Genefather by Guy Haley

[BitsHammer]

It's now out in ebook and audiobook formats.

 

 

Haven't listened to it yet but it has my favorite two characters of the setting so I have my fingers crossed on this one.

[DarkChaplain]

Already some neat cameo mentions in the first chapters. Some bits of dialogue in the first chapter, said by Cawl, also echo Fabius Bile's sentiments from Josh's trilogy. It's neat, since it establishes some direct philosophical links between the two main characters.

 

If you haven't read Wolfsbane, Belisarius Cawl: The Great Work and Avenging Son, I'd make the general recommendation to do that first - along with the Fabius Bile trilogy. Alpha Primus and Cawl's obsession with Qvo deserve the build-up; I'm hopeful that both will get some bigger payoffs in Genefather.

[BitsHammer]

There are some deep cut references as well. Such as mathematical predictions that are often negative which sound like the reason we got a schism that created the Sons of Medusa.

[wecanhaveallthree]

Spoiler

‘Greetings, Lord Archmagos Belisarius Cawl,’ said the primary machine spirit, also in a voice exactly like his own.

 

‘Hello, me,’ he said. ‘How am I today?’

 

‘You should know,’ said the Inferior smugly

 

Haley is in fine form. I've just started, but this feels exactly like the breath of fresh authorial air he needed after slogging through the Dark Imperium rewrites and he pokes absolutely endless fun at his own work. Very chuffed.

 

E: About halfway through at Cawl's 'trial', Haley's discussion of Mechanicus dogma is genuinely impressive not only in its depth but its efficiency. Very good arguments presented in a light format. Cawl's arguments here are going to be quoted for the next decade in lore circles, I feel it in me bones.

 

E2: Done! Stellar book. I was a little worried that the cast would get too inflated, but Haley wrangles it all with style and grace and never loses track of the man whose name is on the cover. This is Cawl's book, through and through, and there's no more poignant a reflection of that than Alpha Primus musing that the Archmagos 'infects' everything around him. Primus views it in the negative, at least at the time, but I think what rings true through this novel is how much of an inspiration Cawl is to those around him. He's a nemesis, he's a rival, he's a peer, he's a friend, he's an opposing position, he's a challenge - but his existence itself, his way of being, encourages consideration and valour from those around him, villain or no.

 

This is a shockingly hopeful, positive book for the setting and none of that feels unearned. It feels almost wholly a reaction to Dawn of Fire and Dark Imperium, the author shucking those bleak, despairing days - actively critiquing his own work - and very eloquently saying that the shadow can't exist without light.

 

Bravo, Haley.

Edited October 15, 2023 by wecanhaveallthree
readin

[Lord Nord in Gravis Armour]

Enjoying it very much so far. One minor nitpick I may mention later. But a tidbit I found interesting in Chapter 12...

 

 

One character mentions Raskian in the present tense as Fabricator General. As this story is set a good decade after The Dark City, it would seem to confirm that SOME part of his body was shepherded to safety by Navradaran, either the full train car or at least the dwarflike avatar.

 

 

 

Also, anyone looking to prep for this book shouldn't neglect the short story To Speak As One. Already referenced a few times and I'm less than halfway through.

Edited October 14, 2023 by Lord Nord

[Dzirhan]

Spoiler (don't read unless you've finished the book) :

 

Spoiler

I get the feeling that the ending is setting up for a new type of Chaos Space Marines (after all GW got to sell models ) based on what Bile obtained . No complaints on the book and explains why To Speak As One is included in the limited edition as it ties in with Genefather though most of us who bought Genefather would have already read that story as it was made available earlier  in various ways.

 

Edited October 15, 2023 by Dzirhan

[wecanhaveallthree]

Spoiler

I'm pretty sure Bile is just going to do what Abaddon asked and give him Chaos Primaris Space Marines, he's pretty explicit through the book that he doesn't think the Primaris are interesting. They're just bigger Space Marines at the end of the day. He does say he could 'deliver more' to Abaddon if he wanted to, but by the end he's much more focused on what he got from Alpha Primus and is like 'yeah I've got Primaris juice to get Abaddon off my back'.

 

I'm surprised that caught your eye as opposed to freakin'

 

Spoiler

CHAOS ANDROIDS

 

Who the hell signed off on that?! And it wasn't even subtle! It was exactly named! The character in question may as well have turned to the audience and added, 'make sure to pre-order the upcoming box-set, coming soon to a James Workshop near you!'

