Buried Dagger by James Swallow (2019) - A critique

[Deus_Ex_Machina]

A few months ago I read the book in the title description and to my surprise it lacked in several ways. As the Death Guard is my favourite Traitor Legion I feel compelled to write here on the forum why from my perspective this book is a clear botch. I will try to keep the content as vague as possible for anybody who wants to read it in the future so spoilers should be very rare.

 

What is the job of the story here? To illuminate the origins of Mortarion and his Legion as well as their corruption to Chaos.

Does the book deliver that in a satisfying manner? This can be answered by a clear "No".  Why? Because the book describes the action going on in three different places namely Barbarus, a voyage in the Warp and skirmishes on Terra. The latter shouldn´t be even in the book at all as neither Mortarion nor the Death Guard are featured in that segment and as such that content is pure uninteresting filler material. As a consequence the unnecessary filler content takes much needed space away from the two other places of interest (Barbarus & warp voyage) which is the main reason why the book is lacking.

 

I have been back in the day a D&D Ravenloft dungeon master for ten years. So I am a fan of Gothic Horror and all manner of classic undead creatures. The world of Barbarus could very easily be a Domain of Dread from the Ravenloft setting in regard of how bad things are there. As a result I was shocked that the author didn´t use that opportunity which had been served up to him on a silver platter and turn the Barbarus segment into a full-blown horror story. Heck, the entire book should have been about was was going on in that wretched place and maybe the final chapter reserved to the fall of Chaos as that aspect holds very little room to explore anyway as it is known to every hobbyist since day one in the hobby.

 

Now you might say that having a classic horror story couldn´t be possible as the main protagonist Mortarion is way too powerful to be scared by anything which the dark denizens of Barbarus can hurl at him and you are right in that regard. But you could introduce human characters into the story and let bad things happen to them so that Mortarion can later show up to either save them or come too late and spectate what kind of wretched place Barbarus truly is. Although for this to happen the author had to create proper characters and not flat ones in the first place and give them enough screen time so that we as the readers care about them. This however does not happen. All the named human characters are in a scene or two and remain totally uninteresting. This is the second flaw of the book. Cardboard characters in the supporting role are always a major flaw. Instead we see action sequences of Mortarion who beats the living daylights out of troublesome creatures which is fine but it does not contribute to illustrate the sheer horror of existence which the populace of Barbarus has to go through each day of living in such a hellish place.

 

So in a nutshell my two critique points were:

1) Filler material on Terra.

2) Not a horror story even though the setting of Barbarus BEGS to be described in such a way.

 

Therefore I give the book out of five possible stars only two. You see Mortarion in action sequences on Barbarus and later witness his fall to Chaos during his warp voyage. So the minimum has been achieved. 

 

What were your thoughts when you finished the book? Did it fulfill your expectations or were you disappointed like me? 

[Karhedron]

I am inclined to agree although for slightly different reasons. I have never been impressed by Swallow's writing and find fails to nail characters in a satisfying way. I much prefer Mortarion and the DGs depiction by Wraight in Daemonology, Scars, Warhawk etc. As you say, Buried Dagger does the job it sets out to do but not with any style or panache. I found it a chore to be completed before the Siege series rather than a book I enjoyed reading.

[DuskRaider]

IMO the handling of Mortarion as a character was botched by BL from the very beginning… or at least post-Eisenstein. In that book, he was handled much better because he was more mysterious and in the background, but a lot of the character “development” past that book was one dimensional and extremely subpar. 
 

What could have and should have been an extremely complex character was instead made a generic mustache-twirling villain with extremely flawed and at times nonsensical motivations. His arc and fall could have been so much more interesting and made to be a struggle with loyalty and ties to his father and brother, but instead he turned even easier than Angron, it seems. I always found his reasons a little absurd, and even more so when you read more into the lengths the Emperor went to to bring Mortarion to his side. The end result is lackluster and often times frustrating, especially when compared to other Primarchs whose motives were more complex and interesting. 

[Antarius]

The rise and fall of the Death Guard and their primarch definitely has the potential to be one of the most compelling stories of the heresy, but well, it just... kinda wasn't. I'm not sure it was because of the lack of horror elements, so much as it was just a failure of storytelling and character portrayal and development.

