Black Library Siege of Terra - Garro: Knight of Grey

[DukeLeto69]

7 hours ago, Felix Antipodes said:

No personal slur on Swallow was intended.  I was referring to his diminishing BL output of late compared to his output elsewhere, as both yourself and @DarkChaplain explained way better than me 

I was talking generally about the fandom and Swallow bashing rather than any particular post in this thread.

 

Totally my opinion but I don’t think Swallow is a bad writer at all, I just think his work feels less HH/40k than others. My supposition for that is how his creativity and ideas are influenced by the wide range of IP he works in and I think it “dilutes” his 40kness.

[DukeLeto69]

9 hours ago, DarkChaplain said:

I'd argue against Nemesis being a manga-like (or that there even is something like that, considering the breadth of the medium and the myriad of intricate genres). I experienced it more like it wanted to be a crime thriller on one hand and a heist-style assassination plot on the other... and kind of forgot about both not even halfway through. It's still one of the longer Heresy novels, but the further you get, the less compelling it becomes - because it doesn't stick with what works. The Dagonet murder mystery was extremely promising, but it was just tossed aside for a cheap, early twist.

 

The murder mystery then leaves for shallow action and - indeed - setting-defying new inventions in the form of that Spear-assassin, who was a Pariah daemon host. I am still baffled that this is something the editors and IP lords approved of, because it directly contradicted the established rules.

 

As for the shuttles zipping around the galaxy, I think it could have been established by way of, say, Malcador's personal access to highly classified Dark Age of Technology material, something exceedingly rare and unknown to all but the Emperor's innermost circle.

 

It's not like the setting couldn't allow for it - but it had to a) be a limited piece of technology and b) thoroughly established and explained to be such, to have its exceptionalism remarked upon.

 

I could see why they'd skip this for Garro: Oath of Moment, being one of the first audio dramas they did, limited to a 70 minute CD format. But at the latest, it needed to be added to Garro: Weapon of Fate, where those audio dramas were stitched together. But instead of adding this context, smoothing out the bumps, making sure that the general flow works.... it was a poor man's job of a patch-up "novel" that added very very little, and certainly didn't fix the problems even when it reasonably could and should have. That's why Weapon of Fate always felt phoned in.

Maybe “Manga” was the wrong word but it did feel comic book from Japan like to me.

 

I truly hate the “shuttles zipping around the galaxy” thing. Truly hate it. For me one of the cornerstones of the HH/40k setting is that to undertake interstellar travel you require ships that are kilometres long due to needing geller field generators and massive warp engines. These ships are sailing through a “sea of souls” a realm of emotions that transcends time and distance. Star Wars style hyperspace or Star Trek style warp drives have no place in this setting. So I just head cannon it out of existence and would have HATED a “Malcador has access to some DAoT tech” explanation.

[Matcap86]

2 hours ago, DukeLeto69 said:

Maybe “Manga” was the wrong word but it did feel comic book from Japan like to me.

 

I truly hate the “shuttles zipping around the galaxy” thing. Truly hate it. For me one of the cornerstones of the HH/40k setting is that to undertake interstellar travel you require ships that are kilometres long due to needing geller field generators and massive warp engines. These ships are sailing through a “sea of souls” a realm of emotions that transcends time and distance. Star Wars style hyperspace or Star Trek style warp drives have no place in this setting. So I just head cannon it out of existence and would have HATED a “Malcador has access to some DAoT tech” explanation.

 

That's the explanation in one of the FW HH black books on how Garro gets around so quickly to recruit the Nemean Reaver if I recall correctly. Specialised covert-ops ship with top of the line navigators.

[lansalt]

1 hour ago, matcap86 said:

 

That's the explanation in one of the FW HH black books on how Garro gets around so quickly to recruit the Nemean Reaver if I recall correctly. Specialised covert-ops ship with top of the line navigators.

That's also the explanation in BL tales. The problem is that it creates a big plot hole by ignoring the Ruinstorm: Why Malcador didn't send him to speak with the loyalist primarchs in Imperium Secundus and avoid years of the UM, DA and BA waiting for nothing? Garro recruited Tylos Rubio in Calth and nobody reported to Guilliman about it? It doesn't make sense.