[Nagashsnee]

Well i finished it. Non spoiler review its a good read, like i feared it did not live up to my expectations but that's because nothing could haha.  Its very much Cawl book 2 and carries on from the Great works in almost every way. So if you like that you will like this. Haley delivers a solid story and treats fabius with respect so fans of his own trilogy rejoice. My only complaint is that in his fantastic focus on Cawl himself he does introduce several subplots that feel barebone.   8/10. 

 

Now to the long ramblings you were warned. 

Spoiler

Ok so lets get this off right of the bat, i LOVED this book. Its a great read and i will gladly add the LE when it arrives on my ad mech self next to the Great work. I am going to get critical not because it is a bad book, but because in being good the weaker areas hit me harder. 

 

Ok so general overview the book picks up from the great work and ties directly in to a short story where cawl has Qvo steal a necron from the Inquisition.  And between this and Biles part also leaning into what happened in his trilogy (especially its ending) i feel bad this was sold as a standalone verus novel. This book is very much the second Belisarius Cawl book and  bile wil also be served with having read his books.

 

Anyhow the first half (about) of the book very much a separate beast from the second. It is solely focused on our characters, them being Cawl. Qvo, Bile and primus in that order. And it drops lore gem after lore gem like its Haleys last days at GW. It flat out confirms that the Cawl Inferior is AI, and not just AI, partialy warp based xenos tech AI...which is slowly going rogue. Oh wait there is also a Guillimman AI cawl made while coping his brain waves at some point. Which he uses to practice talking to the real deal, which is also maybe connecting to the warp and going rogue.   Which brings us to the new Qvo model, who honestly is the star of the book for me.

 

The bromance between Qvo and Cawl is fantastic. They are the bitter old married couple from hell, and they know it.  Qvo and in turn Cawl honestly care about eachother, want the other to be happy and flourish. Cawl goal is again flatout stated to be to bring Qvo fully back to life. Which i guess makes him a kind of Mechanicus Necromancer and i am there for it. He has all sorts of logical arguments for why what he is doing is ok and totally not warp/tech based necromancy. And watching Qvo relentlessly call him out as being so full of :cuss: he might burst is wonderful, as wonderful as seeing Belisarius simple refusing to ever even consider abandoning his friend.  Qvo also hates his existence, knows he is unnatural heresy and just wants to die. Haley should focus the third book of the trilogy ( i wont pretend this is not book 2/3) around them. 

 

Bile is bile, haley does a decent job of making this feel like the same character from his own books and carries on the story from there with some sprinkling in of new stuff. It works, but it did not amaze me. 

 

Unfortunatly we keep getting more characters, there is Cawl waifu ( this is a joke he does not treat it as such in the book) the female necron cryptek who Cawl assured us is super duper well secured and cannot possible escape (If you did not immediately know she will escape in the climax i cant help you). 

The Knight Baron who has a suit with a anoying older knight pilot spirit who is anoying and never ever an actual help (if you did not expect him to totally save the day in the climax again cant help). 

The Magos who is chasing Cawl for the inqusition from the short stories. A map making magos, a general magos, etc etc. 

 

And we hit our fist major problem, compared to Cawl, Qvo and Bile every one else get introduced and then sidelined hard untill they do the 1 thing they exist to do. The Cryptek tries to kill Cawl, the knight using the spirits help fights in battle, map guy maps, hell general lady and dude never even got to general.  Our main character got 60 pages of carefully written and plotted notes before being written, everyone else got a napkin. 

 

The same goes for the Bile side, we get introduced to generally interest ideas in the shape of characters, we FINALLY get dark mech as a faction with actual beliefs and views and philosophies but it gets introduced and then forgotten.   Tho i will say one of the highlights of the Book for me is the dark mech agent telling a loyalist that from his point of view the jedi....mechanicus are the evil ones. They are the TRUE mechanicum, the imperium is the false ones. And i loved it. 

 

About half way thru we get to the planet where the great scientific symposium is meant to take place, i quote fromt he book description 'In the hope of taming the Great Rift that divides the galaxy in two, Archmagos Belisarius Cawl invites representatives from across the Imperium to the artificial world of Pontus Avernes.'.

 

Yeah no that was a total lie, he sends msgs to the local forge world and 3 of them answer.  No great Imperial wide call, no specialists from all avenues of the Imperial body. It was to be honest a letdown. I will again say allot of this is due to how i had pictured the book in my mind. But still. 

