The Lion - Son of the Forest by Mike Brooks

[Kelborn]

Great way to start the day indeed...

 

Time out until I cleaned up the thread - again....

[Kelborn]

On phone so imagine this to be my mod voice.

*ahem*

 

I cleaned up this thread from the questionable Lion vs Angron talk which isn't even slightly part of this novel.

 

Keep that in mind when continuing to discuss Mike Brooks' The Lion - Son of the Forest

 

Strike 2/3 btw.

Keep the Arks of Omen stuff in it's related thread and don't even consider to rekindle the inappropriate "but my Primarch is better for reasons" talk!

 

We had that in the past and we'll be plagued by it in the future with every Primarch duel. Just. Leave. It. Be.

 

If BL decides that this is the way they want to go with, it's their decision.

 

There's a great vid about Stan Lee outright pointing at this kind of stuff.

The studio and the author decide and not us. Learn to accept it!

Edited April 29, 2023 by Kelborn

[SkimaskMohawk]

Alright, so I just finished the book earlier today. I have to say, I was right about the Mike Brooks dichotomy from alpharius; really great stuff with a dash of boring and generic on the side.

 

Spoiler

There's a lot that works. The ambiance of the caliban forest/lion teleport is realized, a lot of the dialogue is charming, the reconciliation with the Fallen is believable, and there's some good character contrast in the thousand eyes warband. In a lot of ways, this does some Heresy era expansion of the 1st legion, as those stories were all from really big players in the legion and not from the grunts.

But there's also times where the dialogue just stops working. Some combat sequences take forever (looking at you, terminators on the bridge and BFG set piece), and these more than anything else is what detracts from it. It's a shame, because that worse stuff only really happens in the last third; I was genuinely enjoying the book more than end and the death until a few  of those passages started to crop up all in close succession. Small quibble on him calling the marines his "sons" instead of "little brothers".

 

But as for the fabled arc of why the Lion wants to protect all humans instead of being...the Lion on them? It literally isn't in the book. Before he even gets his memories back he's deciding to protect humans, and avoid them being collateral damage. Unlike his understanding with the fallen, there's just....nothing to explain the change. 

 

 

[TrevorLoLz]

14 minutes ago, SkimaskMohawk said:

Alright, so I just finished the book earlier today. I have to say, I was right about the Mike Brooks dichotomy from alpharius; really great stuff with a dash of boring and generic on the side.

 

  Hide contents

There's a lot that works. The ambiance of the caliban forest/lion teleport is realized, a lot of the dialogue is charming, the reconciliation with the Fallen is believable, and there's some good character contrast in the thousand eyes warband. In a lot of ways, this does some Heresy era expansion of the 1st legion, as those stories were all from really big players in the legion and not from the grunts.

But there's also times where the dialogue just stops working. Some combat sequences take forever (looking at you, terminators on the bridge and BFG set piece), and these more than anything else is what detracts from it. It's a shame, because that worse stuff only really happens in the last third; I was genuinely enjoying the book more than end and the death until a few  of those passages started to crop up all in close succession. Small quibble on him calling the marines his "sons" instead of "little brothers".

 

But as for the fabled arc of why the Lion wants to protect all humans instead of being...the Lion on them? It literally isn't in the book. Before he even gets his memories back he's deciding to protect humans, and avoid them being collateral damage. Unlike his understanding with the fallen, there's just....nothing to explain the change. 

 

 

 

Largely agreed.

 

I get frustrated when Black Library books that (imo) should be obvious character studies revert to bolter porn.  For me, this was one of those books where less needless action sequences and more introspection on who the Lion actually is was needed.

 

Example: Lion's introspections in the fake forest with the "king"/"fisherman" were fun.  His thoughts about how he had been just as much to blame for the destruction of Caliban as Luther was good.  The surface level thoughts of his Primarch brothers.  Who are the Watchers in the Dark and why are they always around?  More of this.

 

I understand there needs to be action sequences because it's 40k, it's a galaxy of war and Black Library needs to promote models.  But at times, it felt like just as we were starting to understand a bit about how the Lion thought, how he was reacting to this strange new galaxy he was in, etc. we get wrenched into a new battle scene. The last section of the book, when they are battling the big bad guy, felt very "final boss video game" for me, similar to the end of his Primarch novel fighting the Khrave leader.

 

The Fallen characters are enjoyable with their own relatively distinct personalities, even if some of those characters were very one-dimensional (Kai for example).  I liked Zabrael, providing an interesting "window" to see the Lion at times.  