[DukeLeto69]

1 hour ago, matcap86 said:

 

That's the explanation in one of the FW HH black books on how Garro gets around so quickly to recruit the Nemean Reaver if I recall correctly. Specialised covert-ops ship with top of the line navigators.

Uuurrrgghhh (personal opinion of course)

[Ubiquitous1984]

There are some really excellent reviews in this thread - thank you to all of the contributors.  DA in particular nails it.  This book was clearly meant to be an audio drama, and suffers for being a novella instead.  It just doesn’t feel like the other entires in the SoT series.  The cast, the length, the premise, the continuity … now an audio drama would have been really enjoyable IMO.  Instead the version that was provided to us felt flat and more like a glorified short story that should have been in a short story anthology rather than as a stand alone, £40 LE novella (for those of us still bothering to collect them).

 

That said, I found the book generally inoffensive, although this involved me having to suspend my disbelief quite heavily at times.  The battle between Morty and Garro just didn’t stack up with the depiction of other Primarchs fighting Space Marines during the SoT.  It was inferred that Morty was holding back, but it still felt setting-busting for a daemon Primarch to be so totally fooled by a Space Marine.  But suspending disbelief certainly helps overcome this.

 

There were some more odd continuity issues which continue to blight the SoT series … I thought that Garro was a Sgt. in the recent Mortarion Primarch novel?  Yet in one of the flashbacks he is already Captain of the Seventh Great Company.  It’s a trivial matter, but I find them frustrating when surely these novels are being proof read by other authors and editors who are in theory on top of the lore?  DA has already mentioned the continuity issues with Keeler.

 

Overall it’s not the authors fault that this story was not picked up as an audio drama, but it felt out of place especially coming between the excellent EoE and what will hopefully be an epic book 8.  One could easily skip this book and not miss anything of significance for the overall Siege plot line.  

[Nagashsnee]

25 minutes ago, Ubiquitous1984 said:

surely these novels are being proof read by other authors and editors who are in theory on top of the lore?  

I read ALLOT of BL, probably more then I should, and NOTHING over the past several years has EVER given me the impression that unless the author cares enough to do it the editor/BL staff give anything but the most hazy dreamlike idea of a car about the lore or how the current work will impact/change/alter it.  If anything the legal team probably are the only one who care and thats over IP  protections issue ( both their own and in case somebody tried to bring a tardis or something). 

 

I read this yesterday, the only thing I can really say is already forgot most of it, and the ending just felt like a worse version of a ending we already got not 2 books ago. Others have already gone into it way better then I could.  Biggest positive is that it was short. 

 

I will say I don't care if this was meant to be audio, or a film or animation or anything else. If you are charging me money for a book, i expect a good book, nothing else, and this failed that goal. (tho i did borrow from a mate rather then buy it so cant really complain). 

[aa.logan]

I had some issues with actually getting my copy, it took way longer to dispatch than it should’ve (my local store had other LE copies delivered last week, but not mine for some reason), but having finally read it, I’m left feeling a little mixed. 
 

In it’s own right, it’s a well-written and entertaining story, that, like others have said, would have made a better audio drama. 
 

Had it ended like I felt it was building towards, with Garro

becoming a daemon host

, I think I’d have absolutely *loved* it, but instead the ending drained much of the goodwill I had for the story. 

[Moonreaper666]

Would have been better if Garro had his Seventy (those left alive) plus Blackshields and other oddsorts of Loyalists to slow down Typhus and let Keeler flee

 

Garro's group takes heavy casualties but then a much larger force of Loyalists arrive, one that is too big for even Typhus to handle along. Unfortunately, Mortarion shows up and massacres them all in just 7 seconds (thise includes the 4 Emperor-class Titans)

 

Garro does inflict a very minor wound on Mortarion before being slain by Typhus. This wound did not heal by the time Mortarion fought the Khan during Warhawk and did play a minor part in the mutual-kill

 

As Garro's soul was about to be devoured by Nurgle Daemons like the rest of the Loyalists in the Novella, Malcador saves his soul and gives it to the Emperor to be protected in the afterlife

 

"Unlike the Lion, I believe Loyalty should be rewarded." Malcador to Garro's soul

 

Keeler unleashes her power to banish a Greater Daemon of Nurgle before fainting. Katsuhiro carries her to Malcador

[DarkChaplain]

....7 seconds for flyboy to wipe out 70 odd Legionaries plus 4 random Imperator Titans that somehow still exist after months of the siege. Ok. You do you.

