necrons are slowed down due to them flooding the tunnels with promethium, there's a big explosion and they leave with Vail cordoning off the area.

 

I'm skipping some chunks, like a tech priest side character that features heavily, but that's the gist of it. Sandy Mitchell really sells the horror aspect of the Necrons and thanks to his portrayal of them you get a nice feeling of "oh yeah these guys need to get out of here" rather than the "stand and fight" that you get in many Space Marine novels. They know they're outgunned here and aren't going to try and pretend otherwise and the author does a nice job of ratcheting up the tension of the evacuation, even knowing that clearly Cain survives.

 

 

More gushing: one thing I really like about these novels is that there are relatively small details mentioned that characters play off of later. For example, during meetings with the local authorities, there is so much bickering between the administrators that the second in command of the 597th repeatedly fires his bolt pistol into the ceiling. Rather than leaving it as that, later in the book when Cain returns from his side quest, Cain notices it and you get a small comment back that really sells it for me. Other things like Vail, who is compiling Cains records apologizing to the reader for including bits of other in-universe books that are overly dramatic or poorly written give a bit of humor, before inevitably, you start eye-rolling at the passage included because of how it was written in-universe.

 

While I'm sure after a while some of these things will get repetitive and old, I'm really enjoying the Cain novels so far would recommend them

[Krelious]

I just finished two of the three Nightlords trilogy and I can see kind of a model that ADB uses to write his books in that this series feels like the dark version of Spear of the Emperor+ The Black Legion books. So far this series has been quite fun although i could describe it as basically the Black Legion books except its Nightlords. Septimus and Octavia are great characters and its been funny so far to see them get cock blocked by Nightlords as their romance is burgeoning to the point that I hope ADB writes full on penetration in the final book. 

 

I think ADB really has a talent for making despicable people likable. Id give both books a solid 9/10 although I think the first book is a little better since it doesnt engage in rehashes of the same ideas or weird asspulls. I'd also say its kind of convenient in the second novel the

Spoiler

Convenant of Blood gets destroyed

because somehow the Nightlords who are masters of survival and stealth are too stupid to stay in warp travel for more than 30 seconds, it reminds me of Black Legion where the story is rushed to a conclusion and everything ends in a neat package because the author hit his page/word count.  Like oh yeah we will just jump to the next system and regroup there, the Red Corsairs will never find us...they get found 30 seconds later.  I mean :cuss: you couldn't just have them jump into a system controlled by the Imperium or the Eldar or a random Hive Fleet and have the ship get destroyed that way.

 

I can say these are fun reads and worth your time I'm just a bit disappointed how Blood Reaver ends so conveniently. 

 

I'm guessing in the last book everyone except Talos are going to die and maybe Octavia goes back to the Imperium with her child but assumes a new identity.  Malcharion will likely suffer forever or whatever or be captured by another warband and be like the Chaos version of Bjorn/Dante. 

 

 

[SkimaskMohawk]

12 hours ago, Krelious said:

like the dark version of Spear of the Emperor+ The Black Legion books. So far this series has been quite fun although i could describe it as basically the Black Legion books except its Nightlords.

 

More like the reverse; the Night Lords series came first lol. 

12 hours ago, Krelious said:

because somehow the Nightlords who are masters of survival and stealth are too stupid to stay in warp travel for more than 30 seconds, it reminds me of Black Legion where the story is rushed to a conclusion and everything ends in a neat package because the author hit his page/word count.  Like oh yeah we will just jump to the next system and regroup there, the Red Corsairs will never find us...they get found 30 seconds later.  I mean you couldn't just have them jump into a system controlled by the Imperium or the Eldar or a random Hive Fleet and have the ship get destroyed that way.

 

Idk what series you were reading. The Night lords 10th company very much suck at surviving. Theyve had ~200 years since the siege and basically lose dudes and degrade their effectiveness every time they sneeze. It seemed really obvious they weren't surviving, but slowly dying, especially compared to every other chaos warband out there. Black legion, night lords under halasker, red corsairs; all had tons of resources. Octavia is also terrible at her job in blood reaver; she was responsible for a huge amount of damage to the covenant in the first place, so presumably the short jump was to help her navigate properly (which she still misses by a good 2 hour margin). If they didn't have to wait for the echo, they'd have been fine, as the exalted notes "Their warp-wake would take an age to track, mixing with the undercurrents already swirling around vilamus from such a huge fleet arriving only hours before". 