6.5/10

[SkimaskMohawk]

The thing that's been niggling at me is... 

 

Spoiler

why not have the lion be awake for ten thousand years in Caliban land, without memory loss?  Maybe make his journey through the forest end with finding the river, and have him be guilty how his decisions lead to ruin. Have it be warped into 10000 years and then the shock can feel real, because we know the chain of events were directly the Breaking, transportation into Caliban land, and then the journey.

 

And then maybe after meeting the first fallen and being accused of abandoning the imperium, he can have his revelation of how completely he screwed up, and that makes him want to be the protector. It's basically all already in the text, except for that stated reason to be a protector; mostly just needs some rearranging. 

 

Imo, that would gel a lot better rather than "he might have been asleep or something; he didnt dream and actually lost his memory, but he did age and lose some fighting ability. Idk, he was on ice, and he immediately has a new outlook. "

 

[Felix Antipodes]

Really enjoyed this one for the most part.  There were a few flat spots, but overall Brooks managed to weave a reasonable return of the king parable around the usual restrictions that hamstring most GW related fiction.  (Hinks will have to do a similar dance with his upcoming Leviathan novel).

 

Didn’t have any issue with the older, more mellow, Lion.  Might have been better if his road to Damascus moment came a bit later in the story, after witnessing the sacrifice of the ordinary civilians on the worlds he traveled through.  This was a pivotal moment and seems to have happened off screen.

 

I thought the Fallen were well realised and distinctive personalities for the most part and I will miss those who fall if rumours are correct and some don’t make it to the end of Arks of Omen.

 

Hopefully, there is a follow up book which goes into more detail of how the whole jungle walk teleportation thing works.

 

Initially, I was rather sceptical about “the Ork guy” being assigned this book.  Glad I was proved wrong.

[BitsHammer]

9 hours ago, SkimaskMohawk said:

The thing that's been niggling at me is... 

 

  Hide contents

why not have the lion be awake for ten thousand years in Caliban land, without memory loss?  Maybe make his journey through the forest end with finding the river, and have him be guilty how his decisions lead to ruin. Have it be warped into 10000 years and then the shock can feel real, because we know the chain of events were directly the Breaking, transportation into Caliban land, and then the journey.

 

And then maybe after meeting the first fallen and being accused of abandoning the imperium, he can have his revelation of how completely he screwed up, and that makes him want to be the protector. It's basically all already in the text, except for that stated reason to be a protector; mostly just needs some rearranging. 

 

Imo, that would gel a lot better rather than "he might have been asleep or something; he didnt dream and actually lost his memory, but he did age and lose some fighting ability. Idk, he was on ice, and he immediately has a new outlook. "

 

Spoiler

Luther had fatally (or near fatally) wounded him on Caliban and whatever the Watchers did to save the Lion took time to heal, meaning he slept while his body healed hence the aging and him not being active.

 

[SkimaskMohawk]

34 minutes ago, BitsHammer said:

  Hide contents

Luther had fatally (or near fatally) wounded him on Caliban and whatever the Watchers did to save the Lion took time to heal, meaning he slept while his body healed hence the aging and him not being active.

 

 

Thats very much just speculation or a working theory. It's us trying to come up with a reason, because they never provided one. Just "here he is".

[BitsHammer]

5 hours ago, SkimaskMohawk said:

 

Thats very much just speculation or a working theory. It's us trying to come up with a reason, because they never provided one. Just "here he is".

I swear I read it but that might have been AoO or old codex fluff about him healing while he slept.

[Gederas]

4 hours ago, BitsHammer said:

I swear I read it but that might have been AoO or old codex fluff about him healing while he slept.

Yes, the older fluff in previous DA codices mentioned his wounds healing

[Sanctimonius]

Finished it over the weekend. Overall I liked it, not the strongest book but certainly not the weakest. It was nice to have some conflicted CSM and have a wider range from ravening maniacs to more subtle portrayals. And actually having a villain with a plot as opposed to just moustache-twirling evil was a nice change of pace.

 

Spoiler

It felt like the interactions with the Risen could have been developed a little more. A lot of times these warriors who have been persecuted for centuries and carried a giant chip on their shoulders got over it very quickly, though I get that it was a short book.

 

I liked that the Lion has learned a little humility, he's still ornery but trying to be a better man.

 

As for his future role? Honestly I like the idea of a questing hedge knight rampaging around Nihilus looking to tear :cuss: up. The Imperium has Dante to rule over Nihilus, let the Lion and his forest walk build a force capable of forcing back the tides of chaos and nids incoming.

