Huron Blackheart: Master of the Maelstrom

[byrd9999]

I find Guy Haley to be a master of efficient prose, totally dedicated to telling a clear story, and I'm thinking the same thing as you that his background in journalism has something to do with this.

Josh Reynolds, for me, goes too far in this direction. I liked Fabius Bile: Primogenitor and The Dark Harvest, but his sentences are often short, single clauses. It's too staccato and doesn't develop much of a rhythm. It reads to me in places like a list of bulletpoints that he barely fleshed out. It's less noticeable in an audiobook (Apocalypse) or Audio Drama (the superb Darkly Dreaming).

[Roomsky]

Being perfectly honest, I've sort of started taking periods in black library novels as suggestions rather than commands at this point. Have you tried reading Annandale with an actual pause every period? It's painful.

I have to admit this book has soured on me just slightly since I read it, but it's an odd feeling because it doesn't have most of the problems I usually associate with flawed BL output. I was never bored, the subject matter is interesting, and for all my issues with Brooks' portrayal of Huron he's far from an unmemorable protagonist. The comments made about telling rather than showing hold true, I think. A lot of the book feels like Huron's commentary on things happening to go his way, rather than his thought process and actions keeping him afloat as I believe was the intention.

Still, a bizarre feeling. I don't usually come out of a book thinking it was a blast to read but also a bit disappointing.

[byrd9999]

On 6/30/2022 at 5:48 PM, Roomsky said:

Being perfectly honest, I've sort of started taking periods in black library novels as suggestions rather than commands at this point. Have you tried reading Annandale with an actual pause every period? It's painful.

[Moonreaper666]

Does it describe how big or how powerful his fleet is? Or what special equipment he and his Warband have?

[Felix Antipodes]

Another one flushed from the backlog at last.

This was a strange one.  Like several others commented on, I found it both enthralling and aggravating in equal measure.  The present tense used meant that it took me two attempts to get into it.  Not my favourite prose style.  

It was also way too short, with a lot of plot points and characterisation barely touched on as a consequence.  It was good to get a look at the leadership group of the Red Corsairs but many were just names on paper with no real attempt to expand them into anything memorable.  I thought only Huron himself came out of it well character wise.

For those confused by the Red Wolves descriptor, I saw it as Huron’s personal name for Space Wolves within his force.  Space Wolves turned Red Corsair = Red Wolves.  The crew of the Wolf of Ferris may even use the name themselves for their warband without being aware there is a Chapter of that name.  Or they do know and use the name as a poke in the eye to that Chapter and the Imperium in general.

I was happy that they tied up the loose ends wrt the Macragge’s Honour and how it returned to loyalist hands.  It was also good to see a few of the minor Chapters get a name check (although not so much if you are a Angels Encarmine, Deathstrike, etc, fan I suppose).

Side Rant:

I hope the mooted closer ties between the GW and BL writing crews means we stop getting new and random Captains being thrown at us in the lore.  There are only 10 Captains to a Chapter and here we get another one.  An Ultramarine to boot - surely the most documented Chapter of the lot personnel-wise.

On a similar note, I hope the Chogoris campaign mentioned makes its way into the GW side and doesn’t just disappear, never to be mentioned again.  I would settle for a WD flashpoint article or two.

End Side Rant:

tldr: Enjoyable read (once I got past the present tense style) but under developed plot and characters.

For those that asked:  no exact number for the RC fleet, but they had over 200 ships of various class mustered at New Badab alone, with more at their other bases within the Maelstrom.  Nowhere near as many as at New Badab though.

[Lord Nord in Gravis Armour]

5 hours ago, Felix Antipodes said:

I hope the mooted closer ties between the GW and BL writing crews means we stop getting new and random Captains being thrown at us in the lore.  There are only 10 Captains to a Chapter and here we get another one.  An Ultramarine to boot - surely the most documented Chapter of the lot personnel-wise.

Haven't read it yet and I'm not planning to get to it for a while (although I will eventually need to read it simply for the Macragge's Honour handover, something I had been expecting to see in the pages of the Dawn of Fire series).

So in the meantime, can you tell me the name of the new Captain and if he's stated as being in charge of any specific company?

