Krieg

[sitnam]

Am currently reading this - it's actually quite a short novel by word/page count.

 

As others in this thread have noted, some of the setup seems off in terms of scale. 5000 Krieg soldiers constitutes a major deployment? They dig like one set of trenches to besiege a hive city? There doesn't seem to be more than a few thousand Orks and that's enough to warrant discussions about a major breach of the Octavia warzone? (The Octavia zone, by the way, is an entire sector where an Inquisitor lured Tyranid hive fleets into a nascent Ork empire in an attempt to get both to exhaust each other in mutual conflict and kicked off one HELL of a catastrophic brawl.)

Glad I’m not the only one bothered by this. Sometimes the best solution is to not give hard numbers tbh. What makes it even awkward is that the scale is completely fine in the Jurten story arc

[Roomsky]

Krieg – Steve Lyons (Audiobook)

 

It is to my shame I admit I’ve never finished Dead Men Walking. I’ve started it more than once, and I’ve never disliked it or anything, it’s just always fallen by the wayside in favour of basically anything else in the stack. One of the joys of audiobooks is they can pound out those time you really want to get into something but fear your own attention-deficit-ooh shiny is going to undermine you. I don’t know if it would have been necessary for Krieg (it’s pretty good,) but it can’t have hurt. Thankfully, that book seems to be completely inessential to enjoying this one.

 

Krieg is, in a word, haunting. Lyons has a firm handle on the tone and atmosphere of 40k, not just in bleakness, but how in how populations can get so used to omnipresent horror that it becomes almost uninteresting. The attitude of “I don’t know if I did the right thing, but I did my best,” is also sorely missing from quite a bit of 40k material, and is welcome here.

 

 

The origin of the Death Korps is covered here, and being honest it took me several chapters to start appreciating Lyons’ work. Fleshing out Krieg somehow seems like greater sacrilege than fleshing out the Horus Heresy, and while Lyons still keeps a tight lid on much of their world I was baulking at it for quite a while. This wasn’t helped by an initial impression of a “loyalists good, separatists bad” attitude. Thankfully, that doesn’t persist, and by the 2 thirds mark Jurten is absolutely making all the wrong choices. The grayer (a deep-dark, lightless gray) things got, the more on-board I became. Ultimately what makes Lyons’ Jurten, and his Death Korps at large, so effective is that they remain very much human despite their apparent convictions. They’re cold, distant, and scary, but it’s because they remain people their dehumanization remains so effective. Kriegers you start to believe actually are automatons are the Kriegers who have been misrepresented, IMO. That people could feasibly become like them is their narrative power.

 

I enjoyed the B plot almost as much; it’s juxtaposition that makes the Death Korps most effective and this does it well. This is aided by sweeping descriptions of what’s going on in the war accompanying all the POV fightan scenes, which goes a long way to invest me in the conflict. That it’s a xenos threat is also something that earns brownie points from me.

 

It should be noted there are times where Lyons’ ability can’t quite keep up with his ambition. The framing is good, but the parts where matter of fact accounts lapse into “no scholars know what really happened here” moments read like him doing a bad job of trying for the cake and eating it too. To be clear, I’d be fine if the Krieg-homeworld narrative was completely apocryphal or completely objective, but the mix really doesn’t work IMO. A sprinkling of shallow characterization in both narratives proves annoying when up against the book’s stronger elements. Additionally, as others have said, the present-day conflict doesn’t make much sense even by the Imperium’s dubious logical ability. What are the civilians doing and where’s the PDF? Surely you’d start drafting the populace before jumping straight to exterminatus.

 

 

Any wobbliness in execution doesn’t stop this from being a treat. It’s well-paced and is thematically perfect 40k. An easy recommend for lovers of the grim, the dark, and the depressing.

 

To Taste, bordering on a must read.

ANR: 7.5/10

 

 

 

2. Col Jurten knew that if the baddies won this could result in the planet falling to chaos, as chaos invariably steps in when the Imperium is rebelled against. Whilst this is objectively true (or at least strongly likely) it does seem a bit out of character that he might know that. I get he is a colonel but in BL books where chaos is presented as an inevitable corrupting force its also usually presented as an ultra secret- mind wiped regiments etc.

 

 

He doesn't know that.

 

There was no threat of Chaos. Jurten was being paranoid and dogmatic.

Edited February 28, 2022 by Roomsky

[Sothalor]

Yeah, whenever we see Jurten speak about Krieg falling to Chaos, he's not using the term as a 21st century affluent consumer of a fictional setting with all the meta-knowledge, miniatures, artwork, imagery, background publications, etc.

 

He's using the term as a blanket label for a heterodox Other. He's a man born, raised, and fanatically devoted to a totalitarian worldview that leaves no room for questioning, doubt, or deviation. 