 

Some breadcrumbs for future books, and the Lion is more interesting than the often flat portrayal in 30k. I'm down for more.

[Moonreaper666]

How many Fallen are they? How many are part of the Lion's Risen or Chaos?

[jaxom]

1 hour ago, Moonreaper666 said:

How many Fallen are they? How many are part of the Lion's Risen or Chaos?

 

Spoiler

The Lion has 21 (20?) former Fallen by the end of the book, and he's calling them Risen.

There were 30,000 Lutherite and Astelanite Dark Angels on Caliban at the time of the Breaking.

 

[Sanctimonius]

2 hours ago, Moonreaper666 said:

How many Fallen are they? How many are part of the Lion's Risen or Chaos?

 

Are you asking how many in the novel? There's about ten named, with several more implied.

 

https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Risen_(The_Fallen)

 

This article names all the ones we know so far. There's also a few Fallen in the book.

[Sothalor]

This novel boasts interesting craftsmanship with solid wordsmithing and prose, but ultimately feels like a wasted opportunity. This predominantly comes down to two main flaws with the story, which are intertwined with one another to a certain degree.

 

First, what works for me. The prose is well constructed. Descriptions, action scenes, introspective scenes; Son of the Forest has solid wordsmithing. I enjoyed the switches in narrative voice for different POVs; this novel has three perspective characters: the Lion and two Fallen – Zabriel and Baelor. The Lion’s scenes are written in third-person present tense, Zabriel’s in first-person past tense, and Baelor’s in third-person past tense. SotF uses these narrative perspectives adeptly, using their inherent structures to build tones, themes, and atmosphere.

 

I particularly appreciated the way the present tense composition of the Lion’s segments evoke a sort of hazy, indeterminate adriftness from time – very fitting for what the Primarch should be experiencing. At its heights, SotF feels a bit like a fairy tale, or a sort of transposed fantastic legend. For that matter, I also really enjoyed the easter eggs/callouts to Arthurian legend that I recognized, even if they didn’t contribute to the story.

 

Unfortunately, the core story skeleton of SotF isn’t great – those two main issues I mentioned.

 

First, I think SotF just flat-out told the wrong story when it came to the Lion’s character. The Lion in SotF is a drastically different person from the depictions of the Lion as we last saw him in the Heresy (which, chronologically, I believe is still David Guymer’s Dreadwing). Now, I understand that this will be colored by my own reading and interpretation of the existing works – particularly Guymer’s Lord of the First. To summarize, Lion El’Jonson of the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy is a colossal douchebag of an abusive cult leader who uses his Legion as his personal gaslight training arena and would burn inhabited planets because they were in the way. Voicing your disagreement with one of his decisions carried a non-negligible risk of him punching your head off. Clean off.

 

The Lion of SotF is practically mellow; he’s calm, reasonable, empathetic, and interested in reconciliation and forgiveness. He’s committed to defending common humanity as a matter of principle and morality. He’s humble and self-reflective, willing to acknowledge how he’s made mistakes. This is a different person.

 

Now, it’d be great if SotF was about how we got from the Lion of Dreadwing to the Lion we have here. But it isn’t. SotF Lion basically starts with his new personality and that’s that. We’ve missed at least a novel’s worth of character development. It’s like skipping from Luke Skywalker in A New Hope to Luke in Return of the Jedi. Those are some major developments to just pass over! SotF doesn’t delve much into the Lion grasping with the “modern” Imperium either. He takes it all remarkably in stride.

 

SotF is really about getting the Lion to the equipment state of his brand spanking new miniature and shipping him off to the Arks of Omen campaign book. It’s packing him off for his Grand Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny with Angron, the EPIC GRUDGE MATCH MILLENNIA IN THE MAKING, LONG IN THE MAKING- (yeah, piss off, GW Studio. You’re spouting bull:cuss:. We know you’re spouting bull:cuss:. You know we know you’re spouting bull:cuss:. You still spout bull:cuss:.)

 

But okay, we’ll accept the premise that SotF is about the Lion piecing himself together vis-à-vis his equipment and beginning to correct his mistakes by assembling some of the Fallen. Unfortunately, this is where the second big issue arises; nothing feels earned. It’s all too easy and contrived.

 

Almost everything happens seemingly just because, as if it would be most convenient to the plot for them to occur at that moment. From how he acquires the various pieces of his new wargear to the weird forest warp walking power thing to the many convenient Fallen he meets along the way, it’s all so, well, easy.

