Enforcer Considerations

[librisrouge]

I’m thinking of picking up the Enforcer omnibus for kicks but I’m not sure. Anybody have any reason to recommend this series?

[Apothecary Vaddon]

It seems to have a good following and fanbase here. Personally, I found it way, way to dense for my tastes, I think I spent something like 20 min trying to make sense of the prologue/first chapter in the first novel (IIRC, might not have been that specifically, it was passage about an astropath receiving some message), kind of like a sperg of things Farrer thought sounded cool and decided to shove onto as little paper as possible.   

 

But, like I said, a lot of other people really like it, so go for it.

[Roomsky]

It's one of my favorite 40k works, I love it to bits but I can't really pretend its a page-turner.

 

The plot and cast are byzantine, the prose is, as mentioned, super-dense, and it just oozes 40k culture. I read them more to just immerse myself into all things 40k rather than for its narrative, which is perfectly fine but again, it doesn't necessarily "grab" you like some of the more popular series.

 

Great stuff, absolutely not for everyone.

[Orwell84]

My $0.02 - the omnibus left a positive impression upon me when I first read it about 8-9 years ago. Not my favourite 40k series and my simple brain struggled at times with the dense story, but overall it was worth reading.

 

It's not a great page turner like much of Abnett, ADB or Wraight's work, that is true. From memory the novels read more like John French's Ahriman saga in terms of complexity. Shira Calpurnia's not a soldier but a detective unmasking the Imperium's more prosaic enemies - not horrific daemons or aliens but 'only' human nobles, politicians, traders, and other bigwigs profiting at the expense of humanity at large.

 

If you're the kind of 40k fan whose preference runs more towards 'bolter-porn' and weird aliens/daemons, or prefer simple stories, then I wouldn't recommend it.

 

However, if you're into exploring mainstream Imperial civilisation during 'peacetime', enjoy an author's world-building, or like detective stories, then I'd suggest giving it a go.

[Xisor]

The density is a huge attraction to me. For some of the sentences have more texture and stunning depth to it than many chapters of other novels. (And it's not like Farrer is some sort of horrid purple writer with preposterous run-on sentences and no paragraphs, not at all!)

 

But it's worth knowing that Farrer's prose is more denser than most BL authors.

 

Very different style to a lot of what gets published by BL.

 

Farrer's my favourite author, I think.

 

And the second novel in the omnibus, Legacy, is my favourite novel by some distance. (Not just BL, but generally.)

 

It's very good.

[DukeLeto69]

I echo what Orwell and Xisor say...spot on! Farrer is not an easy read and he likes to play with language and structure which means his works take a bit of effort. However, alongside Fehervari I would say the Calpurnia books are some of the most mature and interesting work published by BL.

 

As you can tell I am a fan and loved all three novels in Enforcer. However, I often seem to be in a minority when I say my favourite of the three is Blind, the third one. That is both because of the detective story AND the amazing world building giving insight into the Astropathicus and how astrotelepathy works, something we rarely/never see. I thought it was sublime!

 

But then apart from Abnett's GG/Sabbat series my fav books tend to be "domestic 40k" so Inquisitor stories (Abnett, Wraight, French) and Arbites stories (Farrer) alongside Fehervari's stories which really defy easy classification!