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Deathwatch Shadowbreaker


Taliesin

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So this is coming out now and it looks good to me, one of the year's best releases so far IMO.

 

Read the sample available on the site and it really wet my appetite. I've not read the first one and am not sure if it has as interesting a premise as this one, which with T'au and Inquisition both involved hits some of my bullet points.

 

Anyone else looking forward to this, and any thoughts on the first book ( which is actually only from 2013, I thought this might be a sequel to a much older book, but it's not).

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You MUST read the first one.  It is so good!

 

Honestly Deathwatch has been one of my favorites for a long time, getting this sequel (that I never thought would actually happen, six years is a long time!) is a high point of any BL release for the past several years.

Finished it, will give my thoughts later

I'm currently on Chapter 7 and absolutely loving it!! My interest with 30 / 40k had been wavering a little of late, but this book is an absolute gem... dark, gritty and brilliantly written so far! Hopefully BL re-issue the first book by Steve and give it the Audiobook treatment too, Andrew Wincott is doing a great job with the narration.

 

 

Finished it, will give my thoughts later

How did you already get it?

 

You can download it on audible for a few days now already.

 

Gonna start listening to it on my way to work tomorrow. Can't wait for it.

 

 

Must resist....I already preordered the ebook.

Lisitening to the Audiobook at the moment and good lord is it good. Not only has Parker knocked it out of the park but the narration done by Andrew Wincott is fabulous. I think this is his first 40k reading and the voice he puts on and the emotion he invests in the different characters really lend weight to the story. A must buy in my opinion. 

Guest Triszin

 

 

Finished it, will give my thoughts later

How did you already get it?

 

You can download it on audible for a few days now already.

 

Gonna start listening to it on my way to work tomorrow. Can't wait for it.

 

Yep, listened to it on Audible.

 

so

 

I'd rate it a 4/5

 

Pros

 

TAU representation (probably some of the best writing for the tau)

- they seem realistic. they seem like hypocrites, but intelligent borderline racist towards humans.

 

- The world they are on was once a imperial world, but it is a desert world of little value, a warp storm occured which cut off communication with the imperium.

- during this time, dark eldar raider hit the planet and took out the astropathic choirs and harassed the humans of this world for years.

- Famine, and lack of water was growing during this period

- TAU show up, kill/run off the dark eldar. Conquer the world, set up terra forming generators, start to turn it blue, its raining, crops and water famine start to subside.

- Tau note that it will take decades to get the world to a good point and by that point, TAU will have the majority population on this world, and they imply after TAU lives reach a certain threshold on a world, that they do something to the natives.

- IM going to guess that its shipping them off to other worlds to settle

 

TAU human forces

- ISF: Intergrated Security Forces

- they are the PDF/Guard that teamed up with the tau, they have tau and imperial tech. ( they ride in tau vehicles, weapons seem to flip between gaurd and tau), no imperial vehicles.

- ISF are integrated with the fire caste. seem to have similar but different system as standard firewarriors.

- ISF are respected by the tau fire warriors for the most part.

 

- some human forces are forced to cooperate with the tau, their families abducted and told to do XYZ til the star dies out, otherwise you will never see them again.

 

Imperial:

- Guerilla warfare and terror tactics. a large portion of the beginning of the book was dedicated to how imperial and tau commanders are playing a game of getting the population of civilians either complacent or angry, to help turn the tide for total control.

- TAU not going in with military strength to force the guerilla imperial soldiers to seem more like terrorists and extremists to the civilian population.

 

story:

Story kinda fell apart for me.

- so actual spoilers now.

 

.

.

.

 

A rogue inquisitor teamed up with the tau to gain access to a temporal rift in the tau system* at least thats the end goal. which we find out in the last chapter.

- The inquisitor and tau are conducting experiments with genestealers on Humans and on TAU. I listened through certain chapters twice because I thought I missed something, but they never seem to go indepth why they are doing this. Just that "ITS IMPORTANT".

but its not just the inquisitor that turned, turns out here body gaurd retinue are marines, and 2 of them turned, and gave the rest of their squad ( who were loyal to the imperium, they were in stasis/asleep during this. one woke up killed tau, so the tau vivisected him alive) the marines turning and giving their brothers to their allies seemed like the worst writing in this book. big reason i got why was that the "iron hand" alpha said something about logic being why. wasnt fond of it.

 

I liked the main cast and the inquisitorial storm troopers, they seemed to be written well.

-----

 

I'll update this tomorrow im gonna go eat dinner.