 

The time progression doesn't do the best job with the quick cuts, but ya. Octavia was consistently bad at her job; the covenant had to wait around and give time for Hurons sorcerer's to find them and catch up, and the echo only got back to them after they'd already killed 5 ships. The night lords plan goes badly, aka, the subtitle for the entire series. 

[darkhorse0607]

13 hours ago, Krelious said:

I just finished two of the three Nightlords trilogy

 

Just a note, if you want to circle around later or before you finish the trilogy, Massacre is a short story in the Eye of Terra anthology featuring the 10th company during Istvaan 5. It isn't required reading by any means but it has some nice background tidbits

[Krelious]

On 2/9/2024 at 1:28 PM, SkimaskMohawk said:

 

More like the reverse; the Night Lords series came first lol. 

 

Idk what series you were reading. The Night lords 10th company very much suck at surviving. Theyve had ~200 years since the siege and basically lose dudes and degrade their effectiveness every time they sneeze. It seemed really obvious they weren't surviving, but slowly dying, especially compared to every other chaos warband out there. Black legion, night lords under halasker, red corsairs; all had tons of resources. Octavia is also terrible at her job in blood reaver; she was responsible for a huge amount of damage to the covenant in the first place, so presumably the short jump was to help her navigate properly (which she still misses by a good 2 hour margin). If they didn't have to wait for the echo, they'd have been fine, as the exalted notes "Their warp-wake would take an age to track, mixing with the undercurrents already swirling around vilamus from such a huge fleet arriving only hours before". 

 

The time progression doesn't do the best job with the quick cuts, but ya. Octavia was consistently bad at her job; the covenant had to wait around and give time for Hurons sorcerer's to find them and catch up, and the echo only got back to them after they'd already killed 5 ships. The night lords plan goes badly, aka, the subtitle for the entire series. 

A constant theme in the 3 books is that they are constantly running away from fights and they have been isolated in a hostile universe with the imperium and other traitors fighting them, I think from that perspective they have done a decent job staying alive with what they had considering what the average lifespan of a loyalist Space Marine is who doesnt have to fight his brothers most of the time, doesnt have people looking to betray him, and has proper supplies without demonic corruption going on.  They actively laugh at the red corsairs and let them tank the fight and then run away. They get boarded I think twice in the series by loyalist space marines and the NL completely demolish them both times while fighting with lesser numbers and worse equipment. I'd say all in all my impression is that when the NL dont encounter overpowered enemies and they have a plan they do objectively pretty well and their main weakness is the paranoia and infighting they suffer.  

 

To me the Red Corsairs catching up to them comes across as a :cuss: moment considering exactly your quote as to what the Exalted says. To me this comes across as poor writing as the author contradicts his earlier point/expectation and then suddenly there is an asspull so that one of the two ships can be destroyed since its going to be too hard for him to write a story when this band of heretics have two space ships. Basically its highly contrived and doesnt make sense other than the author trying to write himself out of a corner.  To me an "age" to track would be like days not 2 hours because of how funky warp travel is. I mean wouldnt a smart move be like hey lets stay in the warp for 5 hours and meet here at this place Octavia knows how to navigate to and Ruven knows how to navigate to? Again that entire section of the book is like well I have to kill off a character and get rid of a space ship how do I do that?

 

As for Octavia sucking at her job its more that she wasnt trained for the job in the first place as her entire mo of warp travel is following the astronomicon and the ship actively hates her because shes not the previous navigator. From her perspective id imagine shes been trained to drive an automatic car during the daytime while the Nightlords are like nah ur gonna be blindfolded, drugged and forced to stay awake for 36 hour shifts while driving standard and hope you can just kinda feel your way around the road, oh yeah the car you work with is sentient too and it hates your guts. Its not that she sucks its more like the deck is actively stacked against her due to being the only person who can remotely perform the task in the first place. 