 

I am (also) inclined to think that most of the book's shortcomings are down to Swallow simply not being a very good writer - especially when it comes to characters and the relationships between them. I've been quite unimpressed with his handling of anything after Eisenstein (which I remember as quite good, although I could be wrong. It's been a long time since I read it). "Fear to Thread" was downright bad in many places and it was largely for similar reasons, so at the end of the day I think it comes down to the author, although it does perhaps sounds a bit harsh (and it's not like I could do any better, but then again, I'm not in the business of writing).

[Nagashsnee]

The Death Guard suffer from not having a bespoke author or vision of their role in the HH.

 

The legions that got the best  out of the Heresy (White Scars, Word Bearers, World Eaters,etc) all had a central commanding author handling them in a planned and coherent way. 

 

White scars are perhaps the biggest winner here as they have a real trilogy of works, laying out their beginning, middle and end. Central characters, narative journeys, dramatic deaths, its an actual STORY. 

 

The legions that got the least out of the HH or at best a mixed bag are those who did not have a central person with a clear vision handling them.  They either got more or less abandoned (RIP IRON HANDS) with maybe some short stories and the B roles in other peoples books. Or had many authors handling them which lead to many works of varying quality and most often representation that is at war with itself. 

 

The burried dagger could have worked if the author went all out and presented a complete story of the death guard in a single book.  Complete with not only dealing with the shotgun blast of pre existing death guard short stories but also introducing a couple of non named (as in pre existing characters) to add some drama and steaks to the story.  It would need to deal with mortarion, the legion, their backstory, typhu, etc etc. It was always going to be a tall order as it lacked the support it should have had from previous works. 

 

Who is Mortarion? Why did he rebel (no 'i hate magic' is not enough), what were his goals at this point in the heresy, what did the legion make of it all, him and typhys and their relationship, the trap, the warp torture, the backstories. All this by itself would fill a HH book easily, but then whats that? THE GREY KNIGHTS WITH THE STEEL CHAIR!?! . 

 

The book was like Mortarion the moment he trusted Typhus doomed the moment it was not given to a heavy hitter author wise.  Horror or not, scary or not, the book and the Death Guard in general lacked vision and planning. Throwing in Garro should never have made it past the first editorial meeting.  

 

Still could be worse, they could have had Wraith on this and Swallow on the Sanguinius book! haha. 

 

 

Edited September 30 by Nagashsnee

[darkhorse0607]

 

Throwing in Garro should never have made it past the first editorial meeting. 

 

I mean that can be said of other books as well. Vengeful Spirit for example should have been basically the fourth part of the opening Sons of Horus Trilogy. In some ways it is, but more meaningful character development was spent elsewhere, on the Knights Errant for example. I get that Garro was Swallow's character from Flight of the Eisenstein so he might have wanted to have finished both stories, but Buried Dagger really would've benefited from being more about the Death Guard's fall rather than 50/50 Knights Errant weird side mission (and I say weird mostly about the memory wipe stuff, I really don't think that needed to exist, also RIP to that very salty man Varren, I actually liked his character). Also looking back, it was even more pointless because of how they resolved Garro's/Mortarion's arc and whether that whole suspicion about the books being released out of order is true. If you go all in on Knight of Grey, then the Khan's story is undermined, if you do not, then Garro staying on Terra rather than being made a Grey Knight is kind of pointless. Oh well

 

As for the Death Guard's stuff, I'm kind of torn

 

On one hand, I liked the more tragic side of the fall. Mortarion tries desperately to save the legion from its suffering, isn't able to, and surrenders to Nurgle to try to prevent their death/suffering. I like the betrayal from who was essentially his best friend (if you could say that) and it genuinely made me feel for Mortarion

 

On the other

 

It makes Mortarion look like the biggest idiot in the galaxy and because of that, I end up siding with Wraight's version of the Death Guard (please write more Death Guard Wraight). Part of my issue is that it feels like Swallow ignored all of the stuff Wraight did in Daemonology, Vengeful Spirit (from McNeill, mainly referring to the use of Grulgor as a weapon), and Path of Heaven to set up Mortarion to be more warp-knowledgeable (kind of). Yes in Path of Heaven, he is still very much on the "warp bad" train, but he is also experimenting with it in Daemonology. You could say that it's very Primarch to think that you're the only one around messing with the warp (opening the door to not seeing more of the corruption and plotting by Typhon/Phus) but still. This excerpt from Path of Heaven shows what I mean

 

"But what of Typhon? That element, at least, had eluded his control. Calas emerged ever more often in Mortarion’s fevered dreams, marching at the head of Legion detachments he barely recognised. There would have to be a reckoning with Typhon before the assault on Terra. The Legion had become too distributed, too caught up in the sprawl of the burning galaxy."