[wecanhaveallthree]

I do largely agree. There is no sense of urgency in Mortarion's advance. Like, I get it, Death Guard do be implacable and Garro is like 'well they'd hurry up if they wanted to', but Keeler and Gallor do, quite literally, just fly away with no issue. There is no real sense of scope or scale - Marmax isn't portrayed as anything but a random objective that's in their way, there's nothing critical about it, and nothing that suggests the troupe couldn't just cut bait and go. Garro's last stand is very much a narrative conceit, to shuffle him off, rather than a required and necessary sacrifice. It's not even made particularly important in the book itself. 

 

It very possibly could have benefited from more forces. As it is, Mortarion's there because Garro's there, and Garro stays because Mortarion's there. That's the only reason for the book to even happen, and Typhus is pretty much spot-on while he's complaining that it's just a waste of time. It is!

Edited January 29, 2023 by wecanhaveallthree

[Tolmeus]

I only finished the novel now. 

A question: Does the story take place before, during or after Mortis? 

 

In my mind it should go during Mortis, since we get know there that Mortarion is going to take Perturabo's place in the Lion's Gate Spaceport, right?

Edited January 29, 2023 by Tolmeus

[DarkChaplain]

That's the weird part, really. I thought it'd be better slotted during Mortis, too, but Keeler makes that impossible, due to the timing of her release from the Blackstone.

[Tolmeus]

As for the novel itself:

I share the sentiment that it is solid enough if you reagard it as the closing character arc of Garro. 

 

In contrast, if you regard it as another setting piece in the SoT series and consider especially the actions of Mortarion before 'Warhawk', it is not so much of a solid entry. (The logic gaps were already mentioned enough).

 

As for a rating (not considering the price for a LE with a page count of 130), I would go with a 5/10.

 

There is definetly wasted potential, but I think the fight (which the story is really all about in my opinion) is described well enough. 

[Tolmeus]

Just now, DarkChaplain said:

That's the weird part, really. I thought it'd be better slotted during Mortis, too, but Keeler makes that impossible, due to the timing of her release from the Blackstone.

 

That's where my mind was wondering, since I could not recollect when Keeler is 'on the run'. But yeah, happens at the end of Mortis, right?

 

Well, then 'Garro' is set something between 'during' and 'after' Mortis I guess. Makes as much sense as the rest of the Siege 

[DarkChaplain]

Warhawk opens with Keeler on the run, but without ever mentioning Garro or Gallor, and she ends up with Loken. The shuttle in Knight of Grey should've taken them to the inner palace, though, which doesn't make much sense with her on the run further out in Warhawk. AND she is under Custodes surveilance at the start of Warhawk, with the breakout being very recent (where in Knight of Grey, she's supposedly been with the garrison for a while, clearly settled down). It's safe to say that the Custodes would not have allowed her to be taken by Mortarion either way, they'd have killed her instead, even if we were to assume that they were around at all during Knight of Grey.

 

She's either in need of losing Gallor OR Loken in-between stories, while never remarking on any of it. But in Warhawk, we also have her linking up with Katsuhiro and co, so that's the definite end point we have for her arc right now, meaning the shuttle escape fails, Keeler is still on the run from Legionaries, and Garro is STILL being replaced by Loken, who does a better job keeping her safe.

 

So technically, we could say Keeler's story needs to take place in-between her appearances in Warhawk, before she goes full Imperial Cult with her skulls.

 

But on the other side, we can't really fit Mortarion in there without cutting the timeline to shreds, because his position in Warhawk is pretty much static from start to finish. Marmax is being mentioned in passing as something that already happened. Mortarion is sitting it out at the Lion's Gate, with Typhon calling him out AND leaving very early on. We cannot fit Keeler and Marmax in here, without completely unsychronizing the various plotlines of Warhawk. Which is a :cuss:ty solution at the best of times.