 

Although I just finished reading Twice Dead King: Reign and that book had a bigger :cuss: moment when The Necrons start traveling in the ghost current or whatever its called and then the Imperial fleet catches them there and im like LOL WUT am I reading this makes no sense at all. I mean how are Imperial Warp engines allowing them to travel in that level of space or nothingness I was just completely flabbergasted at the lack of any explanation and im just supposed to take this at face value. Again it feels like another plot contrivance where the author is like hey I need some sort of antagonist here, im just gonna reuse the old one somehow even though it makes no sense lol.  Honestly that book had me with mixed feelings because the writing was largely good its just the entire premise and logic was not to my taste and then on top of it I feel like the ending ruined the series as its basically like "Well my Homophobia was due to the fact I was a self hating homosexual all along! How did I not figure this out sooner? Oh well I guess now im king of the gays or the lepers on my leper colony designed for me by mysterious hands woooowoooo" Again id say a lot of this book is saved by the good work from the previous book and kind of the air of mystery its presents but once the mystery is solved I was feeling very dissapointed as it wasnt really complex enough and lacks a proper feeling of closure, it just feels kind of insulting and a waste of my time as I got dragged on for two largely good books only to have an ending I did not agree with in terms of the overarching theme.  I mean what would Dojeras think? 

 

 

[DukeLeto69]

It is a long time since I read the Nightlords trilogy by ADB. I remember enjoying it but also remember enjoying each book less than the one before.

[SkimaskMohawk]

14 hours ago, Krelious said:

I think from that perspective they have done a decent job staying alive with what they had considering what the average lifespan of a loyalist Space Marine is who doesnt have to fight his brothers most of the time, doesnt have people looking to betray him, and has proper supplies without demonic corruption going on.  

 

So do the rest of the traitor/chaos marines we see though. Why does halasker have so much strength in comparison? Why is the apothecarion deserted before the blood angels sacked the ship? It's very clear that 10th was dying a slow (or fast, depending how you calculate 200 years post siege against a company's worth of legionaries).

 

14 hours ago, Krelious said:

They actively laugh at the red corsairs and let them tank the fight and then run away.

 

And? The corsairs are massively more successful, despite getting hammered in the badab war. 

 

14 hours ago, Krelious said:

They get boarded I think twice in the series by loyalist space marines and the NL completely demolish them both times while fighting with lesser numbers and worse equipment.

 

They absolutely don't demolish them lol. Both boarding actions see 10th win, but suffer some heavy losses and destroyed stuff that they can't easily replace. That's like, the point of blood reaver; they need to fix their stuff after getting gutted by the BA and octavias bad driving. The second boarding by the genesis chapter puts the nail in the coffin for their survival. 

 

14 hours ago, Krelious said:

I'd say all in all my impression is that when the NL dont encounter overpowered enemies and they have a plan they do objectively pretty well and their main weakness is the paranoia and infighting they suffer.  

 

Sure, they do pretty well considering their circumstances. But they're still bleeding out after every encounter and getting weaker and weaker.

 

14 hours ago, Krelious said:

To me the Red Corsairs catching up to them comes across as a moment considering exactly your quote as to what the Exalted says. To me this comes across as poor writing as the author contradicts his earlier point/expectation and then suddenly there is an asspull so that one of the two ships can be destroyed since its going to be too hard for him to write a story when this band of heretics have two space ships. Basically its highly contrived and doesnt make sense other than the author trying to write himself out of a corner.  To me an "age" to track would be like days not 2 hours because of how funky warp travel is. I mean wouldnt a smart move be like hey lets stay in the warp for 5 hours and meet here at this place Octavia knows how to navigate to and Ruven knows how to navigate to? Again that entire section of the book is like well I have to kill off a character and get rid of a space ship how do I do that?

 

Well that quote was to explain why they didn't just jump across the galaxy like you asked. The exalted starting to get worried and bringing up hurons cabal of sorcerers being able to still parse the warp after waiting around is what explains them getting found. 

 

And maybe if Octavia was good at navigating and they didn't have those same sorcerers they could chill in the warp. Or if the exalted wasn't distrustful of talos even then (lol ya just wait 5 hours and then we'll meet you, totally). Like, the novel supports their decision making and why it went south. It wasn't contrived, and it wasn't exactly to get rid of stuff he didn't know how to handle.