 

Dont let this initial half written thoughts on this book make you think one way or the other about it.

 

its a solid 4/5, some of the best writing for the TAU ive seen, Good writing for the loyal imperial side to.

 

 

 

 

Finished it, will give my thoughts later

How did you already get it?

 

You can download it on audible for a few days now already.

 

Gonna start listening to it on my way to work tomorrow. Can't wait for it.

 

Yep, listened to it on Audible.

 

so

 

I'd rate it a 4/5

 

Pros

 

TAU representation (probably some of the best writing for the tau)

- they seem realistic. they seem like hypocrites, but intelligent borderline racist towards humans.

 

- The world they are on was once a imperial world, but it is a desert world of little value, a warp storm occured which cut off communication with the imperium.

- during this time, dark eldar raider hit the planet and took out the astropathic choirs and harassed the humans of this world for years.

- Famine, and lack of water was growing during this period

- TAU show up, kill/run off the dark eldar. Conquer the world, set up terra forming generators, start to turn it blue, its raining, crops and water famine start to subside.

- Tau note that it will take decades to get the world to a good point and by that point, TAU will have the majority population on this world, and they imply after TAU lives reach a certain threshold on a world, that they do something to the natives.

- IM going to guess that its shipping them off to other worlds to settle

 

TAU human forces

- ISF: Intergrated Security Forces

- they are the PDF/Guard that teamed up with the tau, they have tau and imperial tech. ( they ride in tau vehicles, weapons seem to flip between gaurd and tau), no imperial vehicles.

- ISF are integrated with the fire caste. seem to have similar but different system as standard firewarriors.

- ISF are respected by the tau fire warriors for the most part.

 

- some human forces are forced to cooperate with the tau, their families abducted and told to do XYZ til the star dies out, otherwise you will never see them again.

 

Imperial:

- Guerilla warfare and terror tactics. a large portion of the beginning of the book was dedicated to how imperial and tau commanders are playing a game of getting the population of civilians either complacent or angry, to help turn the tide for total control.

- TAU not going in with military strength to force the guerilla imperial soldiers to seem more like terrorists and extremists to the civilian population.

 

story:

Story kinda fell apart for me.

- so actual spoilers now.

 

.

.

.

 

A rogue inquisitor teamed up with the tau to gain access to a temporal rift in the tau system* at least thats the end goal. which we find out in the last chapter.

- The inquisitor and tau are conducting experiments with genestealers on Humans and on TAU. I listened through certain chapters twice because I thought I missed something, but they never seem to go indepth why they are doing this. Just that "ITS IMPORTANT".

but its not just the inquisitor that turned, turns out here body gaurd retinue are marines, and 2 of them turned, and gave the rest of their squad ( who were loyal to the imperium, they were in stasis/asleep during this. one woke up killed tau, so the tau vivisected him alive) the marines turning and giving their brothers to their allies seemed like the worst writing in this book. big reason i got why was that the "iron hand" alpha said something about logic being why. wasnt fond of it.

 

I liked the main cast and the inquisitorial storm troopers, they seemed to be written well.

-----

 

I'll update this tomorrow im gonna go eat dinner.

 

Dont let this initial half written thoughts on this book make you think one way or the other about it.

 

its a solid 4/5, some of the best writing for the TAU ive seen, Good writing for the loyal imperial side to.

 

 

 

 

I've managed to read only the T'au relevant part of the spoiler without scrolling further down. I wasn't able to start listening to it today but now I'm convinced that my money isn't wasted. :D

 

The human ISF integration into the Firecaste and the use of so much of the T'au technology is surprising since before it was a pretty closed system for humans and while improving what tech they were using a bit the T'au usually didn't provide them with the same stuff the Firecaste is using.

  • 2 weeks later...

Loved it. It's actually a pretty long novel tbh, but no moment lags and it all really builds to the end quite well. I'll place it at a 4.5/5, the same rating I'd give Deathwatch, but for a different reason. A decent amount of time what ends up happening is that Parker will be writing a scene from Character A's POV but then switch in the next paragraph to Character B's POV, and it's a little bit disconcerting. I have to reread the paragraph to figure out who's the POV character now. 

 

I think the

Genestealer plot will be resolved in the followup(s). We found out what Al-Rashaq was, but not what the Genestealers are for necessarily.

 

Well, 

besides somehow breeding them outside the influence of the Hive Mind so humanity can use them as weapons themselves. A plan I'm sure is going to work...for sure..definitely...

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