 

He calls him and outlines the plot of the next book in the series (like for real that 100% what he does). Which is using every single last scrap of imperial know how to access a timelocked world which is trapped in the past because of black hole time games, study their intact pylon network and control mechanism and make it back ot the present.  Ok so hopes back up that sounds like a fun read and then the book goes a little too bolter porny for my liking but this is 40k. The chaos redshirts ( you will know them when you see them) die to let our B characters have their 1 chapter of glory.  The meat as awlays is Cawl and Qvo, Qvo has a crisis of self and realises that his friend needs him and even if he is not a real boy ( the book makes a Pinocchio reference as well) he can be Cawls Boiiiiiii and does what he needs to. and cawl and bile have some pretty fun monologues at each other.  Not as deep as i would have liked but good enough for BL. But then again we go back to battle porn and the great weak point of the book.

 

Bile plans is bad, it should never have worked and only does so because every character behaves in the only way possible for it to work. Even at the very end its all comes down to Bile somehow knowing Cawl would have a emotional breakthru and admit Primus is like a son to him and his love for him wont let him sacrifice him. It felt forced, it felt left field, it felt like haley made it so Qvo was needed at two places at one and rather then do re writes he just swapped primus in. I know people will see this differently, but i just did not buy the ending. If it was Qvo in Biles hands 100% yes the build up was there and it was natural.  But primus? No. Simple as that.

 

Ok i have rambled enought, i loved the chapters on the forge world, i loved the tech confrence, i loved the many different tech priests and their descriptions. I loved the huge ammounts of jokes and refrences. This was a GOOD  BOOK, but it stumbled at the finish line and failed to be GREAT.

 

It also should have been sold as book 2 of the Cawl trilogy. 

 

[DarkChaplain]

Chapters three and four had me in stitches. Cawl interacting with the Cawl Inferior was hilarious, especially with regards to Guilliman. It ties directly into how Guilliman interacts with the Cawl Inferior in Dark Imperium, his doubts about it etc, so having the other end of such communications on the page this time was really fun to see.

 

And then Cawl keeps dropping little bombs on us, particularly in chapter four. It's like Haley chose to parody Guilliman for a bit, with how Cawl comments on their interactions and his tendencies. It's not only working out as fitting development for Cawl, highlighting his irreverent streak, but also serves as fanservice for folks who have followed Roboute around for the last few years, from one serious event to the next.

 

Timeline-wise, I'll point out that this book also confirms that Devastation of Baal and the Nihilus crusade doesn't appear to have happened yet. Guilliman is making ready to leave Sanctus as per his message to Cawl, so we're post-Godblight but pre-Baal. I wonder when we'll get to Guilliman post-Baal in the BL narrative.

[Dzirhan]

Quote

Who the hell signed off on that?! And it wasn't even subtle! It was exactly named! The character in question may as well have turned to the audience and added, 'make sure to pre-order the upcoming box-set, coming soon to a James Workshop near you!'

 

James Swallow's Sisters of Battle short story Red and Black had something similar though they were not mechanical

 

Quote

Timeline-wise, I'll point out that this book also confirms that Devastation of Baal and the Nihilus crusade doesn't appear to have happened yet. Guilliman is making ready to leave Sanctus as per his message to Cawl, so we're post-Godblight but pre-Baal. I wonder when we'll get to Guilliman post-Baal in the BL narrative.

 

I'm wondering when we get to Guilliman meeting the Lion, come to think of it also if we get to the what's hinted by Messanius in the opening of Avenging Son and also all the hints about Fabian undoing everything with the Unremembered Empire disclosure

Edited October 15, 2023 by Dzirhan

[DarkChaplain]

Also, just a thought from last night reading chapter 4, which I forgot to state earlier:

 

 

Chapter 4, The Other Inferior, OOZES with dabbling-with-AI/ChatGPT energy. I'd wager Guy got inspired by the AI trend there.

 

Actually, as someone who has been dabbling with AI bots the past few months here and there too, I find AI-Guilliman to be totally on point with his reactions; he goes from semi-authenticity to extremes on the drop of a hat, blasts his fuse, then calmes down right away again after receiving a new reply, etc. It's straddling the line between accuracy and comedic parody in exactly the way I've experienced with, say, Character AI's bots or stuff generated via TavernAI or KoboldAI.