 

He has every reason going into Buried Dagger to be more suspicious of Typhon/Phus, but because Swallow doesn't really do much to reconcile it and basically picks it up from Flight of the Eisenstein, it makes it feel either disjointed or like Mortarion is an idiot.

 

All of that aside, I still like the book, I just wish, again, that the editors had done a better job or that the authors had talked to each other more. Maybe they did, I dunno, it just doesn't feel like it, which then made Wraight have to course correct for Warhawk and in Terminus (the short story in Blood of the Emperor)

[byrd9999]

I feel that Chris Wraight did an awesome job of weaving a plausible and superior character arc for Mortarion in Warhawk using the poor threads James Swallow had provided.

 

After reading Warhawk, and Terminus, the Buried Dagger is a little redundant. Not awful, just no need to ever go back to it to get my Morty fix.

[lansalt]

I think this book has a few good parts already covered above (Barbarus, the ending narrative mixing Mortarion meeting the Emperor/falling to Nurgle), and I agree that the other unrelated plots should have been left out from it.

However, for me the biggest pet peeve were its contradictions. This book made Typhon a young man from Barbarus that becomes Mortarion's friend, ally, and general during their rebellion against the Overlords. Which would have been fine, except for all the other previous stories where he was a librarian of the Dusk Raiders before they found their primarch. Or the other references about Typhon being at first a nobody in the legion under Mortarion.

Another book that deserves criticism for the same reasons is Mortarion, the Pale King, which flanderizes him from his very first Great Crusade action into a resentful primarch disliked by his peers  (including Horus!) without no room for a proper character arc. More like Angron than the unfriendly but still widely respected guy he was suppossed to be.

Edited October 1 by lansalt

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

You wouldn’t have been surprised if you had heard any review of or read his BA books.

[Nagashsnee]

 

You wouldn’t have been surprised if you had heard any review of or read his BA books.

 

I dont hold the 40k ones against him, they were the product of their era and rightly left in the dust bin of BL history plot wise. 

 

Fear to Tread tho will always live in infamy for me. Not just cause it was a total waste of the ONLY BA hh book. Not only because it had the blandest and most forgettable characters (who can forget apothecary ba! and librarian ba! and of course tactical ba!), which were rightly forgotten about (remember the red angel? HH and the Siege sure did not). Not only for wasting even 1 page on the most generic evil mustache twirling word bearers (tho this happens allot in both the hh and 40k, something about word bearers just calls to the BL authors for generic mustache twirling evil bad guys)  but because it goes OUT of its way to be a bad HH BA book by changing and in the process ruining Sangiunius entire HH arch beyond as it proved anyones ability ( or willingness to repair).

 

Sanguinius had a fantastic pre set story, he goes to Signus LOSES the title fight there, grows as a person/primarch and has the big showdown on Terra. Loss-growth-Finale, story telling 101.  Instead Swallow had Sanguinius lose on Signus...then he quickly got better and had a instant rematch and BEAT kabandha on Signus (possible the same day its been a while since i read it).  Suddenly everything after that is meaningless, there is no loss to spurn character growth or intersection, no epic rematch for him to prove his worth and vanquish a established threat.  It was quite possibly (ok Nikaea retcon wins but its a firm second place) the worse HH retcon the series did, as it adds NOTHING to the story, the HH, the Character or the legion. And creates actual story issues. Sure ADB came in and put Angron in his place, but it was never needed, having chaos threats that can go toe to toe and even beat Primarchs was only ever a good thing. Having the Signus trap be a actual well laid trap where events have been placed that give chaos the juice/edge it needs to fell a primarch is a good thing. And ruining that while also needlessly changing the lore for NO GAIN will always mark Swallow as one of the HH worse writers in my eyes. 

 

But it also highlights one of the key issues with the HH and brings up right back to the Buried dagger, poor central control, non existent overall story planning, guaranteed sales making quality not that relevant, and ultimately this lead to the mid HH dark age of endless cashgrabs, format changing, LE and the loss of MMP on release.  At book 54 the problems were know to everyone.