New armor? Already wearing it.

Need a weapon? Bloop, here’s a magic sword.

Gee whiz, it’s just so convenient that all of these Fallen happen to be clustered around these few planets on the wrong size of the Cicatrix Maledictum.

Oh wow, what good fortune that they all just happen to actually have been Loyalists all along and are willing to let bygones be bygones and immediately re-swear fealty to the Lion.

And it’s a good thing that the whole “travel through the warp is a horrific nightmarish ordeal without the light of the Astronomican” just… isn’t a problem.

 

It feels cheap. There’s almost no sense of struggle, of confrontation and overcoming challenges and growth. Things which should be payoffs feel unearned, and that’s a real shame. I think there’s solid potential in a story using the Lion’s wargear, panoply, and his efforts to reconcile with the Fallen as a parallel and metaphor for his growth and character development. We get one moment resembling that at the end of the book, and it’s great. That was a moment of struggle, self-realization, and payoff. In fact, it actually pissed me off because I got there and went, “wait, why wasn’t the whole book like this?”

 

Now, I think there is an explanation for all the seeming contrivances of the plot – namely, that there’s the work of a greater power manipulating things behind the scenes to get the Lion where he needs to be. Perhaps the Emperor is a god and is gradually awakening more and more as the warp churns. And I think that’d be a valid reading of SotF, given some of its scenes: that the Emperor is actively intervening to get the Lion onto the table (cause he’s got a mini now, get it?).

 

But the problem is the narrative doesn’t ever really address that. It’s never really ruminated upon as a possibility by the Lion. The book doesn’t commit or even suggest it as a potential explanation. We’re left instead with a plot where a whole lot of things just conveniently happen for the Lion.

 

That’s really the core of my critique of SotF: it’s unsatisfying. It’s not a book about the Lion forced to confront himself, his choices, and to grow from that as a person. It’s not a book about the Lion overcoming challenges and earning the tangible rewards from difficult triumph. Ideally, I think those two strands would have been one and the same – a novel about the Lion facing up to himself with the various pieces of wargear earned as payoffs for self-realization and growth. But instead the character development seemingly all happened in another story, and the payoffs here just feel unearned and contrived.

 

All in all: good prose, good use of narrative tools, but for me Son of the Forest told the wrong story and told it kind of badly – and that’s a shame. There are glimpses here of what could have been, and those really just highlight the missed opportunity here.

[Moonreaper666]

2 hours ago, Sothalor said:

This novel boasts interesting craftsmanship with solid wordsmithing and prose, but ultimately feels like a wasted opportunity. This predominantly comes down to two main flaws with the story, which are intertwined with one another to a certain degree.

 

First, what works for me. The prose is well constructed. Descriptions, action scenes, introspective scenes; Son of the Forest has solid wordsmithing. I enjoyed the switches in narrative voice for different POVs; this novel has three perspective characters: the Lion and two Fallen – Zabriel and Baelor. The Lion’s scenes are written in third-person present tense, Zabriel’s in first-person past tense, and Baelor’s in third-person past tense. SotF uses these narrative perspectives adeptly, using their inherent structures to build tones, themes, and atmosphere.

 

I particularly appreciated the way the present tense composition of the Lion’s segments evoke a sort of hazy, indeterminate adriftness from time – very fitting for what the Primarch should be experiencing. At its heights, SotF feels a bit like a fairy tale, or a sort of transposed fantastic legend. For that matter, I also really enjoyed the easter eggs/callouts to Arthurian legend that I recognized, even if they didn’t contribute to the story.

 

Unfortunately, the core story skeleton of SotF isn’t great – those two main issues I mentioned.

 

First, I think SotF just flat-out told the wrong story when it came to the Lion’s character. The Lion in SotF is a drastically different person from the depictions of the Lion as we last saw him in the Heresy (which, chronologically, I believe is still David Guymer’s Dreadwing). Now, I understand that this will be colored by my own reading and interpretation of the existing works – particularly Guymer’s Lord of the First. To summarize, Lion El’Jonson of the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy is a colossal douchebag of an abusive cult leader who uses his Legion as his personal gaslight training arena and would burn inhabited planets because they were in the way. Voicing your disagreement with one of his decisions carried a non-negligible risk of him punching your head off. Clean off.