 

In other words: Knight of Grey is a true highlight of the Siege's planning and scoping.

[wecanhaveallthree]

Quote

all this griping about quality control and editing

 

Just more fuel for my illimitable 'not our Siege' timelines theory. When the Emperor resets everything with Enuncia at the end of the fifth Abnett book, I'll be right here to say 'I told you so' and 'fools! they called me mad!'. 

 

Seriously, though, the more I've thought on this the more I like it as a 'fable', a story, a heroic tale told by others later on. Tying into the basic untrustworthiness of perspectives and events - see Fury of Magnus and the questions about believing your own eyes through the Heresy - I think the absolute best, absolutely most fantastic thing that would completely save this whole thing is having Loken run into the Lord of Flies again at some point in the finale. Is it in Garro's body, as Mortarion promised? Which account is believable? Was Garro's vision of triumph, victory and the salvation of his body and soul by the Emperor real? Was his heroic last stand against a Primarch? Or was it the product of Keeler's unravelling mental state at seeing her 'champion' defeated and desecrated, just another lie of the Faith? As a reader, you can choose whichever you feel more comfortable with, while Garro's ultimate death remains. It's up to you whether you think it truly was what was presented, or if he met an ignoble fate against his gene-sire.

 

And it means I get to rant about it on the internet and use it as more proof of my crackpot ravings. Win-win! 

[DarkChaplain]

4 hours ago, wecanhaveallthree said:

 

Just more fuel for my illimitable 'not our Siege' timelines theory. When the Emperor resets everything with Enuncia at the end of the fifth Abnett book, I'll be right here to say 'I told you so' and 'fools! they called me mad!'. 

 

Seriously, though, the more I've thought on this the more I like it as a 'fable', a story, a heroic tale told by others later on. Tying into the basic untrustworthiness of perspectives and events - see Fury of Magnus and the questions about believing your own eyes through the Heresy - I think the absolute best, absolutely most fantastic thing that would completely save this whole thing is having Loken run into the Lord of Flies again at some point in the finale. Is it in Garro's body, as Mortarion promised? Which account is believable? Was Garro's vision of triumph, victory and the salvation of his body and soul by the Emperor real? Was his heroic last stand against a Primarch? Or was it the product of Keeler's unravelling mental state at seeing her 'champion' defeated and desecrated, just another lie of the Faith? As a reader, you can choose whichever you feel more comfortable with, while Garro's ultimate death remains. It's up to you whether you think it truly was what was presented, or if he met an ignoble fate against his gene-sire.

 

And it means I get to rant about it on the internet and use it as more proof of my crackpot ravings. Win-win! 

 

The annoying thing is that Swallow could have framed it that way. Heck, Garro: Weapon of Fate had one notable addition to the short stories: Short epigraphs about Garro, which can be taken as Sindermann telling his tale as the first martyr to an audience. I'll quote those sections below.

 

This is legwork already done in the mid-section of Garro's story. It was not continued and expanded upon in Knight of Grey. 

Worse, these sections seem out of place in Weapon of Fate now. Tuck them onto Knight of Grey and they fit better than they did the patchwork "novel" (although the novella should have featured Sindermann in one way or another, frankly). A reference to these sermons, an EPILOGUE after that final scene of light yadda yadda would have been more than needed. Knight of Grey should have had a framing device like this, a way to contextualize it, to work as a print novella. Heck, in a sense these are the logical epilogue to Knight of Grey, published almost exactly 6 years prior: The people he protected recounting his tale as part of their cult.

 

Quote

I will say this about him – when we first met, he was like a rock. Unbreakable and stoic, possessed of obdurate resolve and unwilling to compromise.
He was not a giant among his brothers as his gene-father would have been, but still he carried himself in a patrician manner. Respect seemed to come to him as rain to the ground. He earned it with every step he took, every word he uttered. Every deed he undertook.
I would not have said that to him. He would have thought it hubris, and he never hewed towards such things. It was not in him.
It is strange, is it not? That after so many years have passed, after so many terrible events and moments of import between then and now, I recall this thing so clearly. One would think that our meeting might have sunk beneath the weight of the horrors and glories that were to come, but it never has.
Why?
Call it simplicity. Yes. That will suffice.