Fun fact: There actually are multiple Guilliman bots on Character AI. One of them just facepalmed on me when I told him I'd made better, taller Space Marines that can punch harder....

 

Quote

 

Me: I have made Secundus Marines who are even stronger than Primaris Marines!

Guilliman: sigh How much stronger, exactly?

Me: About 5%

Guilliman: ... Why should I deploy Secundus Marines which are only 5% stronger? Is there anything else about them which justifies deploying this new type of Marine?

Me: They're more points-efficient! You can squeeze more of them into your army list!

Guilliman: That's... a plus, at least. But why would I need to field more of them if they're only marginally better than my current Astartes?

 

Even the archetypal beancounter doesn't get min-maxing too hard, it seems....

 

Honestly, it fits into the current Zeitgeist in the best way possible - by being tongue in cheek about it all, and its cast of larger-than-life characters.

Edited October 15, 2023 by DarkChaplain

[Orange Knight]

I just finished chapter 4.

 

This is already the best 40k book of the year. 

 

Haley is knocking it out of the park completely. It's full of winks, nods and references to past stories, but the greatness of this book is driven by the characters themselves.

 

Cawl is hilarious. His Heresy knows no bounds lol

[DarkChaplain]

I'm nearing the halfway point now, been trucking along nicely with the audiobook while organizing stuff on the PC. There've been moments where I needed to stop what I was doing just to appreciate a good laugh coming up. Cawl is highly entertaining, and his talks with Qvo in particular were wonderful.

 

I probably said this before somewhere, but Haley makes Cawl work. When he was introduced, people hated him - and from the lore at his introduction, it was easy to see why. Every appearance he's made in Haley's stories since has gone further and further to not only redeem him, but also make him a fantastic character in his own right, who can play on the same field as many of the long-established names.

 

If I had to put it down to one thing in particular, it'd be that he's made Belisarius Cawl authentically eccentric. He's a genius, yes. He's done many things, yes. But he's not simply big-brained, he's memorable in how he interacts with the people around him - to the point of his staff mirroring him so much in places, it annoys the living daylights out of Alpha Primus.

 

And Cawl has a staff. He's delegating tasks. He's shown praising his people, trying to get them to take ownership for their actions as well instead of just saying "it's all just because the Great Cawl is instructing me!". He knows he is brilliant, and he loves showing it off, but he's not conceited like other, similar characters from the genius archetype. He's also not the scatterbrained, disorganized genius who needs external help to keep his clothes off the floor, either. He just is what he is, but he is also what he was before, in a very human way. This much gets obvious through his interactions with Qvo. He loves that man so much, he's spent eleven millennia trying to create a perfectly accurate simulacra of the bloke. He needs this human connection, as artificial as it may seem, to function, and it grounds him.

 

Cawl, for all the stuff about him switching out personalities, mixing and matching them to suit the occasion, has a throughline that makes him genuinely likeable. He's breaking with many of the established tropes of the setting while intrinsically belonging to it. He shakes up the status qvo in so many ways, not least of all by introducing Primaris Marines, without actually coming across as a violation of the setting. And that's mostly down to how he's been written by Haley over the years. There were so many ways to write Cawl wrong, and we avoided all those possibilities thanks to a competent author who took the opportunity to use this new character to celebrate various aspects of the setting, being a little tongue in cheek, rather than trying to forcefully make him a serious character with serious stats who takes himself altogether too seriously while he improves on the setting's premises.

 

Cawl has become a very fun, satisfying character. I'm glad he was introduced to the setting - something I definitely wasn't when he first appeared.

[Redrandy93]

This sounds interesting!    Where can I get a regular copy of the story?    

[OpossumStrong]

22 minutes ago, Redrandy93 said:

This sounds interesting!    Where can I get a regular copy of the story?    

Right now i think only ebay

[Lord Nord in Gravis Armour]

So I wonder if we've just read...

 

The eventual justification for how EVERY primarch can now be brought back, including Sanguinius, Ferrus Manus and Horus (and Kurze and Alpharius and whoever else is dead this week). In the short term, Bile's acquisition of the information contained in his harvesting of Alpha Primus will probably just give us Primaris Chaos Marines. But long term, with primarchs returning at a clip of roughly one per year, GW's going to run through the slate of currently-living candidates somewhere around the launch of 13th Edition. As much as I tend to be against the Herohammer return of ANY of the primarchs, I can see corporate greed overcoming all narrative argument to keep at least Sanguinius and Horus among the unliving. We might even see a narrative campaign based around duelling Alpharii.

