Indomitus novel

[WickedJester1013]

No spoilers for the book.

I recently picked up the audio book and was very surprised be the amount of character the necrons had. I wonder What any one else’s thoughts who has started or completed the book.

Will we see the character of necrons fleshed our more now that necrons are the big bad?

[Hathor42]

The only chars I really liked were the scorpekh lord and plasmancer.

[NTaW]

It pleases me to see people liking anything about Necron characters in the lore. I'll be picking this book up eventually but a simple spoiler-free question to those who have read it:

 

Do you think it will be a series akin to the Plague War books that accompanied Dark Imperium?

 

I'm also curious about the setting and whether it mostly focuses on the Pariah Nexus but that seems like more of a "just read the book" question. 

 

 

 

**Just a friendly reminder, if you wish to discuss spoiler-ish things from the book feel free but please use the

[/ spoiler] (no spaces) tags around your post so the rest of us have the option of diving in or waiting. 

[Marshal Loss]

Do you think it will be a series akin to the Plague War books that accompanied Dark Imperium?

Been described elsewhere as a one-off, so don't expect any sequels

[WickedJester1013]

I will keep the spoiler tag in mind, and when I meant character of the necrons I meant of the faction. We don’t really often get to see how an overlord interacts with a destroyer lord or how a necron really thinks.

[Tyriks]

The marine parts of this book are painful. But the Necron bits have a lot of fun or interesting background and world building. I am not done yet so I can't say overall but thus far its worth it for the Necron bits. Though I've heard the narrator on Audible is not good, as a warning.

[Get Thokt]

I have no intention on reading it, since I'm waiting on the Orikan vs Trazyn book. But would very well like to know what happens in Indomitus. I'd happily read through the spoilers with the spoiler tag.

[Anamnesis]

The marine parts of this book are painful. But the Necron bits have a lot of fun or interesting background and world building. I am not done yet so I can't say overall but thus far its worth it for the Necron bits. Though I've heard the narrator on Audible is not good, as a warning.

 

So I’m not alone, the marines parts are terrible. The narrator is a bit strange on audible but it’s okay.

 the book won’t win any awards but it’s fun for the necron for a change!

Anamnesis

[Tyriks]

Spoilers below.

 

So, the tl:dr version is that the Necrons have been sent by Szarekh to drop Blackstone Resonators across several systems to sever the warp. They are approaching some kind of critical mass which will make the effect very hard to reverse and greatly increase the affected area. They make warp travel nearly impossible, cut off astropathic messaging, make people simply give up and merely go through the motions of their life. At present only systems with the Resonators have major symptoms, those neighboring systems are minorly influenced. The marines bumble their way into the process and resolve to stop it. It's fun for the Necron world building but if you aren't desperately looking for that it's not worth picking this up. Not as good as Severed or The War in the Museum.

 

More significant spoilers :

 

The Ultramarines are here represented by a Captain and two Lieutenants. Prax (a lieutenant) has been with the fleet for nine years, since the Crusade launched, and was promoted through the ranks. The others have less combat experience combined than he has and yet are deemed superior battlefield leaders and he is often relegated to orchestrating actions from their ship. This grates on him but he agrees that he is somehow lacking. The marines are infuriatingly stupid. Their first action is to throw away a carefully planned engagement to wing it because the fight has gone "too perfectly" and must therefore be a trap (which turns out to be true, obnoxiously). They later board the Necron tomb ship and dump all of their explosives at literally the first thing that looks imports to them. They get in an argument about whether they're allowed to assassinate the planetary commander and replace him. They ignore orders to return to the fleet so they can come to Orestes and fight without having any idea what is happening there. They bicker amongst themselves constantly.

 

The Necrons are of the Szarekhan Dynasty but are under the command of Simut, an Overlord who is almost as incompetent as the staggeringly inept Ultramarines. He has been sent to drop these Resonators because he couldn't be trusted with the more delicate work involved elsewhere and this task should be relatively simple. He has dropped them off on a few worlds but with complications or delays that Szarekh isn't happy about so Simut is under regular scrutiny.