 

The Lion of SotF is practically mellow; he’s calm, reasonable, empathetic, and interested in reconciliation and forgiveness. He’s committed to defending common humanity as a matter of principle and morality. He’s humble and self-reflective, willing to acknowledge how he’s made mistakes. This is a different person.

 

Now, it’d be great if SotF was about how we got from the Lion of Dreadwing to the Lion we have here. But it isn’t. SotF Lion basically starts with his new personality and that’s that. We’ve missed at least a novel’s worth of character development. It’s like skipping from Luke Skywalker in A New Hope to Luke in Return of the Jedi. Those are some major developments to just pass over! SotF doesn’t delve much into the Lion grasping with the “modern” Imperium either. He takes it all remarkably in stride.

 

SotF is really about getting the Lion to the equipment state of his brand spanking new miniature and shipping him off to the Arks of Omen campaign book. It’s packing him off for his Grand Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny with Angron, the EPIC GRUDGE MATCH MILLENNIA IN THE MAKING, LONG IN THE MAKING- (yeah, piss off, GW Studio. You’re spouting bull:cuss:. We know you’re spouting bull:cuss:. You know we know you’re spouting bull:cuss:. You still spout bull:cuss:.)

 

But okay, we’ll accept the premise that SotF is about the Lion piecing himself together vis-à-vis his equipment and beginning to correct his mistakes by assembling some of the Fallen. Unfortunately, this is where the second big issue arises; nothing feels earned. It’s all too easy and contrived.

 

Almost everything happens seemingly just because, as if it would be most convenient to the plot for them to occur at that moment. From how he acquires the various pieces of his new wargear to the weird forest warp walking power thing to the many convenient Fallen he meets along the way, it’s all so, well, easy.

New armor? Already wearing it.

Need a weapon? Bloop, here’s a magic sword.

Gee whiz, it’s just so convenient that all of these Fallen happen to be clustered around these few planets on the wrong size of the Cicatrix Maledictum.

Oh wow, what good fortune that they all just happen to actually have been Loyalists all along and are willing to let bygones be bygones and immediately re-swear fealty to the Lion.

And it’s a good thing that the whole “travel through the warp is a horrific nightmarish ordeal without the light of the Astronomican” just… isn’t a problem.

 

It feels cheap. There’s almost no sense of struggle, of confrontation and overcoming challenges and growth. Things which should be payoffs feel unearned, and that’s a real shame. I think there’s solid potential in a story using the Lion’s wargear, panoply, and his efforts to reconcile with the Fallen as a parallel and metaphor for his growth and character development. We get one moment resembling that at the end of the book, and it’s great. That was a moment of struggle, self-realization, and payoff. In fact, it actually pissed me off because I got there and went, “wait, why wasn’t the whole book like this?”

 

Now, I think there is an explanation for all the seeming contrivances of the plot – namely, that there’s the work of a greater power manipulating things behind the scenes to get the Lion where he needs to be. Perhaps the Emperor is a god and is gradually awakening more and more as the warp churns. And I think that’d be a valid reading of SotF, given some of its scenes: that the Emperor is actively intervening to get the Lion onto the table (cause he’s got a mini now, get it?).

 

But the problem is the narrative doesn’t ever really address that. It’s never really ruminated upon as a possibility by the Lion. The book doesn’t commit or even suggest it as a potential explanation. We’re left instead with a plot where a whole lot of things just conveniently happen for the Lion.

 

That’s really the core of my critique of SotF: it’s unsatisfying. It’s not a book about the Lion forced to confront himself, his choices, and to grow from that as a person. It’s not a book about the Lion overcoming challenges and earning the tangible rewards from difficult triumph. Ideally, I think those two strands would have been one and the same – a novel about the Lion facing up to himself with the various pieces of wargear earned as payoffs for self-realization and growth. But instead the character development seemingly all happened in another story, and the payoffs here just feel unearned and contrived.

 

All in all: good prose, good use of narrative tools, but for me Son of the Forest told the wrong story and told it kind of badly – and that’s a shame. There are glimpses here of what could have been, and those really just highlight the missed opportunity here.

 

Maybe this book should have been written AFTER the Fall of Caliban and Cypher's Novel

[Felix Antipodes]

I must admit that the novel felt like I’d picked up the mid book of a trilogy, which it sort of is.  

 

You are also right about a powerful entity being behind what happens.  That entity of course is GW, not the Emperor.  There was, very obviously, a restrictive remit from on high what was to be included within the book.  Oh, and do it in as minimal pages as you can.