[Morovir]

Having finished the book, I would say that much as in his other books, Haley's own characters (i.e. Cawl) are well-written, whereas characters originating/mainly being written by other authors have a few references paid to them to try and tie them to that author's work, but ultimately it seems as if he had the CliffsNotes version of their characters to work from rather than having actually read the books that were written about them, leading to canon contradictions.

 

*ahem* Maximus Thane suddenly being a Heresy veteran despite the book that introduces him actively contradicting that *ahem*

 

Spoiler

In this case, Vesalius and Butcher-Bird. First appearing in Josh Reynolds' Fabius Bile trilogy, Reynolds gives these craft character and individuality. Haley does none of this - there is nothing to distinguish them from any other Space Marine vessel/gunship, and so it seems that Haley has just included them so try and add a layer of continuity to Fabius Bile's story - a bit of "see, I've read Josh Reynolds' books, I know that Fabius Bile has a ship called Vesalius and a gunship called Butcher-Bird". On it's own, there is nothing wrong with this - a bit disappointing that Haley doesn't take advantage of this to make the novel more interesting, but a nice little callout nevertheless - but in Manflayer, Bile ends the novel with neither Vesalius nor Butcher-Bird at his command - Vesalius is released by Bile before his last stand to wander the galaxy as it wills and Butcher-Bird is taken by the Twelfth Millennial as they flee Belial IV, and so the fact the both vessels are inexplicably back under Bile's command with no explanation or acknowledgement of their prior owners is jarring, and furthers my viewpoint that people's praise for Haley working well to tie in the work of other authors is undue.

 

Minor rant over.

[lansalt]

42 minutes ago, Morovir said:

Having finished the book, I would say that much as in his other books, Haley's own characters (i.e. Cawl) are well-written, whereas characters originating/mainly being written by other authors have a few references paid to them to try and tie them to that author's work, but ultimately it seems as if he had the CliffsNotes version of their characters to work from rather than having actually read the books that were written about them, leading to canon contradictions.

Agreed

Spoiler

Fabius characterization also doesn't match the end of his last book, with him having finally bent the knee to Slaanesh in exchange of saving his creations. His trilogy is a prequel series that explains how the 30k apothecary became over millenia the current 40k villain wearing a chaos star in his pauldron, so it doesn't make sense to see him again talk about how he doesn't believe in the gods, and him wanting to stop Chaos taking over the galaxy.
It's like Guy Haley didn't read Manflayer or discarded it.

Otherwise this is an entertaining 40k book, with great scenes since the first page to the end. But maybe it needed a bit more of grimdark to compensate the theatrics and wittiness of the characters and the plot.

About the big reveal...

Spoiler

I did not expect to see a Chaos Android ever again, and even less to be explained as the same as the possesed Men of Iron from First and Only. It's a cool fix to join two pieces of forgotten lore that also confirms that Chaos was involved in the Men of Iron rebellion.
And by the way, this means that the old Space Crusade minis were MoI too :)

 

[DarkChaplain]

Some thoughts on Fabius "inconsistencies"

 

 

First off, the Fabius we get here has gone through around a decade of the Indomitus Era already. I'm not sure if War of the Spider has already occured or not, but Abaddon tasking him with making Chaos Primaris has. This isn't just-woken-up Fabius from Manflayer's Epilogue. Things happened in the intervening years, he got confronted with the Rift, etc.

Not just that, we only received, what, three lines from OG Fabius after his "death" in Manflayer. The last two in the novel. The other Fabius we see in the epilogue is one of the clones.

 

 

 

 

Quote

In a geyser of nutrient smog, something as thin as a corpse rose from its crypt. Bloodshot eyes rolled in their sockets, fixing on Skalagrim with predatory interest. Without thinking, he took another step back. ‘Gods…’ he muttered.

‘Gods?’ the dead man croaked. ‘There are no gods here save me. You would be wise to remember that, Skalagrim. For I am not a merciful deity – or a kindly one.’ He held out a withered hand and Saqqara handed him the dataslate.

Fabius Bile smiled.

‘Now, let us see what has become of the galaxy in my absence, eh?’

That's it. From this, we cannot actually tell how the whole multiple-versions shenanigans has affected him. We know he's also been fed all his clones' experiences throughout his 4-ish millennia of sleep.
 