 

14 hours ago, Krelious said:

 

As for Octavia sucking at her job its more that she wasnt trained for the job in the first place as her entire mo of warp travel is following the astronomicon and the ship actively hates her because shes not the previous navigator. From her perspective id imagine shes been trained to drive an automatic car during the daytime while the Nightlords are like nah ur gonna be blindfolded, drugged and forced to stay awake for 36 hour shifts while driving standard and hope you can just kinda feel your way around the road, oh yeah the car you work with is sentient too and it hates your guts. Its not that she sucks its more like the deck is actively stacked against her due to being the only person who can remotely perform the task in the first place. 

 

The exact reasons why she's bad at navigating the covenant and echo don't really matter. She's not good at it and causes a lot of the problems in book 2. 

 

[Kelborn]

Volpones's Glory by Nick Kyme

 

Nick Kyme

A name oftentimes dreaded for what he did with the Salamanders in both 30k and 40m. A name often called out as being a great editor but a horrible author. A skippable one. Nothing of worth reading here, some might say.

 

Well my dear reader. 

Let me tell you that I'd emphasize you to make up your own mind before condemning someone utterly.

 

Because Volpone's Glory is a prime example of how one can improve in given time.

Tbf, I can't comment on the failures of the HH Sallies as I've never read them. I did the first 40k Salamander novel and remember it to be okay/ decent. Nothing on the same level as Dan, Chris or Aaron but fine enough and enjoyable.

 

So reading positive feedback about his then latest work was a surprise to be sure but a welcome one. 

It was oftentimes compared with Band of Brothers, a show that blew me away as a kiddo and I hold dear to this day. And yeah, the comparison works fine.

 

I won't go into detail regarding the plot or characters in order to avoid spoilers but what I'd like to say:

- we follow different characters from the Volpone and other regiments. It's not a story about 2 or 3 main characters but rather a variety of "major" ones with different amount of screentime. Like Bob

- we follow said characters in a conflict in which all odds are against them, strategies fail utterly, tragedies occurs, characters, which we followed more than halfway of the book, die along the sudden or in a sidenote. Very much like Bob

- the enemies are evil, overwhelming, surprisingly a step ahead of our protagonists. Again, reminds me of Bob

 

Tldr, if you liked BoB, you'll probably enjoy this one, as well.

 

For me:

- I liked the characters. Each of them were relatable and understandable in their motifs and actions.

- This is more of a regiment/ character story than an action (or as some might say bolterporn) novel but I enjoyed what Nick gave us, nonetheless. 

- The twists and sudden surprising deaths of characters were good and quite realistic. Not everyone gets the heroes death. It's war. Brutal, ruthless and cold.

 

To sum this all up. If you haven't noticed it already, yes, I very much enjoyed this one, which was written by NICK KYME. If he improved that much (or perhaps he realized that he's far better when writing mortals instead of marines), I'm really intrigued by Iron Kingdom now.

 

Unsure if I need to catch up on the DoF series or if I take each book as a separate story and just jump right to it. (DarkChaplain gave me some feedback on that topic, which I'll reread and keep in mind.)

What this novel also did is that it rekindled my interest on the regular mortal side of the Imperium. (Have to credit Ciaphas Cain here as well but you get the point.)

 

So I'll follow this one up with either

- Iron Kingdom

- The Sabbat World Crusade book (which is standing in my shelf for eons now)

- Start to (partially) reread the Gaunts Ghosts series and catch up on that

- or commit the ultimate heresy and (hold your bolt pistols!) read Farsight Empire of Lies (oh I can hear the Tau fans and more screaming in agony) because I enjoyed Crisis of Faith well enough (have to go, the mob is knocking on my door now!)

 

Whatever it'll be, I'm more willing to give authors a chance, who others branded as "bad", then ever before.

 

Cheers,

Kel

Edited February 19 by Kelborn
Typos

[LemartestheLost]

Assassinorum Kingmaker by Robert Rath

(Audiobook narrated by Gareth Armstrong)

Short review/rating here due to time constraints.