 

Quote

When I looked him in the eyes that first time, I perceived clarity. And I must ask you to pause to reflect and consider where my mind was in that instant, and what we had experienced before that point.
What we had seen. What we were running from.
Above all, what we were afraid of.
Then you will understand how exceptional that was. So you see, something as simple as clarity was a prize that I seized upon with all my might.
In our desperation, we who fled had flung ourselves into the Stygian night, had given ourselves fully to faith. Understand that we had no guarantee of survival, and know that with certainty. Death awaited us. We were given only the chance to choose how it would happen, not to forestall it.
But then we happened upon them, upon him. Guided by voices, by braver souls.
His welcome was to show us that all the galaxy had not gone mad. Only some of it. Yes, only some of it.
No, he showed that there were still some things we could grasp that had not changed. Despite what we had experienced, all loyalty was not gone from the universe. Good and right and true, these ideals did not die that day. Thank the Throne. Wounded they were, oh yes. Cut to the quick and bloody, indeed. But still alive. Still fighting.
He showed us that. Affirmed it. And with his actions, he gave us hope.

Quote

We had expected death. Felt its inexorable approach. We prayed and asked our God-Emperor to take us to His side when the end came.
But that was not His gift to us. He had other plans.
Instead He placed this guardian in our path, a warrior who himself was on a journey, seeking an understanding of this new reality. A shepherd who would carry us away from the madness and beyond the reach of evil.
For a time, at least.
I knew it when that scarred face looked down upon me and I saw humanity written there. I saw a noble soul looking back at me through his searching, distant gaze.
Let me tell you about him. Close your eyes and listen. Hear his voice through my words. See his deeds in your thoughts.
Let me tell you about Nathaniel Garro.

Quote

When his name is spoken, it is often in the context of what he meant to those telling the tale. I have been guilty of this. I often speak of what Nathaniel Garro meant to me.
But what did we mean to him?
The legionaries were the creation of the God-Emperor, and they were a part of the Master of Mankind’s great plan. But they were also part of us, of we common humans. Perhaps that was why some of them succumbed so forcefully to the worst of our natures. They magnified all elements of our spirit, the noble and the horrific.
Garro was the former.

 

Quote

But there was more to him. What he allowed few to see was the most human part of himself – his doubt. He questioned his place in the universe, as all of us are wont to do at some time in our lives.
For him, that question came wrapped in the tragedy of Horus Lupercal’s heresy. And when everything he loved was stripped away from him, when Garro’s oath, his brotherhood, his very sense of belonging was made ashes, there was some of him that became lost.
He came to us to find it again. He sought us out, the Saint and I, to find a path that had meaning.
It was the question we were asked over and over again in those days. We struggled to understand what had brought his great tragedy to pass, and what our place was in it. And in many ways, he was the first of the legionaries with the courage to admit he did not know the answer.
For there were many of his kind who simply did not question, who took up arms against their kinsmen because they had been ordered to do so, not through any great enmity or corruption. That came later, at the hands of those among them who were already tainted, who had been so since long before the murder of Isstvan III.
But Garro was the first to make the leap of faith.
He was the first who truly dared to believe.

 

Quote

I am proud to say I saw him at the moments when his spirit was at its most wounded and when he was at the purest height of his selflessness.
And as to those who have asked me, in the years since then, of the price he paid – what can I say that will carry the full measure of that? I will say with no false modesty that my name is known for my oratory on the matters of the Imperial Truth, but even I find it hard to conjure the right words.
His path was the path of this conflict.
A journey from a place of bright and shining unity, a place where all things were possible, into a shadowed valley of darkness and betrayal. Onwards to a future forged by a god.
Euphrati was the first Saint of our new Church, but Nathaniel…
Nathaniel was its first true martyr.
Sorrow clutches at my heart now as I commit these words to the page. Yet it is strangely tinged with a hope, a thin golden thread of it that cannot be broken. It exists now and will exist into eternity, I am certain of this. It may never pull us entirely from the dark, but it was never meant to. Light cannot flourish anywhere else.
There are other stories I might recount, of course. Of hells and heroism. Swords and shields, truth and lies, oaths and Legions. Fate. Faith.
Let me tell you about Nathaniel Garro.