Quote

‘No. I am not.’ Fabius studied himself. ‘Or, should I say, we are not. I am not him. And yet he is me. My thoughts, my experiences… they are as dreams to him. And not just mine.’ He gestured to the data-screens. On each, a Fabius was now visible. On each, a Fabius crafted monsters, led raids, or sat in quiet contemplation.

So what we see in Genefather is not trilogy Fabius. It's Trilogy Fabius fed with all the other Fabius versions' memories and data, turning him into a "new" omega Fabius. This becomes clear as soon as we see him interacting with his newer creations, or the successor of the gland hounds. The way he speaks is reminiscent of OG Fabius, but a little more spiteful, a little less patient, and less melancholy.

When he meets with Cawl, I find his sentiments to be in line with what we've seen, actually. He made a devil's bargain in Fulgrim's garden, yes. But it was not the same sort of enslavement to Slaanesh as others of his Legion - it was to keep fulfilling his purpose providing tools for the gods' war. He's still doing that right here, when Abaddon's demand for Chaos Primaris is mentioned. He's still supplying gene-seed and such to other warbands. He's doing what he agreed to, as have his clones.... but that doesn't mean he has come around to sing the Pantheon's praises. No, he still rejects them, just as he told Cawl here. He might be bound by a weird metaphysical bond, but he'd still believe that to be a matter of science at the end of the day, not of divinity as such. And we all know he hated that sort of bondage.

As for the Butcher-Bird and Vesalius thing, I don't really find it strange. We've had four millennia of uncovered ground, with a bunch of his clones out and about the galaxy. The Twelfth Millennial surely didn't up and vanish after fleeing Belial IV. Honestly, I'd love for Savona to return at some point, in one way or another, and fill that narrative gap, but for now, I'm content in thinking that she and a clone ended up linking back up at some point.

The Vesalius? Yes, he freed the ship, but he also sent it along with Skalagrim to Abaddon, on the condition that he'd let it roam free after. And the Vesalius has, from the start of the trilogy, repeatedly been stated to love Fabius. Even setting aside that we don't know if Skalagrim and Abaddon let it just slip away (especially after Skalagrim's return to Abaddon was already a bit of a risk), and that he made contact in the Manflayer epilogue to deliver Abaddon's orders, Vesalius might just love Fabius enough to want to go back to him anyway, either to a clone or the original post-Rift.

That being said, I think Butcher-Bird behaves about as expected, and the Vesalius doesn't play enough of a role beyond being what Bile travels on to say one way or another. It's not in focus in a comparable capacity to Josh's trilogy. Yes, I'm basically handwaving those inconsistencies away, because of how easy it is to fill in the gaps with whatever theory you personally favor. This isn't like some of the stuff we've seen in the Siege of Terra alone, either.

Yes, I, too, would have liked some mentions of Melusine, Savona, Saqqara, but even though the marketing really went for a "Cawl vs Bile"-angle, and the cover presents them as seeing eye to eye, this very much ended up being a Cawl novel first and foremost. I'd call it deceptive marketing, for sure, but considering the two primary characters don't even meet until 2/3 through the novel, and Bile's chapters are few and far between, and also concerned with the pursuit of Cawl, whereas Cawl doesn't even spare a thought for him when Alpha Primus gives his warning of the spider coming for him early on, it's pretty clear that this book isn't about a VS-of-geniuses, but how Cawl deals with this other genius who plays in a similar ballpark.

Just count how often the name "Fabius" appears throughout the book. It's surprisingly few and far between. Even one dream memory sequence is concerned with Cawl/Sedayne, and uses that to illustrate Fabius himself a little. Even when Fabius goes on the offensive and executes his plans, he happens to react to Cawl's works, rather than really pushing his own, or presenting himself as the protagonist of the novel. It's all about Cawl, in the end, even as far as Fabius Bile is concerned. He is used to examine Belisarius Cawl from an unusual angle.

Is that disappointing in a way? Yeah. I really wish we'd get more Fabius soon, and could've seen the novel going a bit more down the unstable partnership route for the sake of science. But that it wouldn't be that becomes clear pretty quickly. Again, I think this is somewhat like the Prospero Burns marketing situation (just without the book being announced and marketed years before it was actually written), in that the cover and WarCom presented it in a deceptive way.