 

Simut has been given "command codes" by Szarekh that allow him to overwrite the free will of others, which is not really how Necrons have worked before but whatever. He uses this frequently and in petty ways because he is self conscious about his command. This (and other things) make his fellow commanders dislike him. His Royal Warden is usually an ignored voice of reason, Zozar the Skorpekh Lord is an enjoyable glimpse into Destroyer insanity, the Plasmancer (Ah-hotep) is generally the most competent leader in the book but is not actually on board with Szarekh's plan. Simut is revealed to have destroyed her dynasty prior to the book so she is constantly playing into his insecurities and undermining him.

 

When the Marines jump to Orestes, they actually get stuck on the warp because of the Resonators. They translate in using some technobabble about a ship being destroyed while it was trying to jump out, otherwise they'd have been stuck forever. Ah-hotep drops a computer virus essentially that blinds Simut to their presence.

 

They attack Simut's tomb ship with no plan or information. They board, drop their explosives at the first potential target, then hightail it out. Simut ignores the explosives (despite commenting that they are there) until the marines have left the ship, allowing his own ship to be destroyed. He teleports to Ah-hotep's ship and begins working from there.

 

The marines have realized their presence seems to bolster the humans against the warp canceling effect. They detect the Blackstone Resonator and ignore it thinking if it was important the Necrons would have it on the planet by now.

 

Throughout this we cut to Zozar having flashbacks of his wife who didn't take biotransference well and he subsequently killed. He blames himself because he assisted in designing the machinery for biotransference. His scenes are fun but inconsequential. He desires to see life wiped out because it reminds him of his loss. We also cut to the second lieutenant, Nemetus, as he fights Zozar's forces on the surface. His scenes are also pointless but less fun. Eventually the marines decide this situation is hopeless and that they must send their ship to report on what they've found. Prax takes off but can't warp translate, leaving his fellow Ultramarines to die.

 

Eventually, Szarekh gets tired of the delays and sends an emissary to oversee the process. Simut decides to rush the operation to get it done before they arrive so he can claim full credit. Ah-hotep uses this to seize control long enough to get the Resonator out of position, while also sending a message to the humans that it is important. She is killed but the orbital defenses destroy the Resonator. This maybe allows Prax to escape (his final scene ends with him trying to translate once the Resonator is destroyed). Eventually, all the Necrons from the initial fleet are dead, but the marines know they have no hope against the second, much larger fleet incoming. They resolve to make their last stand while noting that the new fleet's resonator is already beginning to have an effect on people.

[01RTB01]

Just finished reading it...

 

No spoilers but I won't be recommending it to anyone. Out of all the GW books I've read this was incredibly poor imo.

 

The necron character development was interesting but seems quite alien to what we've seen before.

 

I never read the dark imperium books but did read soul wars. That was a much better read than this with arguably very similar plots.

[MithrilForge]

I never get the point of marines who train for years and years as scouts etc etc up to brother status, only to find the brother acting like he just got out of "Boot Camp"...  . 

I think i'd recommend play it safe and go with the New Guy Haley novel 

 

Mithril

[Hathor42]

I think primaris are trained a bit differently. Pax worked his way up where as the other two were trained for command at the start.

[MithrilForge]

Even with that different training regiment as an excuse ...they still seem like noobs !!.

 

Mithril

[Karhedron]

I must admit I find Gav Thorpe a bit hit-and-miss as a writer. This sounds like it is veering towards "miss" territory.

 

Guy Haley seems much more solid and reliable a story teller. I don't think I have read anything of his that would give less than a 7/10.

[Hathor42]

The battle scenes were rather bland. 

[jbaeza94]

I enjoyed the book for what it is, show off of the new models.

 

Im new to necrons, only thing i read of theirs before was the world engine (one of my fav books)

 

The audible guy is a bit strange, im used to the horus heresy guy, but i did like the necron space chatter effect they added.

 

This book did peak my interest in many necron things, like Zozar's biotransference, and how much control an overlord actually has over his fleet.

[WickedJester1013]

Ya the idea that necrons chatter was really new imo