Dawn of Fire: The Iron Kingdom

[Moonreaper666]

11 hours ago, DarkChaplain said:

By the way: Did we even talk about the implications of the ending?

 

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Herek destroyed that Blasphemy blade the Black Templars were keeping safe, and came away with a shard/athame instead. He used it to cut through reality.

In the epilogue, he comes before Legion masters, including Kor Phaeron and Abaddon, and adds his shard to the three already present - and hears the name Erebus inside his head.
Abaddon's last line in the book is "Gather the rest".

Sounds very much like Abaddon is trying to recollect the Shards of Erebus - of which we know there are 8 total. One was given to Kor Phaeron, so we can be sure one of the three gathered before was his. But this puts us at 4/8 together.

...and the Shards of Erebus were "forged" from the Anathame. Seems to me that Abaddon is trying to recreate it.

A bunch of times throughout the book, we had stuff about destiny and providence being mentioned - providence mostly by the "faith"-faction, destiny by the cults.
Funnily enough, the twist about Ekria/Augury is foreshadowed by her repeating the same line as the priest of Hurne ("destiny awaits for those who have the will to seize it"). Erebus considers himself the Hand of Destiny, and when he dished out the Shards, he gave "Destiny" as the reason, too.
Another instance of Destiny in the novel is when the "Nine Cults of Destiny" are mentioned as having been purged by Kamidar during the years without a wifi signal.

So there's definitely more going on here with Abaddon than having his "Hand" - or one of them? - going after Bucharis's stuff. And while the visions we've seen pop up the last few books of a throned figure raising a burning sword and a cup have been implied to be the Emperor - or believed as such in Throne of Light - this stuff is always treated with a bit of doubt, or the belief that it's a warning, not a glorious future of the Emperor's rebirth.

So I theorize that the figure is, in fact, Abaddon. The burning sword is the Anathame, the weapon that brought Horus low and provoked his fall to Chaos, and the "cup" is an artifact related to Bucharis. Abaddon is obviously building towards something, and it'd fit the bill if the visions broadcast by presumably the Emperor were an attempt to forestall its success.
 

 

 

Spoiler

Isn't that made of Fulgurite, the thing capable of killing Perpetuals like Anval Thawn?

 

[DarkChaplain]

No.

[Krelious]

Having just finished this book I would give a dissenting opinion and I very much liked it albeit it feels more like a 400 page set up for another book while tying off some minor events from gate of bones. I think fundamentally what I did not like about the book is how easily a Custodian is killed and in general how clueless the Imperium feels in that I think at this point the touch or taint of chaos should be kind of like on the back page of everyone's minds. No one considers the queen is acting retarded because of corruption or external manipulation but I would say the book find of annoyed me as it only revealed that fact in the last 50 pages, then there's the idea that she's a :cuss:ing queen but dies to a stab wound while she has medical doctors or Chiurugeons... what?

 

I feel like on a meta level this book was portraying a cluster:cuss: of multiple factions fighting each other while not realizing what is really going on and it just seems like while I enjoyed the book and its characters I feel like it could have enjoyed some tightening up or better planning as it seems like to me that we got a 400 page book that told a 200 page story with a lot of nice filler and the good stuff got cut off. I really liked the Chaos antagonists and wanted to see more of them. I want to know who or what Ekria was and what the significance of the queen's black garnet pendant was.

 

In all I get what the book was trying to portray but it simultaneously spent too much time developing worthless junk while kind of rushing to the finish line and just going like oh well the queen is dead, war is over, everything is peachy keen we will be respecting you guys now oh well the Admiral and his ship just off and disappeared we don't know what happened there lets just let Guilliman handle it. I mean honestly I liked this book and I'm very critical but at the same time there is some really stupid and magical hand waving that goes on.

 

I would describe the book as interesting, dynamic, action packed, mysterious, but also :cuss:ing retarded at times.  maybe book 7 will tie up the loose ends as it seems Martyrs tomb does not have any of the same characters showing up. 

 

I liked the Kesh and the SoS storyline. I liked the Marines Malevolent being :cuss:s, generally enjoyed any flavour of space marine scenes while the Red Corsairs needed more page time. I thought too much time was spent on the queen and the rogue knight pilots and in general I think this book had way too many subplots mingling together that it kind of eroded what I would consider to be the main storyline, I think the queen should have died much earlier and then everyone is in way too deep by her actions and maybe general confusion and power struggle sets in and quite frankly maybe two different novels could have been told here.

 

Still better than Wolftime.

Edited July 18, 2023 by Krelious

[Petitioner's City]

Finally reading this and finding it very strong, and surprising, and not what I had expected from its Amazon reviews. I had liked Kyme's Volpone novel a lot, and this feels of a piece of it too.