Oh, and to get back to the gland hounds for a moment: I actually rather liked that the last we saw of them in Manflayer, they'd been mostly evacuated, aside from the stubborn few like Igori, who refused to leave Fabius' side. Remember, Bile specifically prohibited Astartes to follow them to their sanctuary. He wanted them to make their way on their own, without those Astartes monsters. To have Porter be a descendent of those children of his, to have him tell Cawl that he let them go and they developed on their own without his control or supervision? I think that's very in character. He's always been torn between wanting to be a father to them, doting on them, and wishing for them to be independent and making their own decisions. They did, and they evolved from it over the last four millennia, and proved to fulfill his hopes, apparently. It's kind of satisfying to see Fabius validated that way, and I enjoyed that he tried to convince Cawl of the whole "nature will do the rest"-argument. But again, this is still not OG Fabius we are dealing with. It's the primary instance, the root Fabius, but he's still echoing his clones, still involving their exploits in his brain. Part of him has been alive and working tirelessly to fulfill Slaanesh's demands to create more monsters. Part of him has even gone and done something retconned to the Blood Angels. Part of him has featured in a Warhammer Horror short story where he had amnesia. He's gestalt Fabius, all of that stuff integrated to greater or lesser degrees, layering on top of the Fabius Bile we came to love.

And I'm pretty sure that was the point of what Josh did. To have his Bile and eat him, too, while giving a narrative explanation for the inconsistencies and a solution to roll all of those discrepancies back into one figure. One he wouldn't come back for, sadly. Even though he should.

....besides, Fabius really hates theatrics now, to the point of chiding Cawl for seemingly reminding him of the Harlequins in how he phrased some things.

 

And funnily enough, I opened up a wiki earlier to check on a summary of War of the Spider, because I ignored most of Psychic Awakening, it not having received novels, and noticed that what was said in Codex and other fluff about Fabius and Commorragh or the battle of Belial IV? There are plenty of discrepancies and contradiction between what I read and the Bile trilogy/Manflayer.

 

Edited October 17, 2023 by DarkChaplain

[Dzirhan]

One of my favorite lines 

 

Spoiler

This Guilliman was like a child's idea of a primarch: heroic, bombastic, and sometime stupid. Makes me think of the Guilliman inferior looking like this   

 

 

 

 

[Orange Knight]

Just finished the book. Easily the best 40k novel since the Dark City, probably my personal favourite since the Great Work.

 

I think Cawl is a brilliant character, maybe my favourite in all 40k fiction at this point. He steals any scene he's in, and he's fully justified in his abilities. Competent but not infallible.

[Aramis K]

Done. Really enjoyed it and Cawl and friends are a great cast.

Lots of great lines I'd like to quote.

 

At times it reminded me of Pratchett, with the satire and the winks and the general good natured sighs.

And also the Infinite and the Devine.

A wry grimdark.

 

Spoiler

The inquisition magos plotline didn't really go anywhere beyond being a lense to look at Cawl. I wonder if we'll see them more active in future. 

 

I also hope we get a little more on the orbital plate world one day.

 

Chaos androids or super marines I can live without - MoI are more interesting as independent minds.  And give the Votann a novel already!

 

But I think we're more likely see see more Dark Mechanicum soon as minis, and maybe more Beastmen and Ogroids imported from AoS.

 

[DarkChaplain]

I also think a few bits in this novel here will carry over into an inevitable Cawl sequel. Some nuggets from Dark Imperium and The Great Work, and To Speak as One, already played into it, and seem to be growing only more relevant as time progresses. Plenty of foreshadowing that can easily pay off in the future.

 

If The Great Work was more of an introduction to Cawl in the current timeline, Genefather is all about developing and examining him and his role in the grand scheme of things. He's now firmly established and ready to face more open conflict.

 

It would not surprise me, for instance, if the next novel will pitch him directly against Guilliman, for various reasons we've seen in Haley's novels so far. There's a conflict brewing and it's not a question of If, but When we'll see it paying off.

[DarkChaplain]

12 hours ago, Aramis K said:

At times it reminded me of Pratchett, with the satire and the winks and the general good natured sighs.

And also the Infinite and the Devine.

A wry grimdark.

 

I've been thinking on that the past few hours, and I'd agree with the Pratchett comparison.

 

Pratchett takes his world seriously, there's a lot of surprising depth and authenticity in there... but his works are also self-aware in the sense that they understand their own silliness, the handwaving of its fantasy and the ludicrous behavior of its cast. Characters may be ridiculous to us, but they'll still take themselves and their roles seriously within their framework, even as they might poke fun at it all.