 

In his understanding, "Chaos" = LE BAD. He (Jurten) cannot be wrong. He must be right. Therefore, anything that opposes him is LE BAD, hence his enemies must be of Chaos.

[Knockagh]

Guys if we were going to poke holes and condemn BL novels on the basis of scale and unrealistic takes on warfare I doubt there would be any books left. The heresy wouldn’t have even got past the first book. Warhammer fiction are half stories half legends. Some authors will go over the top with exaggeration and others will remain more grounded. I honestly think this book is somewhat in the middle. I loved it if others dont that’s great, but let’s not blast the book for something that’s part of the DNA of Warhammer fiction.

[cheywood]

Guys if we were going to poke holes and condemn BL novels on the basis of scale and unrealistic takes on warfare I doubt there would be any books left. The heresy wouldn’t have even got past the first book. Warhammer fiction are half stories half legends. Some authors will go over the top with exaggeration and others will remain more grounded. I honestly think this book is somewhat in the middle. I loved it if others dont that’s great, but let’s not blast the book for something that’s part of the DNA of Warhammer fiction.

BL novels share a lot of the same flaws. Why would that make them exempt from critique?

[Knockagh]

Want I’m saying is that what your calling a flaw is, I imagine, in most cases very deliberate. Regiments, peoples, aliens, space marines all these groups get exaggerated in different books because the story is part of their legend. That’s what BL fiction does.

[cheywood]

Want I’m saying is that what your calling a flaw is, I imagine, in most cases very deliberate. Regiments, peoples, aliens, space marines all these groups get exaggerated in different books because the story is part of their legend. That’s what BL fiction does.

That’s a very charitable interpretation of BL’s inconsistency of scale, but even if true why does something being intentional mean I have to like it or refrain from criticizing it?

[sitnam]

Guys if we were going to poke holes and condemn BL novels on the basis of scale and unrealistic takes on warfare I doubt there would be any books left. The heresy wouldn’t have even got past the first book.

These are war novels. Just because it's science fiction doesn't mean we need to suspend disbelief entirely for the sake of plot. Much of the weirdness of the heresy (such as the fairly low.number of Marines) was actually rewritten to be more in line with the FW Black Books.

 

Warhammer fiction are half stories half legends.

I see this said often, and often it seems to be used to excuse bad writing. Some 40k fiction is definitely the the realm of truth and myth. The Forgeworld campaign books in particular handle this really well, and some parts of the Jurten story line within this novel also do this. However, a story told through the first or third person of particular characters isn't "half-legend", we are seeing the events through those characters.

 

I liked the book, but I'm not going to pull back my criticism because it's been a habit of Black Library stories to have a bad sense of scale. Quite a few stories do have a good sense of scale. Just off the top of my head: Andy Clark (his Knights novels, Gate of Bones, and Shroud of Night) Guy Haley (Dark Imperium and Blood Angels novels) and Justin D Hill (Cadian novels) are all pretty good at making conflicts feel as large as they should.

 

Take Steel Tread for instance. The novels involves multiple guard regiments, numbering tens of thousands of troops, trying to win a front in a planetary campaign. A front, not the whole war. The actions of the protagonists (a tank crew) aren't single-handily winning a war, but they do contribute greatly to that specific front.

 

As I've also said, Steve Lyons himself has been able to write with good scale, in this very novel!

[Roomsky]

Guys if we were going to poke holes and condemn BL novels on the basis of scale and unrealistic takes on warfare I doubt there would be any books left. The heresy wouldn’t have even got past the first book. Warhammer fiction are half stories half legends. Some authors will go over the top with exaggeration and others will remain more grounded. I honestly think this book is somewhat in the middle. I loved it if others dont that’s great, but let’s not blast the book for something that’s part of the DNA of Warhammer fiction.

 

Ehh, two minds about it. I'm sure, like you say, that none hold up to scrutiny if viewed through an even semi-learned lens. But I also think its a fair criticism when a layman can say "uhm, where is everyone?" There's no reason they can't make broader strokes about numbers and positioning anyway, I don't think it's a difficult balance to keep. 

 

But being honest it didn't ruin the book for me by any means. Krieg has substance, which a lot of BL's output really doesn't, and that alone makes it a cut above.

[Sothalor]

BL/GW do have consistent, ongoing problems with scale and numbers - as does a great deal of science fiction/fantasy in general. That doesn't preclude them from that criticism, any more than the fact that Uncle Carl always has a few beers too many at any family gathering and ends up puking his guts out in the toilet means that shouldn't be called out because he always does it.

 

It just means that's a persistent problem. Nor does it preclude Uncle Carl from being praised for other qualities like generosity towards the needy, hospitality towards strangers, or diligence in his work.

 

 

The thing about Krieg is it's particularly egregious in regard to scale, numbers, AND their impact on the overall story regarding the "modern", Octavius containment story arc.