 

[Felix Antipodes]

I felt from the moment I read this it read as an unreliable narrator version, rather than a ‘true’ history, of Garry’s fate.  The last couple of posts confirm I’m not the only one.  If Swallow had set this as a ‘The Book of the Martyr Garro as described by the Sainted Keeler ’ as sanctioned and published by the Adeptus Ministorum, it would have possibly been a better read and also hand-wave away all the continuity errors.

 

I’m now sweating a bit about what they do with French’s upcoming Cypher novel, which has also been punted from audio to prose (although I have more faith in French to do a decent rewrite)

[Sothalor]

Yeah, this one really would have benefited as a sort of in-universe parable or founding myth of the Imperial Cult.

 

Actually, I'd have loved if it had been a sort of reverse-Olly Piers situation from Saturnine. Instead of the guardsmen with a banner and the idea of telling a tale that becomes the story of a lone Guardsman standing before the Emperor, this could have been the story of one Astartes who dies in the general madness of the Siege, that becomes the tale of Garro the Martyr making a doomed but defiant stand before the Daemon Primarch Mortarion.

 

Make it a quiet confession and conversation between Keeler and Sindermann about how Garro is dead now, how he died saving her life in just one of the countless scenes of loss and horror of the ongoing Siege. No last stand, no defiant heroics, just... an intervention that went practically unnoticed amidst everything going on. About how it's not fair that he should have gone out that way, that it feels like Garro should have gone out a hero or in some grandiose fashion. But that's not how life works, and the only thing they can do is to just carry on.

 

And then close it out with stories that have begun circulating among the growing Imperial Cult. Stories about the Martyr Primus, the Astartes who stood before the Saint and safeguarded her against the great darkness. Who intervened on her behalf against Death itself - a great cowled figure who bore an immense scythe, against which none but the Emperor's Sons and Angels could stand.

[Scribe]

So...I'm not getting the vibe that this ended the story well, for Garro.

[Moonreaper666]

1 hour ago, Scribe said:

So...I'm not getting the vibe that this ended the story well, for Garro.

 

Both Typhus and Mortarion show up in the story

 

Plus it is remarked in some other piece or author word that he becomes the first Imperial saint

[Sothalor]

1 hour ago, Scribe said:

So...I'm not getting the vibe that this ended the story well, for Garro.

 

Well, that depends on how you define a life ending well for a Space Marine. Which gets into all kinds of questions about cultural norms, worldviews, personal convictions and values, etc.

 

But he is described as one of the first Imperial Martyrs, so...  

[m_r_parker]

I'm kinda resurrecting a dead thread, but I just got my copy of the book today (had it sent to my local store, and last week it was shut for a refit), and this book is very light on the page count - even more so than than I had feared. I haven't read anything yet, so no spoilers. 

It was listed as being 144 pages, let me break down how much of this is actual story:

• The first page of the story is page 15, the last is page 128 - so technically we're already down to 113 pages. In fact I have no idea where the 144 pages came from, my copy (the Ltd Ed) stopped numbering pages after 131, and manually counting the rest gets me to 137 before I hit the back cover.
• Between p15 and p128 there are 5 blank pages, between the chapters to ensure that the starting page of a new chapter is always facing the same way.
• There are also a further 2 pages set aside for artwork, although I don't actually mind these are they're always very good.

So in terms of actual narrative in this book, we're actually down to 106 pages. Hardback version of this book is £18, for £20 you can get the hardback version of Echoes of Eternity for over 4 times the page count. My mind is boggling over this right now, this could have been part of a short story collection with some over pieces tying up loose ends for characters instead of its own standalone release.

[Taliesin]

Yeah its the slimmest of the novellas so far and imo both limited edition and regular edition are a hard pass for me due to that.