As it happens, the leadership of the Ultramarines has at least had ONE dropout, since not only was the Captain from the Indomitus novel "incapacitated" at the end, but that entire novel is pretty much non-canon at this point given that it HAD to take place a near-decade into the Crusade in order for the character histories to work, yet we now know that the Pariah Nexus was reported to Guilliman a good five years earlier.

[Felix Antipodes]

He is Captain Julius Katra, Ultramarines, Commander Task Force XXV, Kallides Battle Group.  Doing a quick reread he is actually described as a Force Captain but I don't think that changes my complaint?

[Lord Nord in Gravis Armour]

I don't think it does either. I know Gilly promoted Felix to Captain outside of the traditional codex (and Ultramarines) structure, but that would have been after the timeframe here - it was news to Calgar at the time that Guilliman would do such a thing, so I don't believe he'd have done so previously (but then again I haven't re-read Dark Imperium since it was "fortified" with the timeline retcon, so it's not impossible they danced around that with the rewrite).

[Xin Ceithan]

Thank you for helping me funneling my somewhat conflicting perceptions on this book by this. As others have pointed out, this is a strange one, but I finally seem to be able to put my finger on it.

This is just a nice book.  And that’s it. 

Which is a terrible thing to say. 

It’s well written and entertaining. The audio performance especially is very nice.

But nothing in here matters. There is nothing new on Huron or the Corsairs that isn’t in the Codex or any Website.

There is a bit of name dropping from the Badab War but you can enjoy this without prior knowledge of that (or the story of the Macragge’s Honour from the DoF books)

Huron makes a for competent commander and get a few nice quips but I can’t really take from this what enables him to be more of a  menace than any other halfway competent renegade Astartes commander who manages to survive through a century or so.
Or maybe the outstanding feature on his side is that he doesn’t act like the atypical b  movie / BL villain types. 

The same goes for the Red Corsairs.

Everything in here is entirely generic. The names are there ( the Tyrant’s Claw, the Hamadryad) and of course he made pacts with things but you could just exchange them with basically any chaos undivided warband and it would still be nice and entertaining.

Nothing in this makes me think I should paint my plastic CSM in Huron’s  colours above anything else. 
 

Which is a  shame because I think that there could be more here and there are some inroads into that.

The Mechanicus Adept along the slippery slope between duty and freedom.

The idea of having most other Characters NOT from the original Badab War chapters seems odd at first, but I think it is intended to further the idea of the this is a collection of renegades and not just a sort of “shattered legion” made up mostly by his former followers anyway.

I quite liked the way the chaos powers are rather subtly trying to worm their way in when an opportunity appears rather than just waltzing in offering “ unlimited power”

Even  framing the whole thing as a  side story of the Macragge’s Honour could offer something more  - confronting Huron with his past as an Imperial Commander e.g.m all that he disdains of the Imperium or presenting more of a dilemma between being tempted to keep it anyway trying to keep it anyway and using  it’s for all it’s worth while he’s at it.

But apparently one of Huron’s plot armor strategic genius feat is recognizing the plot Armour of of the Ultramarine flagship.
Because Huron is apparently ok with using a  barely understood Xenos battle station gifted to him by Abbadon  (with appropriate caution) but seemingly instantly decides that he can’t possibly ride in the Honour’s Machine Spirit  - or at least lacks the time and resources to attempt to do that (and maybe further his standing among his fellow reavers by bringing the flagship to heel?! ) 

Don’t  the Ultramarines have nothing better to do? The galaxy being torn apart by the great Rift and everything and isn’t there a new crusade going on ….? ! 

but take away Roboute’s personal ride and expect him to be all John Wick over you the next moment.
Which Huron is smart enough to recognize is not in his interest - good for him! 
 

I really think there is a missed opportunity here - if they had made this a story arc in the DoF series to showcase the Red Corsairs as a sort of prime examples of Chaos Undivided forces in contrast / dark mirror to the showcase Uktramarine Astartes under a competent villain using all these elements that touched but not sufficiently supported, that would have made some some nice two or three books IMO.

It’s a testament to the author that this still works as good, if generic Space Marine Battles type of book in the end given it’s limited / limiting size. 
 

6/10 - Rated V for vanilla. 

(way better than most of the “Space Marine Battles”, but underwhelming in the character’s series)