 

First off, Rath's worldbuilding is spectacular in this book. The way he writes the lore/traditions/politics of the two Houses and the planet itself is masterful and compelling. The characters themselves are very good as well (I particularly enjoyed Sycorax-as-Rakkan). Gareth Armstrong does a very solid job of making Rath's prose feel efficient and purposeful while remaining pretty and engaging to the reader. I know he's not everyone's favorite, but I think he works well here with the amount of tense, imperious voices present in a book filled with assassins and nobility. This book contains everything great about Imperial Knights and everything great about the Assassin Temples in my opinion. All in all, I only had two small gripes with the book.

Spoiler

#1 I wish we got more screen time with the Vanus assassin, sometimes it felt like the story about a three-assassin team was a story about two assassins and Rakkan. She has her moments, such as when she confronts the arch-sacristan, but I would've liked some more time in her head. Again, small gripe, as Rath wrote the perfect ending to come back with a sequel for her story if there is ever an Assassinorum series in the future.

 

#2 Maybe I just missed it, but I felt that the planetary invasion by the Chaos Knight branch of ancestors was unnecessary. I feel that plot would have functioned just as well if flat out civil war had occurred without the intervention of off-world Knights.

 

Aside from those really trivial complaints, Rath knocked it out of the park with this one and I hope that we do get a series/trilogy about the assassin temples from him at some point. I highly recommend this book to anybody remotely intrigued by Knights and/or assassins.

Final Rating: 9.6/10

MUST READ. Towards the top of Black Library fiction I've read so far.

Edited March 2 by LemartestheLost
spelling

[grailkeeper]

Just finished Ameageddon Saint.

 

I really enjoyed the last chancers novels when I read them in 2006. Even then they did not have a great reputation but I thought they were pulpy fun.

 

I didn't enjoy Armageddon saint as much. It had its moments but I noticed the flaws much more. It felt badly written with certain phrases being repeated far too much. Maybe I'm older and see more of the downsides. Maybe I've gotten used to a higher quality Black Library book since 2006. Maybe it's just bad. 

 

It's not the worst bl novel I've ever read, but it didn't live up to my memories.

 

 

Edited February 26 by grailkeeper

[Roomsky]

The Rose in Darkness - Danie Ware (Audiobook)

 

If you ask a Black Library Newbie to describe what they think a 40k tie-in novel for Battle Sisters is, they would probably describe this book. Which is to say, it's generic, uninteresting, and very surface-level.

 

I've liked Ware's stuff in the past, but it's always been quite short by comparison. Even Triumph of Saint Katherine was basically just a bunch of shorts pasted together. What was pragmatic characterization for short stories and novellas becomes flat characterization in a full-length novel, and it sucks the life out of this book. Augusta is whatever the Sororitas equivalent of Brother Genericus is - she's grizzled and has a short temper and is mid-level zealous and she yells a lot. I never felt like I was reading a character who had been developed in 3 novellas and several shorts leading up to this. Give me some psychotic zeal or surprising kindness! Maybe a more pronounced martyr complex? Anything? The rest of her squad are interchangeable and the planet's obstructive bureaucrats are equally stock. Camilla is the exception, she's nothing terribly new, but the whole story is a test of how quickly she can adapt to her life being upended, and an unending trial of where her faith is best placed. She experiences great loss and her entire worldview is constantly challenged - it's compelling! So it's a shame her page time is strangled by Augusta's presence.

 

I'm generally a fan of characters debating and failing to get along, but the arguments with the planetary governor and co. throughout were overlong, repetitive, and needlessly cyclical.

"Tyranids are coming to eat you!"

"But we've been planning this festival for 800 years!"

"But Tyranids are coming to eat you!"

"But we've been planning this festival for 800 years!"

 

The narrator doesn't help these moments, either. A good narrator can elevate a book but Helen McAlpine is only "fine." Less than fine in 2 regards:

1. You need to be very careful when putting on a really sad, emotional performance in absence of accompanying music or visuals. Elsewise it becomes grating and tedious almost immediately, as it does here.
2. The Sororitas' prayers are all shouted instead of sung and it's rather unpleasant to listen to.