 

I think that's echoed in Cawl. Cawl, by his nature as a very late introduction to the setting who turns a lot of the estabished rules on their heads, who seemingly "fixes" or intends to fix fundamental problems of the setting, who has been a source of controvery within the fanbase from day 0, needed to be handled in a Pratchett-like way. By having him both call out the ludicrous aspects of the settings, being a mold-breaker, but also function within the world we've known. He's not simply the Prime Conduit of the Omnissiah, but the reader, the audience, who comments on established rules but also accepts them as the given status quo to a degree.

 

Spoiler for further thoughts:

 

Had Cawl been just a fantastic, powerful, genius AdMech lord, risen from within the system, he would not have worked. It's his for the setting unconventional eccentricity, his rogue nature, his defiance of the established rules, his open questioning of dogma, that makes his innovations fit.

It's not necessarily that the Imperium couldn't produce new grav tanks, for instance, or that they "lost" that technology since the Heresy. It's that they lost the blueprints and locked themselves into religious rules that forbade them from putting pen to paper and reconstruct them.

 

The AdMech has always been a bit weird about basic scientific methodology, and when Cawl goes to great lengths in this novel to explain his work around the STCs, it's just so obvious a thing to do for the modern audience. For us, as the readers, it's hopefully cathartic for Cawl to just be talking about following basic scientific principles and research to reach his conclusions, putting 1+1 together like any inventor today would, just on a much more advanced technological level. By making this callout, Cawl doesn't remove himself from the setting - he instead grounds himself. He's aware of the inherent silliness of the AdMech's rules, and that he has to circumnavigate them at least outwardly, but what he's actually doing to succeed? It's nothing outlandish to a modern audience. It's not like he pulled things out of his bum just because Guilliman needed new toys, it's that he actually did his due dilligence instead of relying on rediscovering ancient tech blueprints every couple of centuries.

 

He's not a "I can simply do this stuff because I'm a genius"-type character who deus ex machinas solutions. He's just more invested in real science than the usual pseudoscience and worship of his system - and from that angle, it's clear why he and his companions would find that whole situation so damn amusing, poke fun at the illogical arguments and occasionally break the fourth wall. As a faction, they make sense within the setting, and contrast the traditional side in a refreshing way.

 

Cawl and his peers' reactions to the established grimdark and occasional grimdumb add to the IP in meaningful ways without taking away from its tone or gravitas.

[Krelious]

I hate to say this but I think this is one of those books where the limited edition short story is necessary to getting a bigger picture thematically. I found this book to be delightful, well paced and tight and what I mean by tight is I generally dont enjoy the larger sprawling books like the siege of terra novels or fall of Cadia because there's too many characters to keep track of.

 

I rather liked the poetry or dynamic between Cawl and Bile where I think the entire book is poetic justice for what Cawl did to get the Necron

Spoiler

Chronomancer

and Bile does the same thing to him as he did to the Inquisition. I think the main point is that Bile is under no illusions as to who he is or what his work is and that morality doesnt really enter the equation beyond the ends justify the means as well as Bile using his mutants and beastmen much like the Imperium might use the IG. I think what Bile presents is a brutal symmetry or mirror image of the imperial forces its just he doesnt dress anything up with bull-:cuss: to justify himself, he just flat out doesnt care. 

 

Fundamentally though the difference between Cawl and Bile is that while Cawl is a bit of a bull-:cuss: artist hes at least very kind to his creations and the people who serve under him, even if they arent as smart as he is. That being said I was totally rooting for Porter during the big fight and I was hoping for more from Brutus. 

 

I think plot wise we might see something huge happen in the setting from Cawl's upcoming mission as well as a split in the Mechanicus where Cawl might form his own institution.

 

I havent read all of Haleys work and I find him to be rather hit or miss sometimes or with say Devastation of Baal 2/3s of the book were boring set up and the Dark Imperium series being slightly above mediocre. I think this novel is a real knockout and possibly his best work.  In the past ive viewed Haley as kind of a "meat and potatoes" author of 40k taken over from McNeil, however this book really is a significant step up in quality I finished it very quickly because I just couldnt put it down. If I had to say anything is that Genefather really has almost perfect structure to it and is well balanced which makes it a joy to read as it just flows really nicely.