[Allart01]

While I largely agree with the flaws you pointed out, I think your picture of the Lion during the Heresy focuses solely on the worst representations he suffered from. 

ADB, Wraight's and even Annandale's Lion are probably closer to what was intended for him as character.

Edited May 3, 2023 by Allart01

[Sothalor]

8 hours ago, Allart01 said:

While I largely agree with the flaws you pointed out, I think your picture of the Lion during the Heresy focuses solely on the worst representations he suffered from. 

ADB, Wraight's and even Annandale's Lion are probably closer to what was intended for him as character.

 

You say worst, I say best. 

 

The depiction of the Lion as a domineering, paranoid, abusive authority figure is the most interesting, characterful, holistic, and nuanced rendition of him that Black Library has put out - especially if, get this, maybe he doesn't understand that he's doing it. Maybe he's just so used to obedience and deference from those around him and that gets combined with an obsessive task-focus and a horrendous stunting of social skills.

 

What kind of person would be like that? Well, perhaps a giant superhuman designed for war and conflict, who grew up alone and feral on a crazy monster death planet, whose primary form of interaction with other beings for his formative years was "kill or be killed" and "everything is out to get me."

 

I think that depiction evokes fascinating issues about topics ranging from inherent nature versus environmental influence on the long-term outlook of a person to the rights and responsibilities of power by those who hold it to the toxic influence that broken families exert.

 

Now, I understand that's not an interpretation everybody would necessarily hold, that's fine. People should be able to engage with the material as they please.

 

 

BUT. None of the depictions of the Lion in any of the published materials even remotely resembles the character in Son of the Forest - and that was my critique. Even the most charitable interpretations of the Lion from the Horus Heresy are far from the one we've got here. 

[EverythingIsGreat]

I have not read the book, but I did read the spoilers.

From the commentary I gather that all the Lion was missing was a good night's (or 1000) sleep. After he got properly rested he started playing with kittens.

 

Anyway, interesting questions have been raised about some of the events and personality changes. My question: was that 10000 year absence continuous? Is there any indication that he may have awakened previously and worked some things out? Would he remember such an interlude if it had happened? Is the 10000 year absence something that he knows or is it something he was told? 

[wecanhaveallthree]

Absolutely nailed it, Sothalor.

 

The Primarchs are huge characters - hugely emotional, hugely prone to 'obey or die', hugely prone to murder and banishment when they don't get their way or there's even the perception they haven't gotten their way. The Lion's central character trait is 'trust nobody, not even yourself'. I agree with you 100% that he is compelling and engaging because of his extreme flaws, and whether he can overcome them. The best stories, the best moments, are when he tries to - being pulled across the galaxy by Guilliman's simple 'I need you' in Pharos, his 'I nearly destroyed us' and marching straight, unthinking to Curze's now-empty cell - as though to imprison himself (a COOL and HANDSOME reference to the fates of the future Fallen) from Ruinstorm, his devastating return to secrecy, fear and 'do what I must' in Dreadwing. The Lion has enormous issues, and cuts right to that old chestnut: is it better to be born good, or overcome your evil nature through great effort?

 

There is no catharsis for the character here. No progression, no consistency. He is a different man, and on the face, a much less interesting one.

[Felix Antipodes]

Which is why it felt like book two of three to me.  Hopefully, we will get to read book one where these changes occurred.  Next on to the Ark of Omen book to see what damage is done there 

[Moonreaper666]

1 minute ago, Felix Antipodes said:

Which is why it felt like book two of three to me.  Hopefully, we will get to read book one where these changes occurred.  Next on to the Ark of Omen book to see what damage is done there 

 

The End and The Death Vol 3 then the Scouring novel that deals with the Destruction of Caliban

[Ayatollah_of_Rock_n_Rolla]

8 hours ago, EverythingIsGreat said:

I have not read the book, but I did read the spoilers.

From the commentary I gather that all the Lion was missing was a good night's (or 1000) sleep. After he got properly rested he started playing with kittens.

 

Anyway, interesting questions have been raised about some of the events and personality changes. My question: was that 10000 year absence continuous? Is there any indication that he may have awakened previously and worked some things out? Would he remember such an interlude if it had happened? Is the 10000 year absence something that he knows or is it something he was told? 

 

Spoiler

There's no indication that he was active before. And even if he was, that's irrelevant, because the last thing he remembers is the fight on Caliban.

 

[EverythingIsGreat]

Thank you. It doesn't sound compelling. I suppose I will have to get it at some point, since it is an important development in the current setting.