Ware knows how to write. It's been shown in many of her previous works and it shows in Camilla's sections of this very book. So I'm not giving her a pass for this bargain bin Sisters novel that reads like it came out in 2002. It's competent in many areas but seems determined to crowd out the elements that give it any soul.

 

MEDIOCRE!

 

If you're looking for Sororitas fiction, I recommend Mark of Faith, or Ware's own Triumph of Saint Katherine much more than this.

[grailkeeper]

Every sister of Battle I've read about has had pretty much the same personality- with the exception of the ones in the Cain Books and the sister in Sea of Souls.

 

Its ok if you have a book where there's only the one sister, but it's hard to distinguish characters in a squad when you only have the devout one, the angry one, and the devout angry one. Squads of hypnoindoctrinated super soldiers can have differing personalities, why can't nuns? Surely they can have a personality beyond fervour. 

[Sothalor]

42 minutes ago, grailkeeper said:

Every sister of Battle I've read about has had pretty much the same personality- with the exception of the ones in the Cain Books and the sister in Sea of Souls.

 

Its ok if you have a book where there's only the one sister, but it's hard to distinguish characters in a squad when you only have the devout one, the angry one, and the devout angry one. Squads of hypnoindoctrinated super soldiers can have differing personalities, why can't nuns? Surely they can have a personality beyond fervour. 

 

Honestly, I chalk that up to the reality of who is writing this fiction and for whom. I think it's fair to say that generally, Black Library authors belong to a particular band of worldviews derived from a particular segment of Western liberal thought, intellectual tradition, and cultural heritage.

 

It tends to be difficult for people to represent holistic viewpoints of drastically different worldviews if they don't have some level of deep, genuine understanding or experience of it.

 

 

In some ways it's like how very few of the military tactics and strategies in BL fiction are A) sensible, practical, and sane, and; B) demonstrations of some high-level mastery resulting from decades of practical experience.

 

Or like how so many writers get details of firearms terminology, handling, and characteristics wrong. Or swordplay. Or close-quarters combatives. Many writers simply don't have those particular life experiences to draw upon to present them wholly accurately - and that's okay, for the most part.

 

We, as readers, tend to give these issues some leeway when the story's emotional beats and narrative arcs and drama resonate with us. We'll forgive inauthentic details when some deeper human truth speaks to us from the depths of the story. Unfortunately for something like writing Sororitas, I think those are precisely the areas where many BL authors struggle with. We'll forgive inauthentic technical details, but there's something about inauthentic characters that's much harder to reconcile.

[grailkeeper]

Rereading the infinite and the divine. Its even better than I remembered. The writing is just so clever. 

 

"Everyone had their damage. Of the few who'd already arisen, several of the old highborn of necrontyr emerged not knowing their names. Others were complete automatons, or even mad. In dark moments, Trazyn feared that in ten thousand years, when the dynasties began to awaken in full, he would find all of his peers had diminished.

Not he, though. Trazyn had emerged with his faculties entirely intact.

'My lord?' Sannet cocked his head, the aperture of his single cyclopic eye narrowing. 'Permission to repeat the question?'

 

 

That's up there with Casablanca for me.

Edited February 29 by grailkeeper

[The Scorpion]

On 2/26/2024 at 5:02 PM, Roomsky said:

 

If you're looking for Sororitas fiction, I recommend Mark of Faith, or Ware's own Triumph of Saint Katherine much more than this.

 

What's your take on Pilgrims of Fire?

[Roomsky]

4 minutes ago, The Scorpion said:

 

What's your take on Pilgrims of Fire?

 

It has a very strong introductory section which it then effectively throws out the window to give us the usual band of generic Sororitas, at which point it sort of turned into white noise for me. The Savlar are honestly more compelling than anything the Sisters get up to, which is a shame but not too unexpected. Hill's writing style is at its best when he's writing Guardsmen.