 

I would also say that it's not just about numbers; I also experienced a sort of setting/narrative dissonance regarding the nature of the WMDs that form the connective sinew between the two plot threads - namely, prior material (FW's Siege of Vraks, the FFG RPG books, codices, publications, etc.) refer to Krieg's devastated state as being a result of civil war and use of "atomic" weapons.

 

I submit that term was a deliberate choice, intended to evoke our modern consciousness about the potential consequences of nuclear armaments, MAD, global nuclear conflict, and all that entails.

 

However, that evocation also has a strong inherent pull towards grounding the audience "visualization" in what they already know or can relate to; that is, this particular allegorical technique tends to pre-prejudice people to directly overlay their preconceived/existing images and concepts onto the work. I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing, just that it can influence how people engage with it.

 

 

In this particular case I do think it's a bit of a problem, because Krieg is trying to have it both ways. A close reading strongly implies that the "nukes" in both narrative threads are something far beyond our modern-day weapons; they're repeatedly referred to as products from the Dark Age of Technology, lost and forbidden devices, the Ordo Hereticus is getting involved, Inquisitor Ven Bruin states that they unleash the horrors of the warp, and so on.

 

But what we see in the story is almost all directly modern depictions of nuclear warfare. Flash blindness, destructive effects on buildings, fallout, radiation poisoning. If anything, the weapon effects are rather underpowered for the way the characters behave about their potential use.

When six of these unfathomably apocalyptic weapons are detonated beneath the captured Hive City, there are still buildings standing and even a minor character who was caught in the explosion who survives for a while afterwards.

 

If you're telling me all this stuff isn't a deliberate evocation to survivor accounts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I highly doubt it. And again, I'm not saying it's bad. 

 

 

But therein lies a piece of the dissonance; this is all happening in a setting where this sort of thing is child's play. The Imperium routinely deploys weapons that have far more catastrophic on-target effects. Cyclonic torpedoes, life-eater virus weapons, orbital bombardments. Orks probably regularly cause extinction-level events with things like rok drops. Tyranid Hive Fleets literally eat worlds bare of life. And that's without getting into things like daemonic incursions, Planet Killers, Blackstone Fortresses, etc. In short, there's no lack of horrific wide-scale devastation going on all the time in 40k.

 

In contrast, part of what drives our modern psychology about nuclear conflict is not just the physical effect of any given weapon - it's the mindset and attitude of reciprocal response that would escalate things into total unrestrained war. If, hypothetically, tomorrow Moscow, Washington DC, and Beijing were all simultaneously glassed into irradiated craters by concentrated nuclear strikes, the planet would go on. There will be localized fallout and some long-tail ecological effects, but, and this sounds coldly callous, the world and the human species, as a whole, would keep going.

 

It's that human factor that's really scary - that our societies and countries would then drive ourselves into paroxysms of hatred, vengeance and reciprocity that lead us to strike back so unrestrained with such means and mentalities that it ultimately spirals into mutually destructive outcomes - that we consume ourselves in this cycle.

 

But - again - here's the thing, the Imperium already lives in that mindspace, all of the time.

 

 

So - getting back to Krieg - it's these two areas of dissonance: the scale and numbers of one of the plot threads, and the whole WMD angle. They're like wavelengths that end up amplifying each other at certain points. I think Krieg almost demands its reader to remain solidly grounded in a modern, early 21st century mentality for everything to "work." I'm going to borrow an analogy from C.S. Lewis here about beams of light in a darkened shed. You can stand outside a beam and look at it, or you can stand within a beam and look along it. They're different experiences, with different outcomes.

 

And again, I'm not saying this novel as a whole is bad. I think it's more that it comes across as an outlier in terms of the atmosphere, imagery, and zeitgeist that's built up around 40k over the years.

[Moonreaper666]

 

Am currently reading this - it's actually quite a short novel by word/page count.

 

As others in this thread have noted, some of the setup seems off in terms of scale. 5000 Krieg soldiers constitutes a major deployment? They dig like one set of trenches to besiege a hive city? There doesn't seem to be more than a few thousand Orks and that's enough to warrant discussions about a major breach of the Octavia warzone? (The Octavia zone, by the way, is an entire sector where an Inquisitor lured Tyranid hive fleets into a nascent Ork empire in an attempt to get both to exhaust each other in mutual conflict and kicked off one HELL of a catastrophic brawl.)

Glad I’m not the only one bothered by this. Sometimes the best solution is to not give hard numbers tbh. What makes it even awkward is that the scale is completely fine in the Jurten story arc

I don't get why they don't use Millions or Billions? Krieg and the Orks should be fighting and killing each other in massive numbers

 

Each Hive City fought over should be a graveyard by the end of the battle, with the dead vastly outnumbering the living