[The Scorpion]

Alright, I just finished DA BIG DAKKA by Mike Brooks so might as well give my review of it:

The author says this book could be summarized as WAAAAAGH, while the BL preview describes it as "Krumpin' in da Dark City". Both of these are perfectly accurate descriptions, but I feel it would be a disservice not to mention the many little things this books has that gives it just that little extra. I hadn't read Brutal Kunnin' or Warboss so this was my first introduction to Mike's greenskins and while it may be no masterpiece this book is as solid as any hit to the skull delivered by Ufthak's Snazzhammer.

For starters, this book is funny. It is to be expected for a novel dealing with the most unapologeticaly goofy faction in 40k, but the humour turned out to be far wittier than I was expecting. Mike Brooks claims that he understands the Ork mindset, and I'm 100% inclined to believe it. Orks may be blunt, but there are a thousand different ways to hit something with a hammer and Brooks takes his time to explore the many trainwrecks of thought and not-quite-non-sequiturs that make each greenskin feel unique enough on the page.

That variety of mindsets, along with the Drukhari (more on them later) lends itself to neat interactions between characters, an entretaining setup for the action scenes, and... the thematic exploration of the mechanisms of power, influence, and perception of legitimacy by both oneself and the masses? In my book about Orks? It's more likely than you think!

Enter the Dark Eldar, who find themselves caught not only in contrasts but also in parallels with the greenskins. Their POV provides the "sane man" perspective to the whole affair, though being Drukhari, they are not too sane themselves. Their story is more self-contained and deals mostly with the game of appearances needed to mantain any tenuous semblance of stability in the Dark City, but also with the lack of unity and purpose produced by a society that makes ultimate cynicism it's creed. Copium is a real theme of the Deldar in this book, both in regards to the Orks and to their lives in general.

The larger story is also self-contained, if you exclude the other Ufthak stories. You won't find here any big lore revelations or galaxy-changing events. As is the case with many 40k stories, the book exists to explore the factions, get inspired, and get reminded of what they're all about.

In short, I liked this book. It has fun, it has Flowers for Algernon vibes with Ufthak learning to trust (and distrust) f'inkin, it has suprisingly thoughtful musings such as: does being strong makes you powerful by default? Can you truly hold onto power with only scheming and lies? Does being a git means you deserve to be kumped? (The answer is yes)

In short:
I liked the book
Orks are Based
Spikies are high on copium
It is well worth the read

7/10

[aa.logan]

The End and the Death (part 1).

 

I finally psyched myself up to start this back in February and have just finished it now. I am able to separate my feelings about the book itself and how GW handled it’s release but I can’t review this in any way without mentioning the fact that it’s too damn long and this feels like a failure of editing.

 

Despite myself, I loved it. Enjoyed pretty much every page, it kept me gripped and still managed to surprise me, but I can’t shake the feeling that it should have been one book- plenty could have been pared down, events could have been depicted in earlier entries and maybe, just maybe, Abnett didn’t need to include so many words that are so uncommon and specific that they felt made up- that would have shaved a wood chunk of the word count.

 

This is a churlish review, I know, but it is possible to have too much of a good thing

[darkhorse0607]

Fabius Bile: Primogenitor

 

Written by Josh Reynolds, audio narration by John Banks (who is excellent as always, don't need to say much more on that)

 

It's taken me a while to get to the Bile books, I had limited exposure to the character in the Heresy, mostly in Angel Exterminatus, and didn't care for him so I never got around to reading the trilogy even with the rave reviews.

 

I'm regretting that now. Reynolds did for Bile as ADB did for Abbadon/Black Legion (and also the Night Lords). There isn't much required reading before this as Reynolds does a good job covering the backstory (or as much as you need of it) during the story, although I will say that reading Talon of Horus might help as there are a few mentions of what happens at the end of that novel.

 

It really was an excellent book, Bile is more "grown up" here for lack of a better term, and he even makes mention of that fact. I liked the inclusion of the Consortium (apothecaries of different legions that have gone to work for Bile) and each member that goes on Bile's adventure has their own qualities that feel like they fit the legions they came from.

 

Without going into too many details this was also my first encounter with Harlequins and I generally enjoyed how they were written as well.

 

Overall I instantly bought the next book in the series which is about as high praise I can give it, and it really makes me a bit bummed that Reynolds no longer writes for Black Library because I feel like he's one of the authors out there that just "gets" the setting and I would like to see more from him.